By Clementine Ford Fri 23 Aug 2013
Photo: To suggest that everybody and nobody might be helpful measurements merely asserts your own dominant ideology. (Getty Creative Images)
Everybody and nobody are one and the same. Both are useless forms of social measurement and yet this collective view seems to be directing political dialogue in this country, writes Clementine Ford.
"Is it only me," Lyle Cook of Shearwater, Tasmania asks the Herald Sun, "or is everyone sick of hearing the PM, the Finance Minister and the Treasurer constantly saying what Mr Abbott will do when he is PM?"
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that it must be left to someone to discuss what it is Mr Abbott plans to do when he's PM given that he refuses to do so himself, no Lyle Cook of Shearwater, Tasmania, 'everyone' is not sick of this. There may be others, but an army you do not make.
As (mostly) thinking creatures, it's natural for us to seek support for our own views by assuming they are confirmed by other rational creatures - rational of course because we believe our own philosophies to be naturally based on reason, and consider those who disagree to be tinkering with a less than full toolbox. This is how we come to hear ludicrously offered truisms asserting things like 'everyone' knows asylum seekers who come by boat are illegal bloody queue jumpers and as such 'nobody' wants them here.
Everybody and nobody are one and the same, and both are useless forms of social measurement.
Photo: Daily Telegraph front page from August 5, 2013 (Agency: Photographer)
Regardless, it's a philosophy that's been cynically employed by Rupert Murdoch's Limited News in the lead up to the election. It's no secret that Old Rupe wants to deliver Abbott into the prime ministership, whether or not for the much touted (although probably incorrect) theory that he wants to protect his Foxtel foothold from Labor's NBN or the much more likely explanation that he's just a deeply conservative old man who strongly supports similar (despite occasionally contradicting himself on even that).
Whatever the reason, the News Ltd press has been relying heavily on the idea that 'everybody' in Australia is sick of the Labor Government and their apparent mishandling of the economy, and 'nobody' will be voting for them this September.
The result is that, in a supposedly democratic country, we have an election campaign being conducted not by a political party but by the tabloid news company invested in their instalment. Worse, that tabloid news arrogantly disregards the proportion of the population who hold contrary views, deciding that such citizens are invisible and therefore undeserving of representation in a supposedly unbiased news force. Regardless of your political leanings, this is a monstrous abuse of journalistic power that should be recognised as such.
I understand passion. As an op-ed writer, it's my job to express opinions that are inflammatory to a proportion of people. I can't say there haven't been times where I've relished knowing how a particular turn of phrase might inspire fury in those with whom I disagree.
But there's a difference between assuming a binary of moral codes that one can argue for and against, and simply erasing opposition altogether. To suggest that everybody and nobody might be helpful measurements merely asserts your own dominant ideology without actually prosecuting your argument. As a silencing tool, it's both enormously effective and damaging.
To give a non political example for context, this practice of ascribing absolutes is still frustratingly employed to reinforce gender roles. Outside of satire, there's really no place for seriously argued theories that begin with the words, 'Everybody knows women/men are [insert whatever stereotype or prejudice the speaker holds]'.
The worrying compulsion to refer to this 'Every Australia' is driving a political dialogue in this country that's increasingly concerned with appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Similarly, it is intellectually baseless and often insulting to assume that desires stereotypically ascribed to one group are the only desires that count - as if those who sit outside this sample are so meaningless and irrelevant to the moral question at stake that they cease to even exist.
When Melbourne nightspot Red Bennies found themselves in a copyright tussle over a 'schnitz and tits' night, organiser Jeff Yates justified his support for the antique concept by saying, "Everyone loves a pub meal and a schnitzel and everyone obviously loves the second part of the product." In this case, 'everyone' was clearly meant to refer to not only a rigid ideal of masculinity but to reinforce the idea that these are the only opinions that count.
So back to the election and the general political atmosphere in Australia right now. The worrying compulsion to refer to this 'Every Australia' while ignoring voices of dissent is driving a political dialogue in this country that's increasingly concerned with appealing to the lowest common denominator. Technology has enabled a news cycle that recycles itself so often most people are informed by soundbites rather than reports, and it seems fewer and fewer people are prepared to look beyond the slogans being conveniently fed to them from all sides of politics.
Everybody knows the ALP can't be trusted to handle the economy. Nobody wants a Liberal government. Everybody cares about securing our borders. Nobody supports the carbon tax. Despite none of these things being explicitly true, they are repeated ad nauseam and accepted if not quite as facts, then at least as opinions that deserve to be respected despite their baselessness.
What we are left with are political opponents catering to such facile absolutes, delivering populism over policy to members of an electorate comforted by the reassurance that they are the norm, but who largely don't even care enough to investigate these issues beyond having a barely informed feeling about them.
And while it might be true that not everybody in Australia is guilty of such intellectually bereft political engagement, it's also true that this sample size is not nobody. If there are to be any exceptions to the rule, it is perhaps this - when absolutes, slogans and assumptions are repeated as facts (particularly where politics are concerned) everybody should be very worried because nobody wins.
Clementine Ford is a freelance writer, broadcaster and public speaker based in Melbourne. View her full profile here.
When nobody agrees with what everyone's thinking - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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