Okay, this shit isn't funny anymore.

[logansrogue]

Dear Labor,

GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER. Right now, right now, this country needs to you pull your head out of your fucking arse and do what you can to keep Abbott OUT OF GOVERNMENT. Because that man in power? Holy shit, it scares me. It really, really scares me. At this point in time, it's the lesser of two evils and holy SHIT is Abbott fucking evil.

I'm terrified. I'm not even exaggerating, I am like, seriously frightened for the future of this country if that fascist git gets in. It'll be WORSE than Howard. It'll be horrible. Even Costello things Abbott is a fuck-knuckle.

So Labor, please, DO SOMETHING. I don't know what it is you can do, shit is pretty bad, but do SOMETHING. Cause if Liberals get in power, and we're stuck with the Mad Monk, I WILL BLAME YOU. FOREVER. AND EVER.

No real affection,
Nancy.
PS - Julia Gillard, if I were you, I'd ditch Rudd and go for the Top Job yourself. I mean, I'd fuckin' vote for you.

Comments

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Cause if Liberals get in power, and we're stuck with the Mad Monk, I WILL BLAME YOU. FOREVER. AND EVER.

Amen.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

I also want some way to mark my ballot "Don't you dare take this second-last preference as a mandate for any of your shitpile conservative policies, you enormous stack of douchetrumpets."

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

The people handing out Liberal propaganda at the next election will unfortunately be on the recieving end of some very frosty fucking glares. Not that I like being cold to strangers, but I resent having to put a number next to the Liberal boxes.

Never mind the fact that I'm in the Liberal Heartland here, so those people are loaded bastards looking out for number one, perfectly happy if my disability payment gets cut off. I'm all right, darling, so why don't you vote for the people that make sure I don't have to pay for your food and board? There's a good girl.

[countessdeweird.livejournal.com]

This.

[mawaridi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm scared too. And Ms Gillard would totally have my vote. It's about bloody time we had a female PM, and I also happen to think she is pretty cool.

[bewarethespork.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's not entirely true. Not all of us Liberal voters are heartless bastards, you know. Some of us aren't even all that well-off. (Hell, I'm certainly not, not since I moved away from home, anyway.) Some of us just have really, really strong reasons not to vote for the ALP or anyone who preferences to them, and believe in the Liberals' mission statement, even if they don't agree with the way it's interpreted.

(For the record, I hate Abbott with the fire of a thousand suns and I wish Malcolm Turnbull had stayed on as leader, but I kind of liked old Eyebrows Howard. And compared to Rudd and the ALP, almost everyone will always be the lesser of two evils in my eyes and in the eyes of lots of people who have been personally screwed over by unions [like my dad, sadly enough by the very union that was supposed to be representing him] or who are really, really fucking scared of this internet censorship stuff.)

Urgh, I didn't mean to get all preachy. I'm sorry. It's just...you know how personal politics is. Someone says something and you take it personally even when it's not meant to be. I know a lot of people who will happily say things like "all conservatives are evil, heartless bastards", so defensiveness is sort of a kneejerk reaction. I didn't mean to get all ranty at you, and I hope you won't take offence from anything I've said.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

That's okay. I'm not personally bothered by arguing about politics, as I do it all the time with my Dad. Seriously, I have no problem with you strongly disliking Labor. I don't take it personally at all! :)

I didn't say ALL Liberal voters are toffee-nosed jerks, just the ones in my area.

Perhaps you can understand my fear - Abbott has talked about taking away disability from the "less disabled". He would take away the only money I can get, and it's barely covering costs as it is. He'd take it from my poor Mum, too, who has a bunged up back. And that's just the beginning of the horrible things he'd do.

The language he uses for asylum seekers is dehumanising and terrifying. And how do you think Abbott got in? Because the rest of his chums in Liberal are in favour of him and his mad policies!

The Liberal party represents the withholding of my rights and a direct threat to my liberty to me. This is why I am afraid. As a queer, disabled, unemployed woman, I am terrified of them. I have no love of social conservatism, but I understand, to a point, economic conservatives.

I have no such affection for Howard. He was needlessly cruel to refugees, he wouldn't say sorry to the Indigenous population and he jumped on the "OMG TERRORISTS!!!" bandwagon. He chummed it up with one of the most callous, cold-hearted bastards this side of the year 2000 (GWB). I could go on.

It's no secret that I'm very progressive, very socially-minded. So it's pretty obvious that Liberals aren't going to be my cup of tea.

I guess one thing you have to understand is that for me, a lot of the time, the personal is political. I can't help it. A good portion of the world legislates over my body and thinks they can decide things for me because I'm female/queer/disabled. They think they can say whether I'm allowed to get married or not, or whether I'm allowed to adopt children if I happen to have a wife, or if I should even be having children at all. So when I talk about politics, I get very emotional and so forth.

