I sincerely thank John Kehoe at the AFR for writing a piece so revealing in its lack of empathy for humanity that, for the first time in years, I was able to find political middleground with conservative relatives about his ghoulish views

(I won't link to the man or his piece. If you need it because you want to have a similarly heartwarming across-the-aisle chat with Uncle Gav, DM me and I'll send it along)

It's been so difficult and divisive this last few years, and to be able to get past the partisan yelling and really get on the same page with my relatives about how People In Charge just want many of us to go away and die... well, it's a genuine treat at the moment

Combine it with the horseshit Alexander Downer came out with yesterday and you have a real bracing tonic for what ails us

If you missed the wise words of these gentlemanly society wits, a summary --

Andrew: "It's ever so hard to choose between corpses and a wobbly financial sector"
John: "Perhaps we could allow only the elderly enfeebled to die on our behalf"

It's as though the man in the disaster movie who tries to scramble into the lifeboat ahead of the women and children became real, and became several thousand people, and they are in charge of politics and the media and, um, all of the business

I feel like, in keeping with my theoretical career as a communicator of some kind, some analysis is required, but I'm kinda tired and need to do more work now. Which, ironically, is how John and Alex prefer me

The only thing that pops to mind right now is that columnists (aka: professional "here is my opinion"ers) need to go looking for "heat" the same way comedians, shock jocks and wrestlers do, and perhaps John is just playing the logical, unemotional contrarian

Another revealing bit is John's quoting of stats on Australians' mental health, as gathered by... a bank.

John also gets his gardening tips from Jair Bolsonaro

And yes -- characters like John and Alex and the clowns at the IPA are nice stalking horses for our govt's "reasonable conservatives".

"Well, of course we don't want elderly or immunodeficient Australians to die. They should expect to suffer a lot, though"

I do want to believe these people aren't bloodless psychopaths. I do like to try to understand where they come from. I like to listen. Hopefully that makes me good at my job as a human-centred cartoonist writer service design analyst synthesist weirdo

But right now the divisions between "us" and "them" are really clear and it's nice to know that, ultimately, my family members are on the "us" side. And all it took was wonderfully clear communication from John and Alex. See? Great comms solves problems. Cheers, boys