An absolute disgrace if this is how the Government is thinking: GST: ‘Higher taxes’ to flow from reform plan.

“We still seem to be in denial about the structural budget ­deficit,” said Tony Shepherd, the former Business Council of Australia president who chaired the audit commission for the federal government. “I’d return the GST increase to those who are ­seriously in need, such as the ­bottom quartile. The top three-quarters (of people by income) are going to pay more tax — that’s the bottom line.”

Another member of the commission, Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone, said a higher consumption tax would have to happen sooner or later. “The states need more money,” she said. “And if the states need more money but we don’t want extra federal expenditure, the GST is the way to do it.”

If Labor loves all this public spending, let them get elected on the promise of more taxes. In the meantime, Mr Eloquent and his Treasurer, Mr Fixanything, should be making the case for lower spending and why it is so important.

It’s the same thing now in the US with Paul Ryan, the Republican House Speaker, working to get the revenue to pay at least some of the bills.

This is an article described as “reflections on the election of Justin Trudeau and the ‘idiotized’ culture” whose title is The Triumph of Drivel. It is specifically about Justin Trudeau, but having endured Barack Obama since 2008 and now Malcolm, I can only say I have got used to it as a phenomenon of our times. And what sort of phenomenon is that?

Perhaps I should explain what I mean by “drivel.” I could write “lies,” but these are only possible to those who have criteria for the truth. Drivel is what people talk who have no such criteria. The fact that what they’re saying may be true, or untrue, is of no significance to them. It is enough that it sounds plausible. The truthful man knows when he is lying; the postmodern man neither knows nor cares. He can believe himself “good,” as drivellers will do, because truth doesn’t come into it.

The old-style politician told knowing lies. The new-style politician doesn’t know what “lies” are. He uses the term rhetorically, against anything he doesn’t want to hear. The old-style politician would back down when confronted with the truth. The new-style politician doesn’t know what you are talking about. He assumes you are only trash-talking him.

So let us listen to how Malcolm describes events as they have transpired:

“This is the government of Australia, it’s not the Tony Abbott government, it’s not the Malcolm Turnbull government, we can be prime ministers but we are here to serve others,” he said. He also said he had learnt from his own downfall that it was vital for a leader to be collaborative and consultative.

“The one thing I have learnt and learnt this not just from my own experience but also from others (is) the absolutely critical importance of recognising that this is an exercise in collaboration. I’m not the president, I’m the Prime Minister. I am first among equals,” he said in a clear reference to the complaints about Mr Abbott not involving his colleagues enough in decision making.

Ridiculous. Just words with no sincerity. He can’t even fake it, he’s such a phoney, but those folks at The Australian just lap it up. So I return to the conclusion of the original article I quoted:

“The people” believe in drivel, too, as they have just proved. As I’ve mentioned before, a growing percentage of the general voting population has been morally and intellectually debilitated — “idiotized” is my preferred term — by postmodern media and education, and by spiritual neglect within (often broken) postmodern homes. Large vested interests can lead them by the nose, even while they imagine themselves victims of conspiracy.

Postmodern media! The folks of Europe have just discovered how the reality they live in has nothing much in common with what they read in the papers, see on the news or hear from their political leaders. Idiotized may do, but it is a form of political insanity for which no solution that I can think of now exists.

AND FURTHERMORE: That Barack Obama is delusional is truly the only explanation I can think of for his behaviour. He is leading America into a cesspit of social disorder, both nationally and across the world. His only friends are the deep left and the media. I would hardly be the first to describe him as a narcissist. Continuing this theme, the following was picked up via Andrew Bolt, an article by Paddy Manning in the SMH titled: Bad blood and bastardry: how Malcolm Turnbull became opposition leader. This is the passage I find so absorbing, but the lead-up in the article to Brendan Nelson’s comment quoted below is quite astonishing. I remember none of the events, but what I do remember is that Peter Costello gave away the leadership of the Liberal Party in 2007 because he could not bear having to deal with Malcolm. This might be why:

A doctor by profession, Nelson told journalist Peter Hartcher he genuinely believed Turnbull had a “narcissistic personality disorder … He says the most appalling things and can’t understand why people get upset. He has no empathy.”

In the modern world, with the media structured as it is with its far left perspective, this may be the only kind of personality type that can survive the never-ending negativity. The most personally decent man to ascend to become Prime Minister in a very long time, Tony Abbott was driven from office by the media left along with the left in general for whom personal values count for nothing against their own agenda. Malcolm, however, will do just fine.