Discussion - Imported Nationalism

Me Thinks provides this rant from the pub on the problem with nationalism these days. Is an egoist party supposed to be nationalist? That seems too beholden to group identity. But pragmatism is also a characteristic of Me First! The nation-state is still the only kind of sovereign polity in the world, so we can roll with that. Besides, our flirtation with internationalism in negotiation with the Protista fell apart over how much chilli to put in our one-and-only conference dinner.

Anything can be taken too far even for narky pedants like us. The nationalism that once freed populations from absolutist monarchs now tends to fetter them to imaginary monocultures. We hanker for a more relaxed national spirit that once characterized Australia. A laconic and understated homegrown nationalism has morphed this century into something altogether more ra-ra-ra and razzamatazz. A nationalist now wears a flag around their shoulders while yelling at passers-by. A nationalist fifty years ago would have called them drongos.

The Australian way involved shuffling your feet as some patriotic oath was uttered and then mumbling along to the national anthem half-heartedly. Making a big thing of it all was the province of politicians and wankers. We just wanted to have a barbecue with family and friends. But then we forgot that and started importing our nationalism from the United States. This foreign influence on our culture must be curbed! But how?

Fucked if we know. But whinging is very Aussie and we are starting with that.

Update

On further consideration we think a partial solution could come from borrowing and improving on a policy often demanded by ranting nationalists. More stringent citizenship tests! But our innovation will be to extend that qualification to all Australians. If you are born in Australia then you automatically have permanent residence but to become a citizen you must pass a citizenship test on coming-of-age (and you can have another shot every twelve months). Fewer drongos on the electoral roll could be just what this nation needs.

Media Release - Pedestiquette

The following announcement from an affiliated pressure group has been passed onto us for circulation...

In Feet First! we are dedicated to advocacy for pedestrians and challenging wheel privilege in all its forms. But we want it to be known that we do more than just make demands. We are also prepared to offer something back in the form of reviving pedestrian etiquette. We vow to show respect for our fellow pedestrians by committing to the following behaviours whilst walking among them:

5. If we need to look at our mobile devices, we'll find space out of the way in which to stop and do so.

4. If we are entering into a busy walkway, for instance by exiting a shop, we will give way to those already walking there.

3. If we are walking as part of a group, we won't occupy the entire width of the walkway.

2. At all times we will scan the space ahead of us for other persons and objects and adjust our course accordingly.

1. And, If possible, we will keep to the left, while overtaking on the right, just like they still do on Melbourne escalators.

Almost everybody is a pedestrian now-and-then so this 'pedestiquette' will be a wonderful thing for the general public. And while others focus on issues of global disaster we are showing that we can address those tiny but frustrating things that happen every day. So put your fellow walkers first by adopting these five behaviours from Feet First!

See! Even at the margins of political movements one can occasionally find a hint of common sense.

Policy - Truth In Everything!

Now and then we see political activists (often from minor parties) calling for 'truth in political advertising' and similar concepts. This is seen as of benefit to both them and the general electorate because it will make it more difficult for the holders of power from the major parties to manipulate our understanding. But Me First! will take things further with our much-needed policy of Truth In Everything!

Yes it will apply to politics but it will also apply to other aspects of public life. Consider the following...

Truth In Commercial Advertising: You run a fish-and-chip shop and your window signage declares you make the 'best burgers in town'. Is this 'town' your locality, your municipality or your entire population centre? Be precise! How has 'best' been defined and tested? Were you awarded something by a recognized expert in burgers or did you survey the local population? Provide criteria and citations in small print on your window! Or is this just your opinion? Well then modify your sign to say 'we think we make the best burgers in town'. Or you could just add scare quotes to any and all of the words in your statement. If you cannot do this then we are calling your burger-related statement a pork pie! *

Truth In Architecture And Design: Have you installed shutters on your front windows for all to see? Do these shutters have hinges to allow them to close over your window? Are these shutters sufficiently wide to cover the entire window pane? Or are your shutters merely faux shutters intended to deceive? If so have you installed a small sign in your front yard stating that your shutters are purely decorative? You better have! The same will apply to facades that make a warehouse look like a fortress or finials that are only tacked onto your roof like some inverted chair leg. You have been warned!

