Category Archives: Liberal

Demagogues like Donald Trump thrive on simplicity. One of the keys to his ascendancy has been the lumping together of his many enemies into a single entity, a group to blame for all the economic anxiety and cultural dispossession felt by a vocal subset of his constituency. And so, various strains of right-wing anger have for some time now been congealing around a single vague word: liberal.

As a political philosophy, liberalism is an untidy confection. But Im pretty sure I am one, at least in part because I subscribe to liberalisms first principlethat everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Insofar as I advocate for equality, reason and individual freedom, I guess that makes me the special snowflake sneered at by a billion alt-right Twitter accounts.

And, like all self-identifying liberals in the age of Trump, recent events have plunged me into a sea of doubt. Which is why I think its important to say this: As well as being a liberal, I am also a xenophobe.

That statement requires some immediate qualification. I am not your garden-variety racist. I do not cultivate hatreds based on skin color or nationality. I do not have an Aryan Viking or a colored egg as my Twitter avatar. A child of the 1980s, and an urbanite, pluralism is part of my cultural inheritance. But the truth is that, for someone who has spent the last decade as a travel writer and literary cheerleader for foreign people and places, I often have a hard time transcending stark cultural differences.

I think its important to say this: As well as being a liberal, I am also a xenophobe.Some examples from my rap-sheet include a month in China, during which my girlfriends red hair invited the kind of swivel-eyed scrutiny you might expect if shed had two heads, was enough to turn me against the entire country. The disdain for punctuality common to Latin America and Africa drives me to distraction. In abject fulfillment of the British stereotype, the worlds widespread inability to queue drives me to silent, haughty outrage. Whilst I am adept at reciting the worlds capital cities, Im also an authority on being judgmental.

Such observations dont generally make the final copy of daily opinion columns, but theres nothing especially novel or incendiary about them. (I suspect few members of the liberal chattering classes can watch the Broadway classic Avenue Q without a wry, self-conscious chuckle at the musicals most famous number, Everybodys a little bit racist.) However, at a time when liberalism as a concept is under attackwhen half of America is blaming it for all the worlds problems, and the other half are catastrophizing about the implications of its demisethis mea culpa may help formulate a better understanding of what liberalism is, and why it is in crisis today.

Crucially, the idea that a liberal can also be a bigot presupposes that a persons politics do not depend on the purity of their soul, but rather on the extent to which their anxiety about human nature supersedes their susceptibility to prejudice. Or, to put it more simply, being liberal does not necessarily make you a better person. It just means you believe base humanity is flawed and needs to be contained within a framework of social mores and ethical absolutes.

Liberalism, wrote the controversial philosopher Slavoj Zizek, is sustained by a profound pessimism about human nature. Where the nostalgic conservative sees a past of white picket fences and peaceful cultural homogeneity, the liberal sees centuries of genocide, sectarian war, colonization and enslavement. A right-winger might call it hysteria. A liberal would call it a rational reading of human fallibility. Viewed through this pessimists lens, political correctness is a safeguard, a levee against the dark rivers of our intolerant tribalism.To put it more simply, being liberal does not necessarily make you a better person.

Against this backdrop, a person opposed to liberal ideals comes across as either willfully foolish or worse. Liberals dont brand such people as racist because we think they are. We brand them as racist because we know they are. Because deep down, we know we are too.

And thats the problem. The central weakness of modern liberalism is that the self-criticism required in order to disown this instinctive bias has become a form of blindnessof our own moral imperfection, and of our tendency to offer a prescription for society to which we ourselves struggle to adhere. Three months on from Trumps election victory, and with the anti-liberal backlash continuing to shape politics across western democracies, the vulnerabilities in this picture grow starker by the day.

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill, among the founding fathers of modern liberalism, wrote that Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. But it seems unlikely that he could ever have imagined how future generations would see, in the ideology he championed, a haunting echo of that same oppression. What emerged as a philosophy of opposition to structural prejudice started to grow sclerotic the moment it assumed the mantle of orthodoxy. The resultan inflexible dogma rooted in secularism and identity politicshas ended up provoking the vengeance of those who feel marginalized by it.

While many liberals complain about the implications of anthropogenic climate change, how many of us refuse to fly?Often, the accusations of hypocrisy marshaled in opposition to liberal points of view are more absurd than effectivewitness, to name one recent example, the thousands of Trump apologists disparaging womens marchers on the premise that those same people hadnt been holding weekly sit-ins to protest the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. Yet the overarching criticism is valid, for how many liberals can say with sincerity that they are immune to instinctive bias? Can any of us truly claim that we feel as much sympathy for thousands of innocent Syrians immolated by Assads barrel-bombs as we do for European terror victims? While many liberals complain about the implications of anthropogenic climate change, how many of us refuse to fly?

Indeed, the words do as I say, not as I do could be the catchphrase for the entire liberal orderfrom the everyday leftie who decries gentrification while secretly celebrating the increased value of their house to figureheads we eulogize. As people around the world lamented the end of Barack Obamas administration, many pointed out that the man elected US president on a tide of hope and optimism, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize within months of taking office, vacated the White House as the first American president in history to have been at war for every day of his tenure. It doesnt require a huge leap of empathy to understand how someone anathematized to his politics might have seen, in the deluge of liberal tears that accompanied his departure, evidence of an intractable contradiction.

