Pants on fire
Koko the gorilla, famous for communicating with humans via a 1000 word sign-language vocabulary (and infamous for her nipple-fetish and subsequent involvement in a sexual harassment lawsuit), apparently has another trait in common with her relatively hairless cousins: After a particularly violent tantrum, in which a sink in her enclosure was ripped from the wall, Koko was confronted by her handlers. At this point she gestured to her tiny pet kitten and signed: ‘Cat did it’. Koko’s apparent penchant for untruths, reminiscent of Bart Simpson’s adage: ‘I didn’t do it’, is in turn is echoed throughout my year 7 English class. Therein students swear to their innocence so vehemently that I often doubt my own senses, despite the peashooter still dangling from their lips, and the spitballs stuck to my forehead. I have often lectured along the lines of ‘The Boy who Cried Wolf’; however the concept that blatant and obvious lying to my face in the past has damaged their present credibility remains seemingly foreign.
While lying seems to be universal, the question of whether it is OK to lie is an age-old conundrum. For the religious amongst you, the Bible and the Koran both prohibit lying. However, Jesus himself arguably told a porky – “Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come… But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret” (John 7:8-10). Saint Thomas Aquinas spoke in depth about lying, dividing lies into three categories: the humorous, the useful, and the malicious. All were deemed sinful, but humorous and useful lies are only venial sins. So go ahead and tell the one about the chicken in the doctor’s office – you’ll only get a bit of extra time in purgatory. Though I’d think twice about starting a rumour about the new girl in the office’s inflatable breasts - unless you enjoy the smell of brimstone and long for an eternal lease on lake (of fire) front property. But here we begin to spiral off into the perpetual problem with any analysis lying – the problem with which we were undoubtedly going to rendezvous: that of semantics - what may be humerous to some may be malicious to others. Also, to define a lie, we must define the truth, and truth is inexorably linked with the observer. If not as dead as post-modernism would have us believe, objectivity is at the very least enigmatic. Absolute truth does exist, but is a golden thread weaving throughout the fabric of this reality, only detectable by the patient and those with a keen mental eye (and mental patients) – kind of like a cosmic Tasmanian tiger. As for the corporeal world, it is as Nietzsche said: “There are no facts, only interpretations” (which, paradoxically, is itself stated as fact). So, before we fall into a dauntingly lengthy missive on the nature of reality, I will leave this examination of lying - so nascent, so half-arsed - and move awkwardly to the topic that originally prompted these thoughts on the concept of lying – the Australian government under Prime Minister John W. Howard.
Our cuddly PM’s lies are well documented, and delivered with such aplomb that, like my year 7 class, they are difficult to refute. Blatant lies won him a third term after the ‘children overboard’ affair, and the “never, ever” to be introduced GST is now are rarely thought-of part of everyday life. Justified by lies, Mr Howard led us into a conflict that has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, left a country ravaged by civil war, further destabilised the most volatile region on Earth, increased oil prices dramatically, and has solidified the previously pencil-sketched bullseye on our collective foreheads – colouring it in with the big red texta of foreign policy. The 2004 election was won, in no small part, thanks to lies (‘useful’ for the government, ‘malicious’ for many others); canny lies via implication, that interest rates would not rise under a Howard government, and omission - no pre-warning of the now-infamous Workchoices policy. People voting for Howard based solely on economic performance remind me of Krusty the Clown, when rationalising his decision to vote for Sideshow Bob - “Well he framed me for armed robbery, but man I’m achin’ for that upper-class tax-cut”. And the result for those traditional Labour voters who dreaded the thought of an extra $50 a week on their mortgage? Two interest rate rises in 18 months and ‘Workchoices’ now law.
Workchoices. This is the sunny little number that has removed unfair dismissal laws for companies with less than 100 employees, and has left decidedly more tenuous the ability to live relatively comfortably on a low income. The advertising campaign promoting the introduction of Workchoices was pure propaganda – happy families, more choices, better for everyone, happy, happy, happy. The reality? People are being fired, and then offered their jobs back at severely reduced pay; some apprentices are being paid six-to-seven dollars an hour; workers are pressured into signing away their breaks, holidays, and overtime rates, and being fired if they don’t comply. As reported in the Melbourne Times, a security guard applied for compassionate leave to care for his dying father and on his return to work was fired. The reason given was that compassionate leave is only available to an employee ‘if a relative has died’ before the application is lodged. With no recourse via unfair dismissal, the guard is now unemployed. The path this country is on, when you throw in the government’s disdain for Medicare, leads to sad little place where the cycle of poverty becomes ever more inescapable. And if you feel that poverty is not your concern, seeing that you are university educated, earning a comfortable wage, and working for a large company, consider this: As the ‘class’ division grows, so will drug and alcohol abuse, and mental illness. Concordantly, so will the crime rate: violence, theft – already petrol station ‘drive-offs’ are up 45-odd % this year. These things will not only cost the country millions, but will render many public areas, and transportation, unsafe. We may well end up with our very own ghettos, right here in Melbourne. Well, at least we’ll be more like America.