Truth On The Web: Did you just share a meme without checking if it is accurate and comes from a respected source? Did you just say 'LOL' but cannot provide video evidence of you having just laughed out loud a moment ago? Was this spurious content only shared with your private circle or can it be seen by all-and-sundry? Be careful who you say things to or you will cop it baby!

This is how much truth matters to Me First! But how will we enforce this truth policy? Surely our law enforcement services are stretched as is! Our solution is this - defamation! Anyone who is exposed to and offended by a distortion of truth can sue. Nothing works better than having ones every word and deed scrutinized and policed by ones peers. The profit motive will drive us to make one another more truthful and result in a better society overall (while also enriching our party coffers). You are skeptical of this? Come on! Trust us! Would we lie to you?

* 'Pork Pie' is rhyming slang for 'lie'. You can use such figures-of-speech as long as you provide explanation.

Discussion - Privileged Position

Me Thinks has provided the following discussion on the mutating nature of political debate. Me First! is desperate to be relevant and so must keep up-to-date with shifting trends. A big one is the ever-changing definitions of 'privilege'.

Originally the word evoked images of the landed gentry and clergy. But for a long time the ranks of those deemed privileged has been growing and diversifying. The list soon grew to include successful merchants and examination-tested civil servants and professional military officers. Then there was the 'fourth estate' of the media and the inclusion of elected politicians. The list of the privileged has grown in part because power has been better shared in modern times.

But there are other additions to the list that result from a recognition of how prejudice impacts on life and livelihood. What combination of chromosomes you have or how absent melanin is from your body started a long and growing list of demographic factors that affect power relations. And it is power that defines any kind of privilege worth identifying. But the list has gotten so big lately that anybody can be more privileged than you as long as you slice the issues in a particular way. Debate (online at any rate) is becoming dominated by the call and response of "you are too" and "I so am not". The ability to annoy another is a sort of power we guess.

With that in mind Me First! wish to muddy the waters further by introducing a long-overlooked but key form of privilege - we shall call it Personality Privilege. Imagine a group of friends of identical demographics. Observe how they interact in a room and soon you will notice some have more prestige than others. This can happen in a room full of the privileged (however defined) and in a room full of those lacking privilege (however defined). Some hitherto overlooked factors are at play and chances are they are the same factors in both rooms. Those factors are ones of personality.

Characteristics like charisma, determination, expansiveness, cunning, manipulation all play into who in a group has power. And it is the groups we choose to move in that define the foreground of our lives and push culture and economics into the background. We all know a 'big fish in a small pond' who has the power to give and take favour as they put each of us in the good or bad books of their own private fiefdoms.

Can we ever address the problems of Personality Privilege? Why would we want to? As egoists Me First! has zero intention of legislating this issue away. Rather we want to make our party a seedbed of Personality Privilege. You can be sacred or profane, cultured or crass, rich or poor, known or unknown, pink or brown, male or female, cis-gendered or trans-gendered, old or young, urban or rural, able or disabled, sane or insane, smart or dumb, lucky or unlucky. None of these differences will matter to us as long as you are a domineering boor or a scheming cur. Arseholes of the world unite!

There is one challenge with this strategy - the observed tendency of arseholes to despise other arseholes. How can they possibly work together? The solution is the Internet! Those who cannot get along in person can just about manage it online and thus all kinds of 'community' can now exist that in the past would have simply torn themselves apart. With this revelation it will be our privilege to remake society in our own image!

Hold on... looks like everybody got there sooner than us... what a mess...

Transcript - Preference Negotiation Meeting


During every election in Australia there is fuss made over the preference negotiations of the various political parties. Me First! initially felt it was a private matter and wanted to tell everyone to bugger off and do something useful like collect stamps. However after the nth call for transparency and accountability on preference negotiations we decided to give the punters what they wanted.