None of this is to say that social liberalism needs to be disavowed. The Trump era, if anything, looks set to demonstrate its importance anew. And while populists would have us believe that 2016 heralded the start of liberalisms downfall, we must keep faith that most people, if pushed, would choose a more self-aware liberal future to Steve Bannons nihilistic vision of religious war.None of this is to say that social liberalism needs to be disavowed.

But as todays progressives confront a newly energized right-wing populism, we must recognize the shortcomings in liberalism that have led us to this juncture. We should be able to acknowledge that, in seeking absolution for our worst instincts, we may have overcompensated by acquiescing to a status quo that has overseen rampant inequality and catastrophic foreign wars. And we should admit that the reactionary ideas fueling the right-wing surgenativism, nationalism, and American exceptionalism among themare understandable, albeit execrable, responses to our transparent balancing act. Trump is sticking a middle finger up to a liberal consensus teetering on feet of clay.

Everyone carries a shadow, wrote the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, and the less it is embodied in the individuals conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. It seems likely, were he alive today, that Jung might suspect liberals of possessing the biggest shadows of all. Perhaps we need to embrace our shadows before we can properly push them away.

Follow Henry on Twitter at @henrywismayer. Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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All liberals are hypocrites. I know because I am one - Quartz

Dave Berg Published 11:04 a.m. ET Feb. 6, 2017 | Updated 19 hours ago

Kate McKinnon and Hillary Clinton on SNL on Oct. 3, 2015.(Photo: Dana Edelson, AP)

The Trump administration regularly challenges the legitimacy of mainstream journalists, claiming theyall but openly favored Hillary Clinton during the recent presidential election. Many of Trump's supporters agreeand have turned to other news sources, such as Fox News, talk radio hosts and social media networks.

But thatrejection of the mainstream news media is only part of a larger story. Conservativesare wary of the entire liberal entertainment media, especially late-night comedians. While Jay Leno and Johnny Carson used to skewer both sides of the political spectrum with equal glee, todays hosts dish up humor that is anything but even-handed. Instead, they seem to be on a mission to destroy Trump and the Republican Party, doing monologues that often sound more like anti-Trump diatribes. In fairness, Jimmy Fallons only agenda is to entertain, but he is a notable exception.

As a result, many conservatives are clicking off the late-night showsand switching instead to right-leaning media, which is increasingly offering comedic material to fill the void left by the professional comedians. Some of the jokes are really funny. The go-to meme is mainstream journalisms bias against Trump such asPulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Michael Ramirezs depiction of an anchorman delivering these words: In other disturbing news President Donald Trump is doing what he promised in his campaign.

Nothing bothers conservatives more than liberals who sanctimoniously preach the virtues of tolerancebut dont take their own advice. Chicks on The Right recently ran a photo of a scowling woman pointing an elongated index finger with this caption: Im a tolerant liberal!Agree with me or else youre a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, redneck, gun toting, America loving bigot.

USA TODAY

Hillary's late-night TV pals aren't funny: Dave Berg

USA TODAY

'Designated Survivor' misleads on Michigan: Column

When Clinton referred to half of Trumps supporters as a basket of deplorables during a campaign fundraiser, she unknowingly struck the rawest conservative nerve of all. Trumpsters" immediately saw this as confirmation that Clinton wasnt just talking about their candidate. She was wagging her menacing index finger at them as well.

This campaign game-changer was lost on most of the late-night joke writers, who saw it only as another opportunity to satirize Trump and his supporters. James Corden joked thatTrumps supporters wanted Clinton to apologize and also explain what deplorable means. But conservatives embraced the phrase as a badge of honor.Trump made an entrance at a Miami rally with a big screen image of French revolutionaries from the musical Les Miserables projected behind him. But the title was changed to Les Deplorables.

Retailers began selling T-shirts with funny versions of the meme, such as Team Deplorable and Friends Dont Let Friends Join the Basket of Deplorables.

One of Trumps inaugural balls was even called the Deploraball.

Hollywood celebrities provide some of the richest material. Not all of them, just the self-important, preachy, hypocritical ones. When the dour, pedantic actors at the nationally televised Screen Actors Guild Awards bashed Trump non-stop, Fox News'Tucker Carlson quipped: This spells trouble ahead for the new administration becausewhen you lose Hollywood, you dont just lose Hollywood. You also lose Santa Monica and some parts of Pacific Palisades. And thats not good. Conservative satirist Ann Coulter tweeted: Big rally last night by SAG Sharia Activist Group.

USA TODAY

Pay no attention to the Gorsuch hysteria: Christian Schneider

POLICING THE USA:Alook at race, justice, media

Talk show host Chelsea Handler smugly told Varietythat she wouldnt interview Melania Trump because she can barely speak English. It was an odd thing for her to say, as the first ladywould be a great get for Handlers struggling show. Besides, Trump speaks five languages, and Handler doesnt even have a college degree. The irony was not lost on the first ladys supporters, who vented on Twitter.

From @mljackson12, "Perhaps Chelsea should give the interviewin French, German or Serbian? No wait Slovenian." And @ms_erika74, "Chelsea Handler speaksfluent vodka, thats about it."

Homegrown conservative humor has filled a need that late-night comedians have ignored for too long. They have done so at their own peril, as they will inevitably be facing stiffer competition from comedy shows hosted by comedians who understand the political sensibilities of people in the vast red political landscape of the country.

