The wrong side and the right side

How can someone be so right and so wrong at the same time?

John Howard is a loathsome little squit, he's reduced the job of Prime Minister to a chunk manageable by someone of his very moderate vision and intellect: the Australia of which John Howard is Prime Minister exists only within the boundaries of Greater Sydney, on subdivisions of one quarter acre on which stand one single family dwellings, occupied by a man, his woman (waspish and united holy matrimony) plus regulation 2.2 children, sundry pets, a barbecue and a cricket bat.

Steadily over the years he's presided over the Big Country more and more has been whittled away and parked out-of-bounds. Don't be queer, non-white, non-christian, female, tolerant, adventurous, open-minded. Such things have been rendered unAustralian.

I found this site http://www.bilegrip.com/ while surfing and it did manage to fuck me off quite royally. If you bother to look at it you'll possibly think the reaction a wee bit odd, so bear with me.

I've never voted for a party of the left. Why. Well let's start with a few things I DON'T believe in first.

I don't believe that anyone goes into politics prepared to make things better for any number of other people at their own expense.

I don't believe that anyone in politics wants to set people free rather than subject them to a more effective set of controls.

I don't believe that anyone with a finger tip to one of the levers of power can retain any serious commitment to a previous single-issue type obsession.

Anarchy looks attractive until you consider that you'd only be giving free rein to the sort of people who thought Bob Hawke was a Top Bloke and the sort of people who continue to believe that John Howard is a Bonzer Little Battler.

At that point I accept politics, and governance and that I'll have to pay for it. But I'm damned if I'll pay over the odds for a bit of peace and quiet when more tax payers dollars or pounds only means more expensive mistakes.

So I'll go for the faint prospect of fiscal rectitude over any vague promises of slightly subtler shades of social illiberalism any day.

It is possible to loathe John Howard, to want to cry for the damage he has wrought at home and to perception of home abroad, to tear one's hair out with the results of each federal election in despair and disbelief, and be a grudging right of centre voter. OKAY?