Critiquing the Habits, Actions and Inaction of Politicians, Senior Bureaucrats and Other People in Possession of Considerable Power and/or Influence

Everyone has a right to critique the habits, actions and inaction of politicians, senior bureaucrats and other people in possession of considerable power and/or influence.

As long as the critiquing is conducted in an evidence-based, appropriately sensitive way, it is valid and necessary.

When evidence-based, appropriately sensitive critiquing is ignored by people in possession of considerable power and/or influence, there is likely to be much corruption occurring.

And corruption is one of the worst types of trickery.

In every society, every day, there are far too many corrupted expressions power and influence. 

There are unjust displays of authority.  There are considerable abuses of power.  There is much unfair influence.  There are hideous levels of incompetence.

All people have a propensity to hold misguided assumptions.  That is mainly why they form inaccurate conclusions. 

How do you define the scandalous, and why?

Perhaps you are interested mainly in the entertainment value of wrongdoing.

Perhaps you are a person in possession of considerable power and/or influence.  If so, you may be wondering who has knowledge of your scandalous behaviour, how they gained it, and what they may do with that information.

One of the primary duties of every politician and senior bureaucrat is to prevent corrupt practices, not contribute to them.  Yet, in practice, what happens?

Political systems are filled with trickery.

There are, of course, a few non-corrupt political groups and organisations, in various parts of the world, but no-one hears much about them through the mainstream news, or even through social media.

As corrupt individuals are usually shameless, much effort is required to encourage them to improve.

There are many corrupt law enforcement officers and many corrupt legal practitioners and government administrators, most of whom do not regard themselves as corrupt.

There are obviously many politicians who do not regard themselves as corrupt, either, though they are also mostly unaware of their own biases and their own incompetence.

The official political opposition to corrupt governments is usually corrupt itself.  That is probably why that opposition is regarded as official.

There is much official corruption in every society, most of which is obviously not called corruption officially.

Non-corrupt, unofficial opponents of corrupt practices are usually ignored by the mainstream media.  When those opponents are occasionally mentioned, they are described in unjustly derisory ways.

Emphasis is usually given in the media to the opinions of the corrupt and/or otherwise unreasonable and irresponsible.

Non-corrupt political activities are uncontroversial and sensible.  They are therefore uninteresting to mainstream advertisers and to drama-seeking audiences, particularly drama-seeking audiences of tabloid journalism.

That is why political reform is so difficult to achieve peacefully.

What, then, is to be done?

Drama-seeking audiences, regardless of their possible sophistication, tend to focus on real or imagined scandals.  They either focus briefly on alleged scandals involving high profile individuals or they relentlessly and aggressively focus on the despair-related activities of powerless, vulnerable people.

Drama-seeking audiences are uninterested in the analysis of corrupting structures and corrupted systems.  They take no notice of the fact that such structures and systems have enabled scandalous actions to be practiced unhindered for a considerable time, hence the despair of the vulnerable.

Perhaps you regard yourself as a relatively sophisticated seeker of drama and other forms of excitement.  You may even regard yourself as a heroic protagonist in a crime-fighting drama.

But what is the objective truth about you, and where, if anywhere, have you attempted to locate it?

Why are you reading Trickery Today now?

Perhaps you have been looking for information about the advertisements, donations, sponsorships and subscriptions you believe to be funding Trickery Today. 

How do you usually form your assumptions about publications?

Over the months ahead, our global network of investigators will make strategic releases of enlightening documents and extraordinary narratives.

The initial goal will be to cause the most embarrassment to allegedly corrupt person in possession of considerable power and/or influence.  

The subsequent goal will be to help societies implement better constitutions.  That will ensure corruption is prevented, through necessarily improved structures and systems.

Corrupt individuals will most likely declare our work a witch hunt, as is usually the case in such circumstances.

We already have all the evidence we require, from every country.

We have gathered evidence about every politician and senior bureaucrat and wealthy person and international organisation in the world.

If you are corrupt, we will already know who you are and where you have been and the habits, actions and inaction of you and your associates.  We will know what you have done and what you should have done and what you should not have done.  We will even know why you have not done what you should have done.

But will you respond appropriately?

When corruption is evident, the usual responses of the corrupt are certainly not appropriate.

The only alternative, then, is to transform the critiques into appropriately targeted satire.

Unfortunately, unsophisticated audiences have a propensity to turn all satirical messages into conspiracy theories, pseudosciences and social media accounts.

You may have noticed that political satire is uninteresting to mainstream advertisers.  Most of the people who make decisions relating to mainstream advertising are corrupt themselves.

Additionally, mainstream advertisers know that sophisticated satire is not understood by unsophisticated audiences.

And an unsophisticated audience happens to be the target audience for mainstream advertising.

Trickery Today is for sophisticated, non-corrupt persons with little interest in drama-seeking and much interest in real civility and real civilisation and real evidence.