Truth be told we only got to meet with one preference negotiator. None of the more significant contenders wanted to bother with us. But to our surprise we discovered that the one fellow that would talk to us somehow represented a number of micro-parties of the religious fanatic ilk. Talk about buying in bulk! But we had to go in with something to offer them and were well-prepared to do just that. Here is a transcript of the conversation that ensued…

Mr First: In return for your preferences we will offer you both our preferences and something that you cannot possibly refuse!

Mr Whisperer: And what, pray tell, is that?

At that we passed over to Mr Whisperer a paper with the following text.

----------

If elected we will work to ensure that Australia is a society in which all your members and supporters can…

* Choose to go to full-term if they accidentally get pregnant.

* Choose to live as long as they possibly can under palliative care.

* Choose to only engage in heterosexual sex within the confines of a traditional marriage.

* Choose to give religious instruction to their own children by sending them to Sunday school at a local church.

* Choose to change the channel if something offensive like Harry Potter (which celebrates occult magical practices) comes on television.

* Choose to convince others that all this is right and never be thrown to the lions for annoying street-corner evangelism.

In short we will work towards everything you as a persecuted minority could reasonably want in an open society.

----------

Mr Whisperer read our offer and then blinked. We may have blinked too but were wearing sunglasses so nobody could tell. Mr Whisperer then went on:

Mr Whisperer: I think you will find that we already have all those things and more.

Mr First: Oh. Okay. Well then why are yall making such an effort to get into politics and push all these new laws?

Mr Whisperer: Because we want to force everyone to live the life we have chosen to live.

Mr First: Right. Well. Um. That’s a pretty shitty way to be.

Mr Whisperer: Only God decides what is shitty and only we can interpret for God.

Mr First: So you want to live in a society surrounded by others who are only pretending to be like you?

Mr Whisperer: You could say that. You could say we want them to fake it till they make it or go to Hell trying.

There was only one way to respond to this and so we ended the conversation with…

Mr First: I have seen the Light!

Your Me First! party did a preference swap with the religious fanatics but then we forgot to stand any candidates in the election so nobody can blame us for what happens next.

Media Release - Quashing Consumer Sovereignty

The Australian Government is considering making laws to restrict the right of consumers to boycott goods and services they have ethical problems with. What is a boycott but some consumers telling other consumers what they think of a product? This shows that the current government has left behind its heritage as a 'mass party' and become a 'class party'.

Sorry for the political lingo but Me First! has studied politics at uni. A mass party is one that advocates a political ideology that anyone of any background or status can adhere to. In contrast a class party represents a particular group within society. Every thing the current government does shows that it has abandoned its interest in liberty for all and now exists just for the enrichment and aggrandisement of a select patronage - profit-seeking limited liability corporations who have never come across the notion of enlightened self-interest let alone human compassion.

This is fine with Me First! as it helps us distinguish our political brand but we have some advice for the government on how to truly be what they are. One way to do that is for them to better understand the nature of dissent so as to better quash it. The rest of this media release takes the form of a letter to the Australian Government (so the rest of you can bugger off now).

* * * * *

If you change the law so that consumers in the form of lobby groups cannot openly advise other consumers to boycott products they deem to be detrimental to environmental and human needs then they will simply get sly on your arses. Consider the following statements...

"I never buy Benny Wareman furniture because it lacks the tasteful designs my home environment deserves."

This quote is only expressing an opinion of personal tastes. Or is it? Note the italicised word "environment". What if this is some sort of code among consumers for concern for the environmentally degrading practice of using timber from old growth forests? How can an oppressive corporate state ever tell just by looking at this?

"I always buy my clothes from Hippy Hut Eco Emporium because they provide good conditions and award wages to the clothes-makers."

