Ghost Notes #3

Short takes on things I have been watching, reading, listening to, thinking about, or longing for

The Sounds of Silence: This article in The Guardian is no doubt correct in what it says, that the LNP and Labor are in the process of stress-testing their policies and talking points in preparation for the next election. But what is most interesting about the analysis is what it leaves out: the nearly one-third of voters who no longer vote for either of those “two” parties. This is what happens when your political analysis is top down rather than bottom up and it is as a mindset apparent in the “major” political parties as much as it is the legacy media. Any article about the next election, about Australian politics in general, that leaves out the crossbench is as nonsensical as a review of The Lord of the Rings that doesn’t mention the Elves.

Ghost Notes #3

I am just a poor boy though my story’s seldom told: Half the time, the value in paying attention to mainstream media is not that they fulfil the function of democratic watchdog, let alone perform any sort of straightforward educativ…