With the amount of across the board scorn heaped upon Michael Moore these days, it's hard to remember that once upon a time he used to fill the role - now so ably held by Jon Stewart - of America's primary political satirist and anti-conservative nuisance. People even used to laud him for it. And for a while there he really was quite good. For instance, this is the first part of an episode of his 1999/2000 show The Awful Truth in which he runs a ficus plant for an otherwise uncontested seat in Congress.



Ok, neat concept, but perhaps that hasn't aged as well as I thought. But the reason I mention Michael Moore is because there was one thing in particular that came out of his first major film, Bowling for Columbine, that has resonated with me to this day, namely the idea that the general state of existence in affluent societies is one of advanced and irrational fear. This argument was expressed in cartoon form, which, being an impressionable 17 year old at the time, I found very convincing.



 In restrospect, said cartoon has perhaps not aged so well either. Sorry Mikey. However, I still maintain there is something to this concept that fear becomes one of the primary motivating forces in rich societies, especially those structured around a strong urban/suburban divide i.e. Australia. And while obviously we don't have quite the same level of social dysfunction as might be seen in many areas of the US/Britain, in many ways that just makes our periodic crime and justice binges seem even more ludicrous.

You might recall a couple of weeks back I was heaping shit on my home state, WA, for being an absurd backwater because it was contemplating the idea of introducing new police search and seizure powers that allowed them to halt and search any person without a need for reasonable suspicion. Well, I'll be eating those words, because my adopted home of Victoria is on the verge of passing almost identical laws but with the wholesale support of the Labor, Liberal and National parties. The laws have been introduced as a 'pre-emptive' strike against knife culture. This despite the fact that knife-based assaults dropped by 2% across the 2008-2009 period. The laws will enable police to stripsearch anyone, without suspicion, including children and the disabled. A good look. The Police Minister, Bob Cameron, has acknowledged that the laws clearly violate Victoria's much lauded but apparently entirely worthless Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, but said they were nonetheless necessary. To quote:

"People have a right to privacy, but they also have a right not to be stabbed … if random searches can bring about the prevention of stabbing, then it is totally correct for police to be able to do this"

Mr Cameron is evidently not a fan of The Simpsons:

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you? [Homer thinks about this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

So, essentially the Victorian Government is seeking to impose a law in blatant violation of their own purported Charter of Human Rights, a law with the capacity for massive police profiling abuses, on the back of little statistical evidence and with no real effort at properly justifying it, beyond a few vague allusions to Melbourne going the way of London. Melbourne, which is quite unavoidably one of the safest cities in the world, and London who has seen quite a dramatic reduction in its levels of knife crime over recent years, despite not introducing laws of this nature. And this is being done with the unilateral support of pretty much every single party currently active in Government. Why? Because, as anyone in the media will tell you, Melbourne is in the grip of an 'epidemic' of violence and now everybody wants to be seen to be 'tough on crime'. Keep in mind there's an election on next year.

Yes, sure the scum of the Earth gathers twice a week along a certain strip of the CBD and beats the shit out of one another, but that is a problem almost entirely unto itself and has little to do with the general activities of much of the populace. That is a problem written in disaffected and disenfranchised youth who have spent their lives bored and isolated in suburbs that may as well be considered rural so detached are they from Melbourne's city centre. A subset of 'the youth' that account for a clear majority of the assaults and general awfulness that happens in Melbourne's CBD. This is, by and large, a demographically and geographically isolated problem. But finding ways to resolve and ease these problems is a difficult, complex and sensitive issue and one that requires a detailed re-evaluation of our attitudes toward urban planning, parenting, community, and the very notion of suburbia/the Australian dream itself. In short, it's not the kind of thing that lends itself to three yearly election cycles, nor the general activity of politics at all, really.

Much easier for all concerned then to be seen to be doing something right here, right now, no matter how glaringly misdirected. Because when it comes to elections, people generally don't listen to nuanced arguments about the efficacy of different options and the need to institute long-term plans. They want action, bluster and conviction. They want protection, although often its not entirely certain what from. Refugees? Terrorists? Aboriginies? The banks? The youth? Whoever it is, the only thing we can be certain about is they they're coming to get us. And statistics don't stand a chance when there's a man with a broken life to be paraded around.

But, hey, that's democracy for you. And now, PUPPIES!!!!!