Dave Berg, author ofBehind the Curtain: An Insiders View of Jay Lenos Tonight Show, co-produced the show for 18 years. Follow him on Twitter @TonightShowDave.

You can readdiverse opinions from ourBoard of Contributorsand other writers ontheOpinion front page,on Twitter@USATOpinionand in our dailyOpinion newsletter.To submit a letter, comment or column, check oursubmission guidelines.

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Conservatives reject liberal humor in Trump era: Dave Berg - USA TODAY

Cory Bernardi says he did not support the decision to change prime minister from Tony Abbott to Malcolm Turnbull, and he does not agree with the idea of changing again. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Cory Bernardi has fired a parting shot at his former conservative colleagues, including Tony Abbott, declaring he was being used in a proxy war against Malcolm Turnbull in the build-up to his departure from the Liberal party.

In an interview with Guardian Australias Politics Live podcast, Bernardi said he did not want his split from the Liberal party to be any sort of trigger point for the destabilisation of Turnbulls prime ministership by his conservative opponents.

Bernardi said he had opposed moves to remove Abbott as prime minister in 2015, and despite his significant philosophical differences with Malcolm Turnbull, any move against him would be wrong too.

Acknowledging that some conservatives were intent on using his departure as fresh material to weaken Turnbull, Bernardi said categorically he did not want his defection to be used for political purposes.

Its the principle, Bernardi said on Tuesday night. You have an elected prime minister, and they are getting rolled because of the polls, or because of poor decisions. They are collective decisions of the cabinet. They are collective decisions of the party room, and they are hurt and they are terrible, but youve got to be prepared to fight.

It is the principle for me in that entire thing.

And where I resented some of the things you have suggested [about positioning by conservatives] is I was being used in a proxy war, and in my dealings with the [press] gallery over the last 12 months, I have made it abundantly clear, I am not involved in this I am not doing anyone elses bidding.

If I am the rebel Senator ... it is not because I am carrying a torch for anyone else. I dont want to see a change of leadership, its always been about the policy.

Abbotts office has been contacted for comment.

Bernardis comments about the Coalitions corrosive internals come after his statement to the Senate on Tuesday confirming his attention to resign from the Liberal party and start a new conservative political movement.

Former colleagues rounded on the South Australian over the course of Tuesday, arguing it was a complete betrayal of the voters of South Australia to stand for election as a Liberal Senator for a six year term, only to quit the party just over six months in.

Bernardi told Guardian Australia on Tuesday evening he had been inspired to launch his own insurgency after watching Donald Trumps successful grassroots campaign in the United States, but he said he had no interest in importing Trumps political tactics into the Australian landscape, such as decrying coverage he didnt approve of as fake news, or trying to muddy up facts.

He also suggested he could compete with One Nation successfully for the conservative vote, and many conservative leaning people looking for a political alternative would be reassured by his long history within the Liberal party.

In the interview, Bernardi shrugged off an apparent lack of interest from his close friend, the mining magnate Gina Rinehart, in bankrolling his new political movement.

Bernardi said he was looking to fund his organisation through many small donations from activists prepared to sign on to Australian Conservatives, which he was prepared to disclose in real time.

He said the sustainability of a political organisation is driven by memberships and the grass roots.

If I can get thousands upon thousands of people contributing modest amounts of money historically thats been the strength for my political fundraising, Bernardi said.

Ive tried to build relationships with people over a very long period of time. I have a weekly blog that goes out. Some of those people will be disappointed [about what Ive done] but there will be tens of thousands of people who will celebrate this decision and they are very supportive of me because Ive become their voice in the parliament.

I know who they are, Ive established a relationship. I can take the temperature of a great many conservatives in the nation very, very quickly.

He also signalled his donations above the disclosure threshold would be revealed publicly continuously, within 24 hours, rather than waiting 12 months for the legal requirement.

I dont know why people want to hide this.

Continued here:

Cory Bernardi says he resents being used in Liberal party 'proxy war' - The Guardian

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President Trump was correct in excoriating liberal activist federal judge James Robart for his grossly legally defective temporary restraining order against President Trumps temporary travel ban. Beyond excoriation Robart needs to be impeached and removed from the bench for judicial incompetence.

Robart reached far beyond his judicial authority in even supposing that the State of Washington had standing to appeal President Trumps order in the first place. Robart hinges his entire ruling on a concept called parens patriae, a term meaning A doctrine that grants the inherent power and authority of the state to protect persons who are legally unable to act on their own behalf. Ordinarily used by states to protect children and those who are incapacitated, Robart here tries to invoke this state-level power against the Congress and the President.

In the case Massachusetts v. Mellon however, the Supreme Court ruled with absolute clarity that it is no part of [a States] duty or power to enforce [its citizens] rights in respect of their relations with the federal government. Its difficult to imagine a ruling that more clearly denounces and derogates both judge Robart and the State of Washington in this clearly extra-legal attempt to arrogate the power of controlling immigration to the State of Washington. If Robart didnt know about this case he was explicitly informed of it by the Department of Justice in its objection to the TRO, so he has no excuse for ignoring an on-point Supreme Court ruling.