Speaking of which, the lowest income earners in the USA can work 60+ hours a week in multiple jobs, and still live below the poverty line thanks to a criminally low minimum wage. A short hospital stay can cripple an uninsured family. Their politicians lie too, but there’s one major difference: While Vice President Dick Cheney - like our own Johnny-boy - is a calculated, manipulating liar (read: excellent politician), President George W. Bush seems to genuinely believe most of his lies. This is particularly scary when you consider some Klassic Kwotes from the leader of the world’s most powerful secular nation:
And (reportedly):
A Fundamentalist Christian who takes Revelations literally, believes himself to be in direct communication with God, and in charge of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal. Oh dear.
Many of my students are those that will find themselves on the side of the wealth divide that holds naught but burger-flipping jobs and dial-up internet. I am trying to teach them to identify subtle lies and manipulations, those that bombard us via the media and advertisements, those that lead to them voting for a government that will in turn screw them over, but they are less than receptive; When I spoke to him about the techniques advertisers use to get people to buy things they don't need, one boy offered, in a moment of Zen: "But... I like buying stuff." I am trying to teach them the lesson of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’, but I sense they are learning an alternate moral from this story, much like Garek in Deep Space 9; they are simply learning to “never tell the same lie twice”.
While lying seems to be universal, the question of whether it is OK to lie is an age-old conundrum. For the religious amongst you, the Bible and the Koran both prohibit lying. However, Jesus himself arguably told a porky – “Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come… But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret” (John 7:8-10). Saint Thomas Aquinas spoke in depth about lying, dividing lies into three categories: the humorous, the useful, and the malicious. All were deemed sinful, but humorous and useful lies are only venial sins. So go ahead and tell the one about the chicken in the doctor’s office – you’ll only get a bit of extra time in purgatory. Though I’d think twice about starting a rumour about the new girl in the office’s inflatable breasts - unless you enjoy the smell of brimstone and long for an eternal lease on lake (of fire) front property. But here we begin to spiral off into the perpetual problem with any analysis lying – the problem with which we were undoubtedly going to rendezvous: that of semantics - what may be humerous to some may be malicious to others. Also, to define a lie, we must define the truth, and truth is inexorably linked with the observer. If not as dead as post-modernism would have us believe, objectivity is at the very least enigmatic. Absolute truth does exist, but is a golden thread weaving throughout the fabric of this reality, only detectable by the patient and those with a keen mental eye (and mental patients) – kind of like a cosmic Tasmanian tiger. As for the corporeal world, it is as Nietzsche said: “There are no facts, only interpretations” (which, paradoxically, is itself stated as fact). So, before we fall into a dauntingly lengthy missive on the nature of reality, I will leave this examination of lying - so nascent, so half-arsed - and move awkwardly to the topic that originally prompted these thoughts on the concept of lying – the Australian government under Prime Minister John W. Howard.
Our cuddly PM’s lies are well documented, and delivered with such aplomb that, like my year 7 class, they are difficult to refute. Blatant lies won him a third term after the ‘children overboard’ affair, and the “never, ever” to be introduced GST is now are rarely thought-of part of everyday life. Justified by lies, Mr Howard led us into a conflict that has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, left a country ravaged by civil war, further destabilised the most volatile region on Earth, increased oil prices dramatically, and has solidified the previously pencil-sketched bullseye on our collective foreheads – colouring it in with the big red texta of foreign policy. The 2004 election was won, in no small part, thanks to lies (‘useful’ for the government, ‘malicious’ for many others); canny lies via implication, that interest rates would not rise under a Howard government, and omission - no pre-warning of the now-infamous Workchoices policy. People voting for Howard based solely on economic performance remind me of Krusty the Clown, when rationalising his decision to vote for Sideshow Bob - “Well he framed me for armed robbery, but man I’m achin’ for that upper-class tax-cut”. And the result for those traditional Labour voters who dreaded the thought of an extra $50 a week on their mortgage? Two interest rate rises in 18 months and ‘Workchoices’ now law.
Workchoices. This is the sunny little number that has removed unfair dismissal laws for companies with less than 100 employees, and has left decidedly more tenuous the ability to live relatively comfortably on a low income. The advertising campaign promoting the introduction of Workchoices was pure propaganda – happy families, more choices, better for everyone, happy, happy, happy. The reality? People are being fired, and then offered their jobs back at severely reduced pay; some apprentices are being paid six-to-seven dollars an hour; workers are pressured into signing away their breaks, holidays, and overtime rates, and being fired if they don’t comply. As reported in the Melbourne Times, a security guard applied for compassionate leave to care for his dying father and on his return to work was fired. The reason given was that compassionate leave is only available to an employee ‘if a relative has died’ before the application is lodged. With no recourse via unfair dismissal, the guard is now unemployed. The path this country is on, when you throw in the government’s disdain for Medicare, leads to sad little place where the cycle of poverty becomes ever more inescapable. And if you feel that poverty is not your concern, seeing that you are university educated, earning a comfortable wage, and working for a large company, consider this: As the ‘class’ division grows, so will drug and alcohol abuse, and mental illness. Concordantly, so will the crime rate: violence, theft – already petrol station ‘drive-offs’ are up 45-odd % this year. These things will not only cost the country millions, but will render many public areas, and transportation, unsafe. We may well end up with our very own ghettos, right here in Melbourne. Well, at least we’ll be more like America.