Much corruption is practiced through fake civility.

If you are a practitioner of real civility, welcome.

Please pay here.

Perhaps, though, you are seeking to know more about us before doing so. 

We delight in receiving well-informed critiques of our work.

As yet, we are not in possession of considerable power and/or influence.  If you have the ability to change that situation, what are you willing to contribute, and why?

How do you inform yourself about trickery and its costs?

How do you inform yourself about quality journalism and the cost of providing it?

How do you inform yourself about the value of authentic artistic expressions?

How do you ascertain the value of non-corrupt political practices?

Our introductory reports contain various levels of meaning, for various levels of sophisticated assessment:

 

 

If you are unfamiliar with the concepts of artistic merit and quality evidence, or even the concept of a quality work of art, and especially quality literature, you are unlikely to have much awareness of the concepts of quality journalism and quality government.

Unsophisticated persons do not know how to interpret concepts with validity.  They may even be confused by the concept of validity in various contexts.

How do you habitually assess the concept of merit, and how did you acquire that habit?

Perhaps you usually assess merit in terms of virtue ethics.

Perhaps you usually assess merit in relation to the expression of talent and effort.

Perhaps you usually assess merit in accordance with experiencing needs and meeting needs.

How do you usually assess needs, including your own?

Have bullies ever coerced you into feeling ashamed and/or guilty about your own needs?
 
Has anyone ever expected you to ignore, and even deny, your self-worth? 

Bullying is a pattern of behaviour associated with harassment and corruption.  It is habitual.  It is cruel.  That is why bullies must be brought to account.  They deny the importance of other people's needs.

How do you know when your own behaviour is likely to be regarded as harassment, and by whom?

Corrupt individuals are likely to regard the valid critiquing of their habits, actions and inaction as harassment.

What do you know about corruption and the habits associated with it in various locations?

What do you know about biases and the habits associated with them in various locations?

How do you distinguish between dangers habits and non-dangerous habits?

Who is making a noise to distract attention away from criminal activities, immoral actions, incompetence and laziness, and why?

Who is making money from the noise?
 
Who is gaining or maintaining unjust power through that din?
 
Who thinks that making a noise is a sign of productivity?

Who devalues the activities of quiet people?

Publicity is often provided to the noisy at the expense of the quiet.  Yet the quiet do not usually seek publicity.

Reasonable people seek peace, privacy, justice, freedom and truth.

But some seemingly quiet people are actually highly corrupt.  They hide their corruption behind noisy puppets.

How do you assess actions in relation to interactions?

How do you assess conduct?

People with hubris are obviously untrustworthy.  Yet formerly trustworthy persons develop hubris whenever they become overly confident in their own abilities, and their own power.
 
That is why seemingly trustworthy politicians tend to develop hubris very quickly indeed once they experience positions of power.
 
It is the same with overpaid directors.  Their personal financial gains contribute to their overconfidence.
 
It is the same with arrogant administrators, particularly those attempting to build and/or maintain personal empires.

It is the same with persons who become well known to large numbers of people through the mass media and/or social media.  They mistake popularity for competence.  They may even mistake popularity for kindness.

How do you express appreciation of competent political leadership when you notice it?

Perhaps you rarely, if ever, notice it.

Perhaps you believe it has never existed.

Or perhaps you have been tricked into believing it exists when it is actually absent.

You may be aware that statecraft was once associated, in historical terms, with seemingly competent male politicians.

Yet how was that purported competence identified and measured?

What were the relevant comparisons and how were they made?

Was statecraft mostly related to winning wars?

Was it mostly about gaining and maintaining powers within and beyond territories rather than achieving and maintaining peace, advancing education and developing sustainable prosperity?

If you use a methodology for critiquing habits, actions and inaction through comparisons of compatibility, what have you discovered?

Perhaps you have acquired membership of the Enlightened Society for Future Global History.

Perhaps you have otherwise gained access to relatively exclusive areas of the Adelaidezone Digital Arts Quarter.

Perhaps you are even a contributor to the world's most respectable endowment fund.

Perhaps you have much experience in the art and science of invoking assistance towards your anti-corruption efforts.

What sort of assistance have you sought when addressing fake philanthropy and other deceptive practices?

Far too many people associate philanthropy with prestige rather than fairness.  That is understandable, given the history of purported philanthropy, misguided charity, corrupt political funding and the dangerous influence of money.
 
How much money have you directly and/or indirectly contributed towards gaining access to Trickery Today?
 
How do you tell the difference between a fake philanthropists, a real philanthropist and other types of donors?
 
Most people never have the interest, ability or resources with which to practice real philanthropy.  The activity is, in fact, a full-time, unpaid vocation.  And it is often unrewarded and possibly even dangerous. 
 
