Tim Blair

"GLASNOST" INVENTED

The most optimistic statement of 2004:

"I've never seen anything like this in my life," said Marjorie Jacobs, 90, of Hallandale Beach, who went home after waiting two-and-a-half hours in vain. "I'm coming back and voting on Election Day."

That’s still a couple of weeks away. Majorie is clearly among the minority of 90-year-olds who buy unripe bananas. Almost as optimistic is Not Happy John activist Hamish Alcorn:

I have never before seen the apparent beginnings of a movement like I am witnessing now. This is the activist movement I have always dreamed about - real people, from the middle, with everyday values of decency, and who do not have an ideology for a brain.

At the same time there is an incredible cross-fertilisation of views where such wasn't happening. The political fault lines have all changed. Liberals, socialists, labourites, social justice campaigners, anarchists, feminists, environmentalists, agrarian socialists (Nats, CEC, Katter), and mostly people who've never especially identified themselves with any of these, all of a sudden have a lot to talk about.

The term I've come up with for this phenomenon, which I think Margo helped pioneer with Webdiary, is glasnost.

Hamish came up with "glasnost"?

Posted by Tim Blair at October 20, 2004 03:52 AM