One of the things that’s always intrigued me is the way in which things can be framed so that people completely miss what’s going on. I’d like to think that I’m immune but I’m sure I’ve missed the main act while being misled into concentrating on the sideshow. I’d give you an example but – obviously – I can’t think of any personal examples because I failed to notice what was really going on, owing to the clever framing of the topic at hand. Or not at hand, given I was misdirected to something minor.

However, I can’t help but feel that Scottie isn’t as good as he thinks he is. Let’s take the whole protest thing. While it’s true that while we concentrate on the tactics of the protestors, I’m not going down the whole “Hitler liked quiet Germans so much that if they weren’t, they soon were!” path. The Liberal Party is at least two elections away from actually executing those who don’t like their policies… Although I did see a tweet from failed candidate Warren Mundine suggesting that QandA should be dragged over hot coals for their recent program. To be fair, this may not have been because he was advocating violence, but more about finding another use for coal when the rest of the world stops buying the stuff.

It was more the way Morrison described the protestors as “selfish” and “indulgent” which I found interesting in terms of the framing. Let’s just accept for a moment the rather interesting notion that they overstepped the mark when they got in the way of all those police batons and how the poor horse was subject to PTSD after that woman forced it to break her leg and look at our national waterboy’s framing of the situation.

As altruistic miners try to enter a building they’re stopped from their humanitarian aims by these incredibly selfish protestors who are just there for the fun of harassing the saints who, out of the goodness of their hearts, give up their spare time to find ways of giving people jobs. These saints of industry have worked tirelessly to eliminate all canaries from their coal mines and are moving towards a world where mining is fully automated and no humans will be forced to undertake such dangerous work. At such a time, they’ll then share the wealth they’ve created by donating their stuff to the people who can’t afford it at current prices because they’re such great human beings, unlike the bullies who are blocking their way just for the fun of it.

Whichever way you look at it, the protestors believe that they’re trying to save the planet. Even if you think that the planet doesn’t need saving, it’s really hard to argue that they’re the selfish ones. “You bastards, you’re only trying to save the Earth because you live on it! Have some consideration for people like Alan Jones who haven’t been on the planet for years!”

Whatever, it’s easy to see how you can crack down on people blocking pedestrian traffic. There is actually a thing called the riot act and police can read it, demand people disburse and arrest them if they don’t.

The secondary boycott prohibition, however, seemed so impossible to enforce that I just presumed this was another attempt at framing the debate so that we were discussing this instead of the whole climate change issue. It’s been quite easy to shift the focus. After Greta Thunberg addressed the UN, we were suddenly arguing about such things as her age, the nasty personal attacks and then to top it all off, we had the same people who’ve been spouting their own opinions with scant regard for the facts telling us that we should be listening to the scientists… even though that’s exactly what Greta had done.*

But then I started thinking about it…

Now, I know that I’m going to sound crazy. I know that this is going to sound like satire. However, let’s have a good long think about the Indue card. First they come for the unemployed and we don’t mind if we’re not unemployed. Then they come for the aged pensioners, and we don’t mind because we’re not aged pensioners. And then it’s for the childcare rebates and parents with dependants start to mind, but it’s too late because before we can do anything there’s no such thing as cash any more and the government tells us it’s to crack down on the black economy and make everyone pay their share so that we can finally get the Budget surplus that we’d have if it weren’t for all these tradesmen doing cash jobs, then…

You can’t boycott a company because the government says that it’s a good one and you can’t use your money to help that other company because it’s not on the list of approved companies and not just because it didn’t lend money to Adani or donate to the Liberals. There are other reasons but these like Scott Cam’s salary and what he’s actually doing for the money are commercial-in-confidence…

Ok, nonsense. I know…

But it might make a great scare campaign and that seems to be what wins elections these days!

*A few weeks ago, Kevin Donnelly, told us that 47 respected climate experts disagreed with Thunberg and that the world had managed with higher levels of CO2 about 500,000,000 years ago and we still have plants and animals. Yes, I thought, but not the same ones. Anyway, I wonder how Kevie feels about the 11,000 scientists who came out telling us that climate change is real and we better start taking it seriously. Nah, he’ll say, I like my 47 better and those 11,000 were probably just taken in by that sixteen year old.

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