In this quote the consumer is actively promoting a company. This looks pro-industry but such statements imply by omission that other stores fall short of the ethical standards that many consumers desire. What if they then published long lists of recommended providers of ethical products? Are they in effect putting a dent in the profits of those absent from the lists?

"I have ethical problems with Mon Tinto International but I cannot express them in public due to government laws restricting my free speech. I can however tell you one-to-one if you contact me at [contact info]..."

Ouch! This one generates suspicion towards a particular corporation while at the same time blaming your draconian policy for generating such suspicion. It also shows that with modern communications technology private conversations can happen rapidly and propagate far-and-wide.

These three statements show just how much more work you have to do if you are to convert Australia into a homogenous flock of credulous force-fed consumers. In order to prevent such statements from working as a substitute for open boycotts you will have to:

* Get access to the content of the private communications of all Australians to determine if any further action needs to be taken to defend corporate profits from clandestine 'private boycotts'.

* Prevent consumers from saying complimentary things of an ethical nature that references only some companies as 'selective consumer promotions'.

* Prevent consumers from criticizing any aspect of a good or service on the off-chance that it may be some coded message masquerading as a 'personal preference non-purchase'.

This will be a legal quagmire of epic proportions. We have an even better suggestion for you - remove consumer sovereignty entirely! Charge all Australians compulsory fees for baskets of goods and services that they must accept. These can be contingent upon the income levels and demographics of consumers.

"You must be home on Saturday to receive the 'working class young parents furniture package' that we have charged to your bank account."

Is this ludicrous? Come on! This is what you secretly want and it makes you hot!

We will send you our bill in the morning for this advice from Me First!

Policy - Votes For Things!

A while back Me First! presented our Votes For Children policy but who are we kidding? We will never win the coveted family vote. Those Mums and Dads in voter land are all too busy swinging between the major parties to ever notice us. We need a new demographic and a new gimmick to get them in. While looking at the current batch of Senate candidates we noticed that a number of micro-parties use the same libertarian rhetoric we do. But rather than simply seeking to attract ideological purists it seems they have tapped into a demographic and even a way-of-life. Well we can do that too!

We have just now devised a policy in all of a few minutes. Such swiftness works for other micro-parties (and indeed for some Opposition Leaders) so prepare yourselves for the Votes For Things policy! Ta-da!

Me First! will extend the right to vote to a class of inanimate objects. And just like our Votes For Children policy these votes will have to be exercized by the owners of the inanimate objects. Instant electoral bribery for our new target demographic! Here are the criteria for eligibility.

All objects granted votes must:

- Be owned by the person nominating them who are themselves on the electoral roll
- Be licensed to same person
- Be well-taken care of by same person
- Have been anthropomorphized by same person (including having been given a personal name)
- Have mechanical moving parts

Once this policy is implemented we expect guns, four-wheel drives, jet-skis and other objects central to the culture of the Australian 'great outdoors' to be added in droves to the electoral roll. All those grateful objects (as represented by their owners) will then vote for Me First! and we will work for the rights of all those things in Parliament!

So can your best manufactured buddy get to vote? Well that depends.

"Can Cedric The Cellphone vote?" says owner, uni student Jamie. Sorry Jamie but in Australia nobody needs a licence to own and operate a mobile phone. Besides Cedric has a touch screen and solid-state processing so lacks the mechanical moving parts.

"Can Lucille here get the vote?" says blues legend B B King. Sorry B B but while electric guitars do have mechanical moving parts they lack the need for a licence. Besides you are a foreigner.

"Can Gruntfugger my 4x4 sporty ute vote?" says outdoor recreation enthusiast Pete. Fuck yes Pete. Gruntfugger can definitely vote. Congratulations. You now just have to decide how to cast your two votes.

Critics may well ask us what will happen next if we give these important objects the vote. Will we next be extending the franchise to plants or animals or anonymous clusters of human cells? Me First! has a pragmatic response to that which is to say that other parties exist to represent such interests. We will stick to enfranchising poor neglected objects like Gruntfugger.