The power over immigration is exclusively reserved to the Congress, and its power is plenary, which means total, complete and unreviewable. Congress delegated certain powers to restrict immigration to the President by enacting 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), which says that when the President (any president) finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he is authorized to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Having granted this authority to the President, only Congress can revoke it and no federal court, not even the Supreme Court has the power to interfere in that presidential authority short of challenging the constitutional power of Congress to delegate certain of its plenary powers over immigration to the President.

It is simply not within the power of any state to interfere with such a presidential decision, as immigration-control advocates found during Obamas tenure in office. Obama did exactly the opposite, he ordered our Border Patrol officers NOT to deny entry to any aliens who illegally entered the United States, and when Arizona and other states challenged this policy in court on exactly the same sort of grounds of detrimental impacts to the people of Arizona caused by rampant and uncontrolled illegal immigration, Obama simply invoked the plenary federal power over immigration policy and did nothing to secure our borders.

Now that President Trump has chosen to exercise his part of Congress plenary authority over immigration liberal Democrats want to prevent him from doing so, and they found a corrupt judge to do it for them by venue-shopping.

By going to Seattle and finding a sympathetic liberal-inclined pet judge they accomplished two things: they got their TRO and they put the case into the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the largest and most liberal (and most-reversed by the Supreme Court) federal court in the United States, which reacted to a well-formed and legally-sound appeal of the TRO with a one-page ruling rejecting the appeal without any analysis of the case or the law. This was not circumstantial, it was very deliberate tactic on the part of liberal progressive Democrats.

This makes the 9th Circuit Court as much of a co-conspirator in violating the separation of powers doctrine as Robart and the State of Washington are, which is a good reason for the plan to break up the 9th Circuit Court into several smaller courts to move forward. Impeachment of 9th Circuit judges should also begin immediately.

There is no doubt whatever that review of both the TRO and the order rejecting the governments appeal, along with every other case filed against the Presidents Executive Order, will be summarily dismissed by the Supreme Court because the law could not be more clear: the states have no standing to sue Congress or the president over immigration actions because Congress power over immigration law is plenary and not subject to judicial review according to Article 1, 8, clause 4 of the Constitution.

This is nothing more than another liberal Democrat attempt to impede and inhibit President Trumps administration, but this one is entirely unlawful and they know it and therefore Democrats are stepping outside of mere procedural obstructionism and are dabbling in the realm of insurrection and treason, particularly when it comes to giving aid and comfort to radical Islamist jihadi enemies whom President Trump is trying to keep out of the country.

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Liberal Judicial Activism Borders On Insurrection - Daily Caller

The chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee claimed yesterday he has new evidence showing that scientific research discrediting a purported pause in temperature increases was politically motivated.

John Bates, who recently retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, told the Daily Mail newspaper in England that a 2015 federal study was intended to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and was rushed to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.

Bates said his NOAA colleagues relied on unverified data to prove their hurried claims.

Opponents of climate action have frequently highlighted data that seemed to suggest global temperatures stopped rising from about 1998 to the early part of the 21st century. They say it shows the Earth is constantly in cycles of cooling and heating, and they dispute the notion that global temperatures are consistently rising as the result of human activity. It has become a frequent talking point for politicians who argue that there is no urgency to curb the use of fossil fuels.

Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who receives significant donations from the energy industry, accused federal scientists again yesterday of politically motivated fraud. He said Bates' comments were proof that the study was rigged.

The 2015 NOAA study used flawed data, was rushed to publication in an effort to support the president's climate change agenda, and ignored NOAA's own standards for scientific study, Smith said in a statement.

He also said Bates has exposed the previous administration's efforts to push their costly climate agenda at the expense of scientific integrity.

The so-called hiatus was disproved by a team of NOAA climate scientists in a 2015 study that found the data set supporting a pause was inaccurate because it relied on different methods of temperature collection. A second study published last month also found that a pause never happened. It, too, highlighted data problems.

Last month, federal researchers found that 2016 was the warmest year globally on record. It broke previous records set in 2015 and 2014.

Smith in 2015 launched a congressional investigation into the work of scientists who sought to rebut inaccurate claims about temperatures being static. He frequently refers to the vast body of research about climate change as politically correct science.

Tomorrow, Smith is scheduled to hold a hearing promoting Republican efforts to make EPA great again. Critics argue it's intended to weaken scientific research that's used to justify environmental regulations

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at http://www.eenews.net.

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House Science Chairman Sees Liberal Cover-Up on Warming Pause - Scientific American

Just last week, Breitbart News editor and public speaker Milo Yiannopoulos saw one of his speaking engagements canceled when a protest against him at UC Berkeley turned into a violent riot. Rioters broke windows and even took part in brutal beatings of Milos supporters.

I am not on the same side politically as Milo. I am a liberal because I believe in liberty. First and foremost, my most cherished liberty is freedom of speech. The entire idea of freedom of speech is predicated on the notion that one must protect not only speech which they agree with, but also speech they disagree with. That also extends to speech which *gasp* offends you.

The violent rioters at UC Berkeley are representative of a phenomenon I and other actual liberals call the regressive left. The regressive left doesnt truly stand for liberty. Instead, they stand for the idea that anyone that says anything which offends them or doesnt fit their narrative can and should be silenced.

This regressive mindset is not only wrong, it is incredibly dangerous. A healthy public debate of ideas never silences anyone who wishes to engage in an open and honest dialogue about important issues. Unlike many of his critics and the bulk of these rioters, I have actually listened to Milo speak.

