Posts by giovanni tiso
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to John Armstrong,
It would be a real shame to lose your voice.
Ah, but what is the point in having a voice if I can't use it? Because what you say about the usefulness of the community having a fairly well-defined ideological centre is true, but the centre shouldn’t be allowed to become the whole. In fact I think Russell and Damian’s latest point about how the need to constantly define terms might make people disinclined to participate is a perfect illustration of how this community’s supposedly inclusive self-regulating mechanisms (and I could write a book about “don’t be a dick”, I really could) reinforce its biases: it’s precisely by never defining terms that you get to the point where the preferences and needs of a sector of the middle class become the implicit horizon of every discussion, be it about food or travel or politics.
There is a disconnect here in my view: if the sensitivity to alterity and diversity in Emma’s writing and threads could be transferred into the more broadly political sphere, the community would begin to see through class boundaries. I suspect that the people of Trotter’s ilk who lament the influence of identity politics might just be envious of its vocabulary and how it’s succeeded in making privilege visible.
(That “hey, you’re middle class” should be considered offensive is in a way the crux of it. I don’t think that if I had said “hey, you’re a bloke” to somebody in one of Emma’s threads it might have warranted a scalding.)
His voice is still on Twitter and Bat Bean Beam, of course.
Plus I'm at the Tropicana every second Friday.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Russell Brown,
I didn't edit or delete the comment, I didn't threaten to ban you or abuse you, I just said I didn't think the response was warranted. You clearly didn't agree, but if you're going to describe that as "humiliation" and "bordering on the obscene" you may need to check your sense of perspective.
I wasn't referring to humiliation here, obviously. But yes, I think the preciousness you displayed in this and other similar circumstances whenever what I shall insist in calling liberal sensibilities are very mildly threatened is galling and sets some pretty hard limits to what can be said on PAS. Thus ultimately
the intellectual differences that are displayed
are not real. And perhaps we shouldn't expect them to be - every community has its biases - but we should certainly not pretend that they are.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to BenWilson,
Gio's a bit sorry, I'm sure. Just a bit.
I appreciate where you're coming from, but no, not even one tiny little bit. The protection above all things of liberal sensibilities on this site has reached proportions that make discussing politics on it - or anything that might legitimately be drawn into the political sphere - a frustrating and ultimately exhausting (for me personally, I'd add embittering) experience. If Left vs. Right on Public Address means Labour/Greens vs. National/Act, then what's the bloody point of claiming any thought independence, or committment to the robust discussion of ideas?
And it really shouldn't need pointing out, but, bafflingly, it seems that it does: identifying progressivism or the Left with Labour/the Greens means reducing the aspirations of anybody below the middle class to whatever those two parties define as thinkable and achievable in real world terms. This is incredibly limiting. In some areas and for some people, nothing short of humiliating. And in the face of that humiliation, which some of us experience on a more or less daily basis, being chided by the moderator of this site for having said "hey, you're middle class, you'll be okay" strikes me as bordering on the obscene.
I really am done here, but feel free to discuss in absentia, I really don't care all that much.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Russell Brown,
It might not be your intention, but you're giving the appearance of picking fights.
Yes, this seems to have been happening. You know what? I'm just going to fuck off.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Paul Williams,
Gio, Grant's interest in special education is longstanding. With Paul Gibson and others, he successfully lobbied for additional funding for tertiary students with disabilities around '95 - '97.
That's great, I don't want to knock any of the practical successes of disability campaigners. But in the senior political class I'm looking for somebody who is not happy with the model of resourcing disabilities, of thinking about disabilities, and wants to reform it radically. Then and only then we can start to fill our mouths with the word "fairness". Until then, we'll keep getting humiliated, and we'll keep having to fight each other for who gets the most crumbs.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Damian Christie,
So every bit of this conversation where we've been talking about Labour's new leadership, and then National being on the back foot, and whether National will lose in 2014, and the way that the media favours them, we were talking about some other party of the left that's going to rise up and win in the next 3 years?
Left and right is not about that. It may be that today, at this very minute the Labour leadership contest matters somewhat, but it's not what politics is about. Winning the next election is not what politics is about. Constructing a strong civil society, with movements and unions and public media and an intellectual class and a volunteer sector is what politics is about, fighting battles for civil rights and human rights is what politics is about, actually doing something to make society fairer is what politics is about. The three-yearly circus of our general election, which educates us to magnify the difference between centre-right and centre-left parties as if it represented the full spectrum of politics and the range of what is possible, can actually blind us as to what politics is about.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Damian Christie,
In NZ, yes I do, so good then.
And as a middle class professional you'll be served quite well by both parties. The classic win-win.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Damian Christie,
I'm not trying to be glib, but it is worth pointing out that Labour ran the country for 9 years until quite recently, and that the media hasn't changed a lot in that time. So it's not that stacked against the left.
If you identify the left with Labour, then, sure.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Russell Brown,
Is that why Maori on both the general and Maori rolls consistently vote in markedly lower numbers than the general population?
Possibly, yes.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Sacha,
That's just because we tell ourselves that it can't be done. Once again, though, the model is right there in front of our eyes.