Real philanthropists tackle corruption, oppose charlatanism, critique incompetence and thereby improve societies.

Far too many fake philanthropists live in luxury.  They bathe in the admiration they receive for distributing a little of their surplus cash.  They do not give up anything substantial.  They do nothing substantial to make the world a better place.

Indeed, there is little evidence that any fake philanthropist has done anything at all to improve politics, increase real love in and of the world, or to prevent harm.

The lives of fake philanthropists are too far removed from the victims of injustices and other disasters.

Experiences of privilege prevent fake philanthropists from understanding what it is really like to feel powerless.  To them, charity is a hobby, politics is a game and love is admiration.

Emotionally, they have the maturity of children.  That may be why they use private space rockets as exclusive roller coasters for their thrill-seeking indulgences.

What is your attitude towards social inequality and social injustice, and how do you compare various forms of inequality, including structural inequality, with political incompetence? 

If you frequently ignore or deny structural inequality, why do you do so?

Corrupted politics is filled mainly with duplicitous persons. 

Honest politics is filled entirely with devotees of good public policy.

But what are the characteristics of a truly democratic person?

What sort of person are you?

How do you assess a constitution?
 
How do you assess a life? 
 
How do you identify real philanthropy?

How do you assess political philanthropy?


 
 
What is your acquaintance with a good society, and how do you know a society is good?

Real philanthropists are aware that quality societies are based on respect for facts.  In such societies, facts are regarded as being far superior to misguided beliefs.

Corrupted societies do the opposite, as do corrupt governments.

How do you tell the difference between corrupt and non-corrupt patronage?

Do you enjoy conducting exploratory research or are you confused by it or bored by it? 

Perhaps your attitude towards any sort of research depends on why you are involved in it, and when, and for what purpose.

What do you know about the political hypocrisy encouraging, and encouraged by, toxic masculinity?

What do you know about the double standards encouraging, and encouraged by, overt sexuality?

Only deeply committed, somewhat deluded supporters of domineering political organisations fail to realised that both sides in a two-party political system are discourteous, incompetent, corrupt and cruel, much like a one-party state and all dictatorships.

The ruthless cultural practices within all overly powerful political organisations have many similarities to organised crime. 

How did your political thinking develop and how does it inform your conduct?

Unhealthy thinking often develops institutionally rather than individually.

How, then, does integrity develop?

How do you account for the absence of integrity, as indicated by the prevalence of corruption all over the world?

How, if at all, is civility possible when social cohesion and conformity are developed and maintained without courtesy, compassion or integrity?

How should well-informed citizens respond to systems of political corruption, bureaucratic apathy and police brutality?

What have you discovered about the politics of social integration in relation to integrity and corruption?

Words such as 'integrity', 'civility' and 'democracy' are often misused by corrupt persons, primarily to confuse the gullible.

How do you know such words, and their uses, have not confused you? 
 
What do you know about ongoing contributions to the maintenance of corruptly dysfunctional one-party and two-party political systems?
 
What do you know about the unjust privileges of unimaginative, rude, crude and greedy mass media executives, other business executives, influential legal practitioners, and (other) political donors/bribers?
 
Why are newer political groups, apart from those funded by self-serving billionaires and the holders of assorted irrational beliefs, usually ignored by the media and by the public? 
 
What do you know about corruption in relation to transport, in Australia and elsewhere, and to whom have you reported your concerns?
 
How does your critiquing address hypocrisy?
 
How does your critiquing reflect your empathy? 

How do various critiques inform your activism?

How do you critique expressions of ego?

What have your interactions with people, including your known family members, taught you about the world?
 
What do you know for certain about responsibility?

Perhaps you do not know how to develop a suitable relationship between civility and intellect through your own actions.
 
How carefully do you consider safety, and how do you know?
 
Perhaps your ego seek thrills.

The powerless, who by definition lack influence, depend upon each other and the state for security.  They may also find comfort in the false security of escapism.
 
The state often fails the powerless.

Some people prefer to over-estimate their own influence.

Other people prefer to under-estimate their own influence. 

Sensible people attempt to measure and communicate their own influence accurately.

What are the geographical parameters of your influence?

Influential bullies usually employ bullies as minions.

Who do influential practitioners of peacefulness employ?

Who are those practitioners, and what do they achieve personally, and through their employees?
 
What do they contribute to the improvement of mental health, and for whom?
 
Perhaps you do not usually associate influence with the ability to provide good, safe jobs.
 
Politicians often claim their policies support the provision of jobs.  Yet most politicians care only about their own careers, their own egos and their own legacies.
 
How do you assess biographies?
 
How do you assess whether a particular person is worthy of the posthumous remembrance associated with biographical attention? 

There are many vulnerable people in the world.  No-one they know really listens to them.  No-one in their life is interested in listening attentively to their life stories, their feelings and their needs.