When Milo is faced with a tantrum from a protester who disrupts his events, he mercilessly mocks them to no end. However, and this is crucial to my view of Yiannopoulos, when faced with a respectful challenge to his ideas, hes extremely polite and gives very well thought out answers to genuine questions from liberals.

This is what public discourse between people who disagree is supposed to look like. Its not supposed to look like the absolute temper tantrum that many regressive leftists throw at his events.

And when theyre not throwing tantrums, these regressives resort to the next most destructive thing, name-calling. Youve all heard it over the course of the past year. Conservatives are racist, sexist, islamophobic etc. Despite my progressive views and liberal credentials as a youth leader in the Democratic Party, Ive been called all of these things when I speak freely about political issues. The one thing I have not been called is the utterly hyperbolic neo-Nazi.

Milo has been called a neo-Nazi by many of his most fervent critics. He is also a half Jewish, openly gay man. I will refer to my ethnic heritage when I say that calling Milo a Nazi is incredibly insulting to the memory of my ancestors and the millions of others who suffered during the holocaust.

Milo is not an oppressor, hes a messenger. I dont agree with every aspect of his message. However, I must admit, I agree with some of it. And thats important. Its important for people from different sides of the isle to listen to one another. Thats how you find common ground and come to a consensus. Its how you change minds and strengthen your movement.

When you listen and engage in a respectful dialogue about your differences, thats called making an argument; something many liberals, the regressives, are forgetting how to do. Instead, they attempt to silence their foes by name-calling and throwing dramatic tantrums to distract from their weak debating skills.

If Milo comes to Towson, and I hope he does, dont be one of these regressive babies. Go to his event, listen, and if you disagree with something he says, ask about it during the Q&A. As a true, blue liberal Democrat who vehemently opposes President Trump, I want avid Trump supporter and right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos to know that people like me exist. I want him to know that true liberals are here to debate him, not silence him.

And lastly, I want all the regressives to know that their childish antics will not be tolerated. To each and every one of you that would even think to engage in the kind of behavior that took place at UC Berkeley, or who calls their political opponents neo-Nazis in a pathetic attempt to slander them with false, ad hominem attacks which harken back to the tactics of McCarthyism. You are the shame of the progressive movement and could not be more antithetical to true liberalism.

Learn to make actual arguments or get out of the debate hall. Right now, with this country in the state that its in, we adults dont have time for your tantrums.

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I'm A Liberal, And I Want Milo Yiannopoulos On My Campus - Huffington Post

The outspoken South Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi will break away from the Turnbull government early this week to form his own conservative movement.

Bernardi has gone to ground but expectations within the government are now hard set that the split is on.

The South Australian has been telling friends hes been waiting for the resumption of parliament for 2017 to clarify his intentions, which have been the subject of internal speculation for much of the summer.

Bernardi is likely to confirm his position either on Tuesday, which is the first day of the new parliamentary year, or by midweek.

There was speculation that Queensland conservative Liberal National party backbencher George Christensen might join Bernardi, but Christensen said he remained loyal to his leader Barnaby Joyce and the LNP, as long as the government held true to its values.

Christensen told Guardian Australia he still believed he could be effective within government.

I still believe we can effect change from within government, thats why I am not going anywhere, Christensen said.

Christensen said he remained loyal to Joyce, and to the National Party.

Im here in the government, as long as the government holds true to the values of the people that put us there.

Christensen said Bernardi had not approached him to join and they had not spoken for the past week but that the South Australian senator was a wasted talent on the backbench.

As parliament returns for the first week of the year, Newspoll shows Labor in front 54% to 46%. At the same time conservative MPs are pushing back against reports that moderate Liberals are positioning to move marriage equality forward following the failure of the plebiscite legislation.

Treasurer Scott Morrison labelled the reports that moderates were involved in a new push for a free vote fake news.

But conservatives, including Tony Abbott, insist that a plebiscite engineered under his leadership but rejected by the parliament is the only way forward.

Christensen also warned fellow MPs against any push for a free vote.

If this government goes down the road of breaking its agreement with the people that we made that we were going to do to a plebiscite, then, you know, the shows over, Christensen said.

And he again had an ambiguous warning for the Turnbull-Joyce government on moving away from the conservative agenda.

We need to reconnect with our core constituency and with the people at large and I think that theres moves a foot to do that, Christensen said. So I really do hope that we succeed in doing that. Because if we drift away any further, you know, its going to become untenable.

Bernardis defection has been a long time coming. His Conservative Leadership Foundation reregistered a number of domain names relating to a conservative party in December 2014, including conservative.org.au, conservativeparty.com.au and conservativeparty.org.au.

Immediately after the election last year, when the Coalition almost lost office, Bernardi warned a conservative revolution was required within the Liberal party to reset the broad policy direction and if we dont do that weve got a taste of the revolution waiting for us outside.

He had a ringside seat in the US during the presidential election that saw Donald Trump take the presidency on the back of a conservative, grassroots insurgency.

His preparations to break away have intensified after what he witnessed in the US.

The split to open the political year will add to the list of woes being faced by the prime minister, which include bad polling, a lack of Senate support for the governments policy agenda and a threat from a resurgent One Nation party.

