An Exercise in Futility

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-21/barron-presidential-image/4701918

"in 1999 that NSW Liberal Party MP Barry O'Farrell said, "When I lose weight and shave off the beard then you'll know I am after the Liberal leadership".

Eight years later, beardless and 40 kilograms lighter, the erstwhile 'Fatty O'Barrell' was elected Liberal leader and in 2011 won a landslide election victory to become Premier."


I initially commented:

What a superficial world we live in. Everything is image and spin and if you ain't got image and spin, then you just don't get it.

What's more, what a waste. Think of all the people of high caliber, perfectly suited to the job but for the mere fact that they 'just couldn't lose weight'; or 'just couldn't change the colour of their skin'; or 'just couldn't grow testicles'. What a different, even maybe better, world it might have been.

Then big joe commented (I suspect this may be Big Joe Hockey stirring the twitterverse pot):

"I suspect that the US is not very different from Australia, appearance is everything and substance is nothing, our present PM is a living example of this."

To which I replied:

If you bothered looking at the 'substance' displayed by our present PM instead of basing all your opinions on ignorant shock-jock influence you would not be able to hold such views. Look at the facts:

In a legislatively difficult hung parliament she has pushed through a raft of far-reaching progressive measures that will have a continuing positive effect on the common good: the carbon pricing system and environmental measures to push us into a sustainable energy regime so that something of the Earth will remain for future generations; a school-funding scheme that goes a ways toward tapping the full potential of our entire talent pool with less emphasis on whether you can pay for it or not; a fairer and more efficient tax system where the tax-free threshold is almost a living wage...etc, etc, etc.

If you don't like any of this by all means continue to vote for the LNP, but just bear in mind that if you do, you are voting for a party which staunchly and steadfastly believes in division. The single salient characteristic of every single one of their policies is that an unmentioned side-effect is that it will create or promote a division in society along the lines of rich-vs-poor, black-vs-white, have-vs-have-not, native-born-vs-alien; etc. This is how they compete: the old rule of 'divide and conquer'.

Do you really want to live in a divided society?