By Zeitungsdunkel
While enjoying some morning radio earlier in the week on the way to the day job, this author was bemused by some of the apparent radio host banter. One of the co-hosts was making jokes to explain why the other regular co-host was not on air this morning, and paraphrasing from memory the joke went something like this:
‘(Regular Co-Host) isn’t here today. He is currently in Canberra helping Malcolm Turnbull put together his cabinet… (pause for comic timing) with his allen key.’
So far so harmless. Joke. Funny. Play the music Mr DJ dude.
Later in the show the joke comes up in banter again, and it is revealed that one listener rang in to moan about the Liberal Party and another to express their utter horror that Regular Co-Host could ever be a Liberal voter.
At this stage, just to completely clarify, there was no Canberra. It. Was. A. Joke.
Now admittedly in this day and age, the person ringing up to complain about the Liberal Party could have been a DelCon, but it does lead to some slightly worrying observations.
Ignoring the entire ‘Joke’ aspect, there is firstly the assumption that anyone’s personal and private voting choices really has anything to do with you, and secondly, the strange belief by many ‘non-Liberal’ voters that everyone else they know and like MUST also vote ‘non-Liberal’.
The second point is the most interesting and maybe the most perplexing insight into the average Leftie mindset. Often do we hear of people claiming ‘I don’t know anyone who votes Liberal’, which statistically is just absurd. Looking at first-preference votes and ignoring the still slightly incomplete at time of writing 2016 returns, the only time the Liberal/National coalition have not been the single most popular voter block this century was the 2007 Kevin Rudd election, and even then the combined Lib/National vote was still a mildly impressive 42%. Not bad for a year many in the Love Media tried to describe as one in which conservatism in Australia had just been proven to be utterly finished.
In fact, prior to Miranda Devine inventing the DelCon movement (thanks Miranda, expect two Christmas cards this year! XXX) if you were ever forced to guess a random person’s voting patterns and knew nothing else about them, then the safest bet would have been to pick Liberals/Nationals.
Despite this, Leftie types still seem to want to insist they do not know a single Liberal voter, and proceed to show utter confusion and shock when they meet one for the first time. Often this confusion then turns to anger, and they then start displaying open fury that someone could even dare be different from everybody else.
Now speaking personally, this author is completely comfortable with the idea that people may choose to vote for different parties. Just because I want to eat turkey, doesn’t mean I would expect those aforementioned birds to vote for Christmas. I don’t necessarily agree with them, and I often think their lifestyle choices makes them lazy, selfish parasites stealing from the rest of society, but I am also pragmatic enough to admit if government stupidity was throwing large amounts of cash in my direction, I wouldn’t very likely want to vote for it to stop either.
What this author does however also do, is realise that people who vote differently do exist, and under a 2PP system, it is about 50/50 likely that any random new person this author would happen to meet for the first time may be significantly politically different.
Lefties however, honestly do not seem to do this, leaving them nearly always surprised and confused over events like Brexit or Tony Abbott.
No wonder they are always so angry.