The treasurer, Scott Morrison, attempted to hose down the dangers posed by the split in an interview on Monday where the Sydney broadcaster Ray Hadley declared the only hope the government had of retaining power was if Malcolm Turnbull resigned as prime minister.

Morrison said what Bernardi did was ultimately up to him. Lets see what he announces, what he chooses to do is a matter for him.

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Cory Bernardi to quit Liberals to form own conservative party - The Guardian

Whoever is in power is going to be the target. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo / Photomontage by GNM imaging

While stories of police violence at Standing Rock have become commonplace, the account that spread last week was particularly shocking. An article from AlternativeMediaSyndicate.com said officers had burned the camps of indigenous activists fighting the Dakota Access pipeline and destroyed their tipis.

The piece, which included an image of multiple large tipis engulfed in flames, was shared more than 270,000 times on Facebook. But the photo was from a 2007 HBO film, and a key premise of the story was fake.

Its absolutely frustrating, said Dallas Goldtooth, an indigenous leader at Standing Rock who warned his followers on Facebook that the article was false. There is so much misinformation.

The 2016 presidential election led to international debates about filter bubbles and the spread of misinformation, with many analyzing how the proliferation of fabricated content may have helped Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.

But Trumps chaotic first weeks in office filled with a steady stream of astonishing news developments that have rattled progressives has laid the groundwork for what could be a significant uptick in fake news, misleading articles and propaganda with a distinctly liberal bent.

Whoever is in power is going to be the target [of fake news], said Eugene Kiely, director of FactCheck.org, which is partnering with Facebook to help identify false news stories.

Research has suggested that there was a huge volume of fake news across the political spectrum during the election, but that pro-Trump false stories were much more widespread than pro-Clinton ones. Some of the most high-profile examples, such as the conspiracy theory that Clinton was tied to a child sex ring, fed rightwing narratives.

Media and communications experts suspect those dynamics could shift under Trump. In an interview with the Atlantic, Brooke Binkowski, managing editor of the fact-checking site Snopes, said she had seen a spike in the amount and popularity of fake news directed toward liberal audiences.

On the left, there are numerous styles of misinformation that appear to be gaining traction. In addition to blatantly fabricated stories, there have been increasing concerns about articles featuring deceitful and hyperbolic headlines, viral memes that have a very tenuous connection to the truth and poorly sourced articles that use inaccurate visuals to draw readers.

At Standing Rock, for example, progressive sites have published random photos of massive buffalo herds suggesting they were at the demonstrations. One Facebook page posted footage of Trump talking to tech leaders in a highly misleading video about tribal leaders meeting with the presidents transition team.

A recent countercurrentnews.com article falsely declared: State Gives Cops the Green Light To Shoot DAPL Protesters On Sight.

In the case of the fake tipi-burning story, Linda Black Elk, who was present during last weeks confrontation with law enforcement, told the Guardian that police had forced them out of their camps, but that no tipis had been torched or destroyed.

In an email, a writer with Alternative Media Syndicate defended the post, saying the photo was a stock image meant to draw a connection to the HBO film and that the site removed it once there was confusion.

Goldtooth said it had been a constant struggle to stop the spread of false news about Standing Rock. Folks feel like they need to sensationalize something to get attention and get awareness. You dont need to do that. Tell the story as it is.

Other recent fake or misleading stories catering to progressive audiences include a LearnProgress.org piece that falsely said Melania Trump was selling jewelry on the White House website; a viral story about a boy handcuffed at an airport due to Trumps immigration ban, which used a photo from 2015; and a Politicot.com story with a fabricated Mike Pence quote about abortion and rape.

Progressives have also widely shared tweets from a number of accounts claiming to be rogue government officials speaking out against Trump, even though theres no evidence that they are run by public servants.

Liberal anxieties about Trump have created an appetite for false news, and social psychology dictates that fearful people may be more gullible, said Claire Wardle, research director with First Draft News.

Its unsurprising to me that were seeing a growth of disinformation on the left People want information that makes them feel better, she said. Were living in a time where there is so much fear and concern mapped onto social technology.

Users are especially susceptible when stories and images appear directly in their social feeds, she added. If one of your peers sends something, you already trust them. So you are much less likely to be critical.

There may appear to be a spike in false liberal articles, because progressives are simply consuming higher quantities of news due to Trump angst, said Judith Donath, with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.

On the left, however, readers tend to be better at debunking fake news and more responsive to fact-checking, she added. On the right, theres less concern of whether its real or fake as much as whether it fits into the narrative.

Melissa Zimdars, assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College, who created a viral list of untrustworthy news sites, said it was unclear how the frequently shocking real news of the Trump era would impact the fake news ecosystem. Because many mainstream headlines have been consistently alarming to progressives, she said it was possible that the content from viral left-leaning sites that promote exaggerated or manipulative clickbait might not actually spread as much any more.

But outrage at Trump ultimately makes users vulnerable to false stories, said Fil Menczer, a professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University. And if progressives do start reading higher quantities of fake news, he said, the country would probably become even more divided. It means more polarization, more segregation and stronger echo chambers.

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Fake news for liberals: misinformation starts to lean left under Trump - The Guardian

Perhaps the most pivotal scene in Damien Chazelles La La Land takes place in a restaurant, one that Mia (Emma Stone) chances upon while walking the long journey home, with no idea that Seb (Ryan Gosling) works there playing the piano. But before that, as Mia approaches the restaurant, she passes a long, colourful mural. We see Mia walk past Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, WCFields, and James Dean. The wide shot that follows reveals the full wall, a crowd of recognisable figuresall sittingon red velvet seats in a darkened theatre, staring out at the street in front of them, as well as Mia, stepping out of a perfect empty frame of red neon light.

