One of the effects of the left’s long march through the institutions is the almost universal capture of young minds. Generally speaking, at least until the financial reality of life arrives – job, spouse, children and a mortgage – there they will remain. Consequently, the young and the left do not depict a normal distribution pattern.
One can see why the left appeals to the young. The facts-don’t-matter-crowd decry objective truth and use moral posturing to emotionally manipulate. “Doing something” appeals to one’s better self and fits nicely with the purity of youth and the obvious lack of real responsibility. Think school kids taking the day off from their own education to march for the planet, despite not knowing or understanding anything about climate science – let alone, Maths or English – and you have in one the left’s predation of young minds using a bandwagon mentality.
So where in all of this is the right? Well, hoping for the young’s transition to real life. In fact the right is very much like that unsure pimply boy waiting with his mates for that new girl on the other side of the dance floor to come over to him. But while he goes on waiting, and waiting, and waiting, his rival has already twirled her out the door, never to be seen again.
At least not until around age thirty-five and the advent of those financial wake up calls of adulthood, may the right finally meet up with that girl again, and now with a husband, kids and mortgage in tow.
Even so, moving right is still not guaranteed. In fact in a way it has become less likely as more taxpayer largess, from both the left and, incredibly, from the right, which never receives any accolades from ramping up government spending, keeps growing. This is because the “someone-else-will-pay” mantra sums up how the appeal of blaming others for being in a much better financial position – and exacting from them an ongoing contribution – is mesmerising. What does not occur to those unformed minds, however, is not just how ravenously parasitic is government’s call, if allowed, on the wallets of ordinary working men and women, but that their own parents, if they are working too, are not exempted from the government’s claim.
At CPAC Australia last weekend, Pauline Hanson spoke about her satirical cartoon series, Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain. Now into its second year and uploaded each Friday to YouTube, the cartoons have proven extremely popular.
Hanson pointed out that despite the interest that her cartoons have generated with an older demographic – and evidenced by the numbers of hands that went up in the room in acknowledgement – the series has been specifically targeted at the 18-35 age group because conservatives and right-of-centre parties traditionally have been weak in engaging with young people.
Hanson noted that some of the people who work for the media company that produce the series for One Nation initially were suspicious of the Party and doubtful about what it could offer them. Specifically, these were members of that left-leaning demographic of young people.
But, as Hanson noted, once the “penny drops” the young are no different from any other group of Australians worried about the country, their place in it and how their needs can be addressed. And so from these cartoons and their work on the series the message of Please Explain did start to resonate.
Though it was one particular cartoon more than any other that opened their eyes: death taxes. When it comes down to it politicians wanting to grab hold of this generation’s inheritance was too much for them because they were the probable subject and not some random other. Knowing that their parents will ultimately pass on to them more wealth than any other generation ever has, they discovered they all have a stake in tax policy and what wealth redistribution really looks like. It may have been only figuratively that their age ticked over to thirty-five, but I can not see them back flirting with the left.
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