Speaking of which, the lowest income earners in the USA can work 60+ hours a week in multiple jobs, and still live below the poverty line thanks to a criminally low minimum wage. A short hospital stay can cripple an uninsured family. Their politicians lie too, but there’s one major difference: While Vice President Dick Cheney - like our own Johnny-boy - is a calculated, manipulating liar (read: excellent politician), President George W. Bush seems to genuinely believe most of his lies. This is particularly scary when you consider some Klassic Kwotes from the leader of the world’s most powerful secular nation:
“I don't see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord.”
"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
And (reportedly):
"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam [Hussein], which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
A Fundamentalist Christian who takes Revelations literally, believes himself to be in direct communication with God, and in charge of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal. Oh dear.
Many of my students are those that will find themselves on the side of the wealth divide that holds naught but burger-flipping jobs and dial-up internet. I am trying to teach them to identify subtle lies and manipulations, those that bombard us via the media and advertisements, those that lead to them voting for a government that will in turn screw them over, but they are less than receptive; When I spoke to him about the techniques advertisers use to get people to buy things they don't need, one boy offered, in a moment of Zen: "But... I like buying stuff." I am trying to teach them the lesson of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’, but I sense they are learning an alternate moral from this story, much like Garek in Deep Space 9; they are simply learning to “never tell the same lie twice”.
posted by Mr Crisotunity at 12:54 PM
8 Comments:
It's a really good angry rant. And it's fun to read and suck up the anger. But, I suppose, rants don't lend themselves to balanced options, because seeing things from the other side would make the rant much less entertaining.
So I guess it's up to me to balance things up a bit. As much as I hate to argue for the liberal party and Johnnie h, I'm going to try.
Firstly, his perceived lies. I don't think you can include the GST as a valid example, cause he took that one to the polls. It wasn't just snuck in after he was elected, so there was no deception.
The children overboard scandal was bizarre, but John just said he 'knew nothing'. Is he lying?
The war in Iraq was started on the basis of bad intelligence (or America's desire for control of the middle east) however the lies the US told the world are their lies, not john's. I think john's decision to send the troops in is based on wanting to be as close with the USA as possible. The USA is the world's biggest superpower, so it's sound policy for our national security. Even if you don't like America and what it stands for.
It's also worth noting that both parties were unanimous in wanting to send troops to Iraq. It would've happened if beazley was running things.
The Interest Rate lie is a funny one, because it's not really a lie. The campaign was geared around low interest rates, but not once did any polly say that they wouldn't go up. All that was implied was that rates would be lower under a lib government than labor. And since we can't know what would've happened if labor got in, we'll never really know for sure. So there's no real lies there. It was a little silly on peter c's part to hand out one of the biggest income tax cuts of all time, when the economy was already overheating...
As for the workchoices. This is one of those really interesting political arguments that I love. The idea of workchoices is to reduce labour market regulation. It takes away power from the workers and gives it to the employers. So what is to be gained by doing this? Did johnny just bring it in to appease his big/medium business friends or did he have some other motive?
With less regulation over the labour market, it becomes easier for companies to hire and fire, and if they can pay their workforce less, then they'll become more profitable. They might even hire more workers and increase production, because it's more profitable now. Other companies will start up, wanting a slice of the bigger profits for themselves. this creates more jobs.
In the case of the cowra abattoir, for example, the company that fired and rehired would have gone bankrupt without being able to do what it did. So now the people work for less, but they still have jobs.
Unemployment is a terrible thing for a society. Much worse than having someone toil away for not much. People on the dole place a financial strain on the economy, and the psychological factors that people on the dole experience (worthlessness, boredom, alienation) all point to someone much more likely to commit crime than a person with a low paying job. Unemployment in Australia has fallen to records lows since the introduction of the workchoices legislation.
YOu conjure up the image of a 'fair' minimum wage. Is your frame of reference National or Global? people all around the world work just as hard for a lot less. But because we are developed, must we make sure that income earned creates a standard of living above some imaginary line?
We have to compete with India and China. We are not better than these people, we don't deserve more than them just because we had the fortune of being born on a rich land mass. People in these countries are willing to do the same work we do for a lot less. If we impose high minimum wages here, then we just can't complete. This leads to rising unemployment, as jobs continue to filter offshore, and we can't attract any big business ventures (outside of tourism of course). Again, this legislation should reduce real wages, and give us a much better chance of competing. This is unpopular, but necessary.
So I guess, for your little burger flippers, it means that there will be burgers to flip, rather than the emptiness of the dole ...
I take offence, Mr Criso.
I have plenty of hair!
It sounds to me like the underdog caste should rise up to oppose their oppressors. Isn't that what happens? The rich get more and more removed, the bourgeois aspire to greater heights and rally the working class to revolt so that the once bourgeois now become the ruling caste and I don't need to spell out the rest.
So what's the solution?
Join a union, buddy.
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