This is the You Are The Star mural, which sits at the southeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue in LA. Fred and Ginger dance in the aisle, while Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton sit up front.A nod to the Old Hollywood legends La La Land so often pays homage to, the mural plays with the idea of spectatorship, inverting the roles of artist and audience by seating screen legends in the cinema, and the average passerby on screen.

La La Land has been described by various critics as a love letter to lots of things: to Hollywood, to musicals, to dreamers, to LA, even to romance itself. It is, to an extent, all these things. Its familiar story (cynical, frustrated male creative seeks wide-eyed female creative, for the mutual following of dreams) necessarily romanticises the experience of being an actor, a musician, a writer even, especially, if it involves struggle. But La La Land is also an ode to the audience.

Mia and Seb both hope to be performers: Seb wants to run, and play at, his own jazz club; Mia wants to make it as an actress. But when we meet them, working low-paid, dead-end hospitality jobs, they are primarily audience members. We see Seb obsessively playing jazz cassettes and records on loop, Mia gushing about a childhood spent watching Notorious, Bringing Up Baby and Casablanca.

In fact, Seb and Mia fall in love as observers their romance blossoms as they share experiences as audience members. They stroll around the Warner Bros lot together, watching films being shot. I love it, Mia sighs. They go to a jazz club together and bond over the music. Shifting in red velvet seats, their hands inching towards the others during a screening of Rebel Without a Cause. They even go to a literal observatory together (the Griffiths Observatory yes, the same one they just watched on screen in Rebel), where their romance takes off. We even see them watch a home movie of their own potential life together in the films epilogue.

Theatres, music clubs and sets therefore become significant sites of communion, both culturally and personally, and fetishised by Seb and Mia. In fact, Mia leaves her uninspiring boyfriend, Greg, when shesinks into the jazz melodies underscoring their dinner at a posh restaurant. Meanwhile, Greg and his brother and sister-in-law discuss the advantages of their expensive home cinemas compared to public theatres: You know theatres these days, theyre so dirty. And theyre either too hot or too cold. And theres always people talking. (After comments like these, Greg is a write-off.)

We often use films, books and music as tools to make connections with each other, even form lasting relationships. The experience of being Someone in the Crowd, as the films soundtrack describes it, doesnt just inspire the creative careers at the heart of La La Land, but every area of life.

When Seb suggests taking Mia to see Rebel Without a Cause, hes embarrassed it seems too obviously like a date, and Mia isnt single. I can take you, he says, before adding, You know, for research. For research! Mia repeats. Yeah. Great. For research. The joke, of course, is that both Seb and Mia know their date is just that, a date but the script also plays with the idea that watching movies can be a kind of emotional research, not just for an actress preparing for a new role, but for anybody. For Seb and Mia, their research brings them to each other, a life-changing (if not lifelong) relationship.

We see Seb and Mias relationship play out as a series of performances, with Seb playing and Mia watching. There are five scenes that explore this dynamic their first meeting at Sebs restaurant, their run-in at a pool party where Mia requests I Ran, a few weeks into their romance at The Lighthouse, at a huge gig where Seb performs in his new band, The Messengers, and, finally, in Sebs own club. Each of these scenes reveal incremental changes in Mias perspective on her life, her ambitions, and her desires, as she moves from awe to playful cynicism to optimism to disillusionment and, finally, to a bittersweet compromise of all the above.

Critics have raised eyebrows at the gender politics of this film on the back of these scenes arguing that they present the male lead as the artist, the female lead as mostly observer, contributing to decades of fetishising male artists while dismissing women as primarily muses or facilitators of male art and ambition.

Guy gets Madeline, Andrew gets greatness (and Fletcher), and Sebastian gets his club (if not Mia), writes Morgan Leigh Davis, of La La Landand the plots of other jazz movies Guy and Madeline on a Park Benchand Whiplash. And women? All they get to do is listen.

But scenes of Sebs performances dont actually focus on Seb, nor do they form deep explorations of his career ambitions they are important to us as an audience because Mia is watching. We rarely see him perform if not through her gaze, and we see her emotionally develop through her evolving reactions to his music, while the films most fantastical scenes are all her projections, her imaginative response to what she hears. We repeatedly see Mia writing, auditioning, and performing without Seb present and the films opening and closing scenes are all shot through her eyes. For me, this is Mias film, the story of her ambitions realised.

Criticisms of the focus being on Sebperformingalso rest on the idea that making art is fundamentally more important than engaging with it, envisaging culture as a series of monologues rather than a great, messy dialogue. But watching is a key part of Mias artistic life. Its as important to her as performing, and La La Land suggests that watching and listening are not passive activities. When Mia notices the jazz in the posh restaurant, for instance, listening is positioned as something that requires skill, practice and attentiveness; while going to see Rebel Without a Cause can end in a beautiful dance sequence at the Griffiths Observatory. Watching and listening are figured as active, creative, transformative acts. Here, consuming art can have as much personal and cultural value as making art: both must occur for culture to exist.

