First I tried to kill it with a hammer.
Jan. 25th, 2005 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reddragdivaI have a theory (which is mine) of what drives youth socialism. It's not just clueless youthful enthusiasm, it's hormones as well. They're a hotbed of hot beds. Leadership is inherently sexy. Even John Howard has groupies. (Which shows there's not much lower than a political groupie.) Dynamic phrases in a small group with a sense of purpose gets the chicks. Doesn't matter what the purpose is. Younger leaders and followers are also unhindered by clues or experience. I once started reading this history of Australian communism: The Reds by Stuart Macintyre. It completely failed to go into the real cause of all the splinter groups splintering and reforming: the history of your hundreds of People's Fronts of Judaea is someone sleeping with someone that someone else thought they shouldn't have and declaring a schism. And the big draw is: where else are you going to find that many smart young women with shaven heads, overalls, Doc boots and all their original body hair, who are nevertheless mostly heterosexual? COMMUNISM IS CAUSED BY DYKE FETISHISM. Thank you.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 06:03 pm (UTC)If we skip the Doc boots and substitute suitably-vegan shoes; at your local militant veganist faction?
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Date: 2005-01-25 07:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 08:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 08:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 09:26 pm (UTC)The Australian greens don't seem to be Marxoids or anysuch; should they ever come to power, taxes would probably go up (especially on things producing pollution) and Australia would probably get London-style congestion charges and public transport that works, but I doubt they'd herd everyone into collective farms, jail dissidents or establish Cuban-style totalitarianism, regardless of how much of a stud Che may have been.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 12:58 am (UTC)The problem with this in Australia is miles and miles of bloody suburbs. Inner-city Melbourne trams are about as good as it can get - we really don't have the population density. Perth covers approximately the same land area as London with one-tenth the population - I can't see lots of heavily subsidised empty buses being a happener.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 08:11 am (UTC)I think that transport in Melbourne at least could be done better than the current car-centric model. Certainly, if the government diverted some of the billions being spent on freeways for outer suburban two-car households to, say, running buses at reasonable hours or extending railway lines to underserviced areas, it would help.
Of course, the swinging votes are precisely in the outer-suburban two-car households who want to get from point A to point B in their Landcruisers as quickly as possible. Which is why they're building freeways left, right and centre, running more cars through the inner city (what are the latte-sippers at greater risk of getting cancer from the increased fumes going to do, vote Liberal?), and occasionally throwing PT a bone like half a dozen bus services extended to 7:30pm or something. When the PT budget isn't wiped out by bailing out private operators whinging about fare evasion, that is.
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Date: 2005-01-26 04:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 08:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 06:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 06:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 06:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 06:25 pm (UTC)Mostly, stoodent politics attracts the opinionated and the egotistical. And the terminally boring.
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Date: 2005-01-25 08:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 08:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 09:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-01-26 09:28 am (UTC)tinfoil hattiara is for.(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 10:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 10:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 10:50 pm (UTC)The most annoying aspect of my time in student politics was the VUT SRC being half socialist activists. The other half of us actually agreed with them on almost all issues — they could just be such dickheads about it.
I was really struck by the dyke fetishism aspect at some of the student socialist meetings. Damn fine women. And then watching the splinter groups splinter further and noticing how often ideological lines matched a who-bonked-who chart.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 11:32 pm (UTC)I've noticed some of the same stuff with the LaTrobe queer politics and the Womens' Collective, hense why I keep my distance.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 11:40 pm (UTC)