What are the local, interpersonal and international parameters of your influence, and how do you know?
 
Who listens to you, and why?
 
Reducing perceptions of your influence may be a good idea if bullies, especially powerful ones, could feel threatened by your influence.
 
Please consider this carefully if you cannot rely upon state security officials and/or private security personnel to protect you.  People you believe to be your friends may not really be your friends at all.

What are the cultural parameters of your influence?
 
What are the economic parameters of your influence?
 
Fame itself makes people insecure, however influential a famous person may regard themselves as being.

Famous people may or may not be influential in particular situations, though they may believe otherwise.  They may encourage insecure people to buy particular products.  They may encourage the poor to donate to particular charities, or even to work for less than a living wage.  They may encourage the vulnerable to support particular causes through volunteering and/or protesting.  Such activities are distractions from the expression of justifiable influence.
 
How much time do you usually devote to identifying dangers, risks and injustices?
 
How carefully do you assess matters of safety?
 
Perhaps the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee is assisting you in that regard.
 
 
 
How have you been critiquing habits, actions and inaction associated with industry?
 
What is your preferred approach to climate action, and why?

Personal conduct is shaped by the interactions between culture and nature.

It is also shaped by interactions between cultures.

What do you know about admiration in relation to power and influence?
 
Immature persons often distract themselves from situations they do not know how to handle.  Such individuals do not deserve to be in positions of significant political influence, regardless of their current ages.  Their primary mode of addressing problems is through aggression, with or without dollops of denial and a gang of like-minded friends/colleagues/fans/employees.
 
How do you usually assess maturity? 

How do you assess a political landslide and political wipeouts and a deluge of complaints and the wreckage of a ship of state?
 
How, if at all, have you assessed the careers of Évrard Titon du Tillet, Jean-Baptiste Pillement, Jean-Baptiste Réveillon and the Montgolfier brothers?

How well do you convey accurate expressions of knowledge through reasonable civility?

How do you express yourself when feeling exasperated?

How do you measure success, in any situation, and from whose point of view, and why?
 
You may be well aware that good witches work to prevent corruption, not practice it.
 

How much time are you willing to devote to answering essential questions over the next few hours, the next few days, and the next few weeks, and why?

How are you intending to address various injustices, and when, and where, and why?

How do you usually address injustices?

What is your preferred approach to learning about injustices?

What do you already know about the history of unjust systems? 

How do you compare one purported democracy with another?

Civility cannot coexist with bullying or corruption or any other form of arrogance, and nor can real democratic systems and structures.

What do you know about simple living in relation to an intelligently kind culture?

How would you describe your cultural and political preferences now, and why?

Have you been expressing those preferences publicly or privately anywhere?

Have you been attempting to encourage the public to share your preferences?

Have you been expressing enlightened patronage anywhere?

How do you prefer to show the cultural side of yourself, and why?

How do you interpret the cultural and political influence of the media?

Most eligible voters take no notice of the entirely non-corrupt Civility Party of Australia.



How does justice display itself in the world, as far as you are aware?

How do you know your physical and/or digital explorations contribute anything useful in the world, including the digital world? 

When critiquing the habits, actions and inaction of politicians, senior bureaucrats and other persons in possession of considerable power and/or influence, how do you assess their priorities, and your own?

How do you usually attempt to identify other people's intentions, expectations, plans, priorities and goals?

Some people seek to win political power, without any idea what to do with that power once they have attained it.

Some people seek to acquire large quantities of money, without any ideas regarding ways to spend it wisely.

Some people seek to pay off debts, with no idea how to do so.

Some people simply want more peace in their lives but lack the knowledge with which to move in that direction.

There are many people with abhorrent attitudes towards risks they do not personally face.  The people who do face those risks are absolutely powerless.

If you are an honest practitioner of civility, you will know that there are many dishonest persons in the world, quite a few of whom are associated with political parties.

How do you usually assess ethics?

How, if at all, have you assessed the ethics of Nicolas Beaujon?

The best of humanity rarely has any power.

Even the Council of Enlightenment has little influence within most people's minds.

Where do you believe you happen to be at present, both physically and virtually?

How do you usually locate truth? 

Governments with no real care for citizens, the general public, human rights, environmental quality, intelligent frugality and well-informed kindness have no legitimacy.  They must be overthrown as peacefully as possible, but only after proper alternative governments are available. 

Power vacuums always allow evil to flourish widely.

Authoritarianism always allows evil to flourish through the concentration of power.

And power is usually used for evil, not for good, unless all powers are appropriately balanced and measured and contained within constitutional reasonableness.

The slightly satirical but immensely sensible Naturals have discovered that eligible voters are exceedingly confused.

Given the fact that the Naturals support good gardening, good farming and good conservation practices, into perpetuity, why do most farmers in Australia apparently vote for the fossil fuel lobby?

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