Mia is always open to art that is new to her music she hasnt yet heard and films she hasnt yet seen. Ultimately, staying open to new kinds of watching and listening is what allows her to create genuinely original work. Her time spent watching film with her aunt inspires the audition that bags her her breakout role and we know those also shape her final performance (the film she gets a part in has no script; theproducers want to work with Mia to mould the role over three months of rehearsals and a four-month shoot in Paris).

Seb, on the other hand, is a closed book to the new. Hes never genuinely interested in The Messengers, and prefers to stay stuck in the past, listening obsessively to the same pieces of music over and over again. We first meet him rewinding cassettes in his car, and later see him dropping the needle of his record player on the same spot on the vinyl in his kitchen. His hands instinctively move to the same keys on the piano. In the end, he decides to move away from original work, instead choosing to become a facilitator of the music of others, in a club that only plays traditional, nostalgic jazz.

Seb might spend a lot of time explaining what makes art beautiful, but we can never take him seriously his insistences on pure jazz, fists clenched with passion, or claims that he is a serious musician, are usually played for laughs. Mias dreams arent (even if she is a lot more likely to laugh at herself).

The visual landscape of La La Land creates a world hovering somewhere between fantasy and reality. Through melodic camera movements, oversaturated colour palettes, dreamlike fabrics, dance and song and references to Old Hollywoods most iconic scenes, the ordinary becomes fantastical. Bathroom lamps become spotlights, hilltop sunsets become perfect movie sets.

And it works both ways: a cinematic tracking shot of Mia auditioning, slowly focusing on the emotion of her face, is interrupted when an assistant outside the door enters the left of the frame. Many of the films most dramatic moments are punctured by the mundane: phones ring, smoke alarms go off, records abruptly finish, analogue film eats itself just before the romantic climax. These both serve to disrupt and reinforce classic tropes (the interrupted kiss is as familiar as the dramatic, orchestral one), and as a result were never sure when were in La La Land and when were in the real world.

This is an impulse that seemingly comes from Mia. She gets herself work on a film set, to immerse herself in the fictional landscape, and we watch her twirling along the streets like shes in a musical in her own mind. She writes in her play blurb that shes interested in the porous border between dreams and reality, and we know that her play So Long, Boulder City! is concerned with windows, like the one from Casablanca that sits opposite her cafe, whichoffer a portal from one world into another. (The whole world from your bedroom? Seb says of her play, while the stagehand is left baffled by that whole window thing.)

We see lush posters of Ingrid Bergman taking up space in Mias apartment, then we see Mia, lying on her bed in sweatpants, shot in a similarly dramatic fashion. She literally steps into the movie at the screening of Rebel Without a Cause, the film projecting onto her face, then takes Seb to the films real sets.

Mias touchstone for inspiration is the story of her aunt jumping into the Seine in the snow. We see a picture, in Mias living room, of a woman in a red bathing suit frozen in a dive above a swimming pool then see that moment recreated at different LA parties across town, never fully sure if its coincidence or a trick of Mias mind, while snow suddenly falls after her Somewhere in the Crowd solo.

In the films epilogue, places from her memory become movie sets, fromthe lamppost Seb danced on at the LA hilltop where they first danced, to the motorway where they were stuck in traffic at the movies opening. As Seb plays, shes writing the movie of their perfect, alternate lives.

La La Lands own audience can never fully escape the fact that they are watching a movie: though it is undoubtedly immersive, the experience of watching La La Land is too referential and self-consciously cinematic to transport its audience out of their seats into another specific place. But the dreamy, technicolour panorama of La La Land encourages audiences to revel in the moments when life feels like a movie, and to find the connections between life and art.

The You Are the Star mural is a strange cultural artefact. It shouts that anyone can make it in Hollywood, anyone can have their dreams come true, but if you look at the selection of celebrities sat in the theatre, its hardly the most broad selection of humanity. If you squint, you might see a few faces that arent white, but theyre few and far between. The vast majority of the stars are white, chiselled young men and women; and so the trick of the muralworks betterif you fit a similar description. La La Land functions in a similar way, and at the end, Emma Stone seamlessly slots into the role of successful Hollywood actress as shes already a rail-thin, white, traditionally beautiful, successful Hollywood actress. As Ira Madison III wrote on the films US release:La La Land opens with a stunning and visually masterful dance sequence sung by an incredibly diverse group of Los Angeles denizens, but they are quickly whisked away so the Caucasian sing-along can begin.

Life mostly happens inside our own heads. Two hours of one movie can sometimes have a bigger impact on us than two weeks of our day-to-day lives at our jobs and homes. The kind of creative internal landscapes La La Land explores through Mia are, of course, not limited to the narrow selection of people Hollywood reveres, and the film itself fails to recognise that. But the idea that borders between our imaginations and our realities are more porous than we believe, and that art and life can have a tangible relationship, is a hopeful one for anyone who has felt that their life has been changed by an album, an old movie, a painting, or a TV show. Its an optimistic way of viewing the world one that is as open to the observer as the performer.

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Goodbye to the liberal era - New Statesman

The 7 Most Outrageously Liberal Super Bowl Ad Campaigns of 2017 NewsBusters (blog) If you just crawled out from under a rock and turned on Fox last night, you might have thought you were witnessing a presentation sponsored by the United Nations, instead of the Super Bowl. We weren't treated to We are the World, but there was no ... and more »

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