This is not a rhetorical question.
We see regularly the right-wing commentators and shock jocks using appalling language and imagery, think of Alan Jones’s suggestion that Julia Gillard be “put in a chaff bag and thrown into the sea”. Can you think of a left-wing equivalent? No, I didn’t think so. OK, Mark Latham is on that spectrum, but one exception surely doesn’t refute the premise.
Jakov Miljak, an electoral officer for the right-wing Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, was involved in a physical altercation with someone in the Young Liberals who spoke out in favour of Turnbull. It was almost a given that the conservative was the aggressor and so it turned out to be.
Then there is Donald Trump………..no need to elaborate there.
I happened on a nice light read this week about Waleed Aly winning a Gold Logie, surely congratulatory or a reasoned argument favouring Lee Lin Chin? No, a nasty diatribe on his win by Miranda Devine, who doesn’t seem to like anyone frankly. Where did I read something about the mark of mental health being the ability to like something about most people you meet? Or did I make that up?
Last week’s Daily Telegraph attack on Q and A questioner Duncan Storrar shows how low it can go. Eek, he has old criminal convictions, eek, his eldest son doesn’t like him, eek he once let a library book go overdue. I am sure any of us would look crook once these mongrels went over us with a fine tooth comb. Who is going to ask a tough question on national tv once we’ve frightened everyone with this sort of response? That is the purpose of the exercise, leave the talking to the pollies and keep the little guy in his kitchen.
But the question remains. Why exactly are these people so damned ugly? They seem to have much in common with religious fundamentalists in that they are highly submissive to authority and believe that the rest of us should readily submit to that authority. They are themselves fearful, so they are keen to subject the rest of us to their fears. They seem easily led by their herd and are disinclined to think outside their highly compartmentalised ideas.
How many conservative politicians and religious right-wingers can you think of who have tumbled in sex scandals? Yet, in the midst of so many world problems they are obsessed with moral minutiae.
In a word, they are bullies. Political bullies and bullies on social issues.
Sad but true, bullies are drawn to positions of power, whether that be as politicians, shock jocks, police or bouncers. When did you last meet a bully who was an optometrist or a paramedic or a fire fighter? Enough said.