Flame trees

In a Western cartel-democracy, when in government a party must:

1. Extract money off taxpayers while pretending not to
2. Spend in excess of those tax receipts on all sorts of things like defence, social welfare, health and random shit
3. Pretend no. 1 is in excess of no. 2 and blame the other guys or the global economy when it’s obvious that it’s not
4. Use most of that expenditure to keep the right fraction of voters happy so they can get re-elected
5. Also some of the expenditure is for mates and monied types that support and control them directly through donations and brown paper bags
6. Pretend no. 5 is no. 4
7. Where possible appeal to voters in ways that do not cost much money, e.g. xenophobia, sports, lies and more lies
8. Be prepared to bail when the irrationality of all this catches up with them and let the other lot have their chance at madness
9. Work hard to make sure the other lot’s chance at madness is as short as possible by lying – specifically by saying the opposite of no. 1-7 above

And that is it. 101.

Which is why it still amazes me that some of these fuckwits have personal agendas that they care about. Like monarchies, abortion, human rights, free speech, industry development, fish, guns, trees, global warming etc. The good politician would simply ignore these issues entirely and never, ever mention the words.