Um, let's see.
The democratically elected leader was taken down by a pack of faceless men in a backroom coup, delivering a gala performance thereafter that the public - you'll have to admit - widely admires as deserving of a thorough electoral enema.
I'm not saying the Labor Party singularly represents underperformance, corruption and scumbaggery (they undoubted must be kind enough to share that honour with the Coalition parties), but right now the Labor Party certainly does have this smell decidedly emanating from it.
But's let's also be fair: There are good people on both sides of our political divide - or at least many whose intentions are good - just as there are many who are self-serving hacks on each side. The actual tragedy is that our party-political system has reduced every one of them to votes on the floor, reducing their propensity for individual upstanding community-building and moral stature to all-too-common zombie-like parody.
Now please, you tell me Evan, what makes you genuinely proud to be a Labor supporter this year? Cuddling up to economically-suicidal Greens, caving in on a meritable mining tax, attempting to offshore the protection of human rights, etc, etc, or simply keeping the Coalition out of power for another year?
If (and be honest, only) the last, precisely why? Specifically, do you actually think it is better to abandon principles simply to hold power; or do you actually and fantastically believe that being in power will inspire a return to principles? Because without principles, the Labor Party is no different, nor at all any better, than the Coalition on its worst day!
Basically, where you are wrong (excuse just one more adjective, please), is in thinking that your opponents in politics are evil. I'm telliing you that they're not: They simply don't agree that your solutions will deliver the same equitable and enviable results that they also want. They are proposing their own solutions, and are mostly genuinely offering them up moreover for democratic consideration.
But, both sides of politics in Australia today (just like as in the rest of the free world) harbour anti-democratic tendencies, and it is exposing and criticising these efforts that deserves our true effort and eternal vigilance.
Democracy requires at least two differing public policy platforms in constant combat for public support: Just as the ultimate triumph of either will signal the end of democracy itself. Uncritical support for any faction of politics doesn't strengthen our democracy, it simply delivers it further into the hands of the faceless men on both sides of the divide that would seize any opportunity to weaken it.
I'm saying that if the Labor Party doesn't stand for democracy and doesn't in its every action to live up to that commitment, its isn't worthy of our support as citizens (that being the only thing created by man that approaches the measure of merit of anything created by nature).
Explanation enough?
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