But unless I say, "ALL so-and-so", then it's probably not about you. Just like it's not about all men when I talk about sexism, nor all Temporarily-Able-Bodied folk when I talk about disability rights, etc.

I hope I haven't offended you too much! Just stating my side of things, and making sure it's clear that I believe these things, and yet I still respect your opinions.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

I think she would kick arse. I read some of her biography, it was really interesting. My dad's always calling her a commie.

[bewarethespork.livejournal.com]

I can understand your fear - I feel it every time Abbott says anything at all about feminism or women's rights, after all. It's just...not enough to balance out all the reasons I hate the ALP.

Bear in mind, also, that my entire family is conservative - not just my immediate family, the entire paternal side of my family, all over the world. Conservatism is an inherited trait in us just as much as mannerisms, accents, even looks. I cannot fathom a world in which I would ever vote for a left-wing political party. The idea of doing so isn't just wrong in my mind - I literally cannot even understand it as something that applies or could potentially apply to me.

That said, I understand why many of my friends hold left-wing political views, and in some cases, I even support them. But I am and always will be a political conservative - maybe not a social conservative, but always a political one.

I would love a resurgence of the small-l Liberal, and a return to politically conservative but socially libertarian policies - the crux of the Liberal Party's actual official mission statement, as available on their website and elsewhere. That's what I believe in - capitalism, a free press, small government, environmental conservatism and smart economic management. I didn't sign up for the fundamentalist nutjobs, but sadly, they're what we're being given at the moment. But there's no other party that even comes close to representing my beliefs. For me, they really are the lesser of all evils.

I can see your side and I respect your point of view, and I'm glad that you can see and respect mine. (All too often in real life, this hasn't been the case - I've been flat-out told by people who are supposedly friends of mine that I'm a bad person for voting Liberal, and that I should feel ashamed of myself for doing so.) I actually really respect the conviction with which you uphold your beliefs, even if I don't share all of them myself.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

As far as I see it, the genuinely just-right-of-centre Australians like yourself are having the same problem with the Liberal party that the Americans are having with the Republican - it's full of assholes.

Believe me - Labor piss me off too. But my problem is more that they're not left-wing ENOUGH. I'd be happy with a government that did more to fund the hospitals and education, to fight unemployment by helping the homeless, mentally ill and disabled to find a niche in society. Also a government committed to preserving Australia's pristine and beautiful landscapes and features, its wildlife and natural resources. That whole green energy thing would be nice, too. Oh, and gay rights and equal marriage rights for all.

So, yeah, I'm voting for the Greens. Again. Cause I'm a hippy-dippy mung-bean jostick burner. :-P

If I stopped talking to people that didn't agree with my political views, I wouldn't be talking to half my family. I hope that the Liberal party sort their shit out, cause it'd be nice to have less fundie assholes in Government. Malcolm Turnbull, now he I actually didn't loathe and had some actual respect for. It might have something to do with the fact that he voiced support for gay rights at one point.

[bewarethespork.livejournal.com]

I'm a little further right of centre than a lot of people, but not as much as the fundie nutjobs; I'm probably somewhere between Turnbull and Howard, actually. But yes, I see your point.

My thinking is this: the idea behind capitalism is that everyone should start on a level playing field and should then be able to use their own skills and talents to earn money and get ahead in life, right? But for there to be a level playing field, everyone needs to have a high minimum standard of education, healthcare and social security support if they need it. So a properly capitalist, free market society would give those things to everyone, and then the people who use those resources to their advantage and therefore earn more money can pay for private education and healthcare, so that they can a) get what they pay for (which I think is perfectly reasonable - if you're willing to pay for private schooling, for example, you should get a level of education that matches the money you've paid for it), and b) take a bit of the burden off the public system so that people who need it can use it more. Does that make sense, or am I totally not explaining myself properly at all?

Gay rights and so on just...go without saying for me. They're not [insert minority group here] rights, they're human rights. Everyone should fight for those - if we don't, then how can we claim to really still be human? There's a really good quote in a David Eddings book where one of the characters says something like, "If we try and pretend that they're less than us, we deny our own humanity," and I've always believed that very strongly.

If I stopped talking to people who didn't agree with my political views, I'd lose most of my friends. I knew hardly any conservatives until I started med school, and I still don't know all that many. It's not like we're a majority in my age group, after all.

(And actually, you know who else apparently supports gay rights? Phillip Ruddock! Completely unexpected and out of left field, but I always thought that was pretty cool.)