Politics is not a team sport

 One of the primary dangers of patriotism is when it induces a sort of blindness to the failings of your own country.

This tendency can result in evil - such as when George H.W. Bush said he would never apologise for America, when American guided missile cruiser floating in Iranian waters shot down a scheduled Iran Air flight, killing 290 civilians - or just plain stupidity, as seen when the same people who question why refugees don't stay in their own countries and fight their oppressors insist that lefties who don't love their country should leave. Per Al Franken:

"[Conservatives] love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow.”

Unfortunately this blind adoration of the child has spread to politics. Or perhaps the love could be better compared to the affection one has for one's sports team. It doesn't matter what your loved one says or does, you'll support them regardless and anyone who criticises them is bad. 

Daniel Andrews has done many good things during the recent flare of COVID-19 cases in Melbourne. He's worked seven days a week for months, first during the January bushfires and now in pandemic response. Meanwhile, Scott Morrison is at the footy this weekend without his during his family during his week off for family time. They were probably glad to be rid of him for a few hours.

But it's hard to deny that the lockdown of nine public housing towers in Melbourne, home to many people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and Melbourne's most vulnerable residents, has a distinct whiff of racism about it. And it's been poorly handled; residents unable to access necessary supplies such as nappies, tampons and Ventolin; residents being delivered expired food; a lack of cleaning supplies to reduce transmission in the buildings, and uniformed police stationed on every floor and around the building to enforce the lockdown. There seems to be little plan to prevent transmission within the buildings, only to keep the residents confined so their poverty skin colour illness can't infect others. You can read a statement from community groups representing tower residents here. 

Daniel Andrews has come under sustained attack from sections of the media, but not for the public housing lockdown. The flying monkeys at the Herald Sun judged that it's Andrews' fault that the virus got out of control because he somehow allowed a security guard supervising returning passengers in hotel quarantine have sex with one of the guests, as if that was something he should have foreseen and specifically forbidden:

Yep it was the security guards that spread this virus, not lack of lockdown - conservatives hate the lockdowns; it was the initial lockdowns that prompted them to name Dan Andrews "dictator Dan" in the first place. But they just hate Dan Andrews in the first place. Victoria is the most left wing state in Australia and as the leader, Andrews is the target of the opprobrium of conservatives who want to maintain their Melbourne smugness but loathe semi-effective social services. 

At least the supposed sex scandal has given them a break from being racist for a few days, and allowed for such gems as this from Peta Credlin, now awarded a plum job writing and presenting for News Corp despite her only real qualification being her inability to get Tony Abbott to keep his shit together:

"I’m in Melbourne at the moment and it’s a plague-ridden city in a basket case state led by a man who is a lethal mix of political rat cunning, PR spin and unwarranted self-belief."

Plague ridden? Could we be overreacting? I do note that Ms Credlin is also disdainful of Mr Andrews for using call centre staff to carry out contact tracing instead of Australian Defence Force, "the best logistics experts I know". Well the ADF might be tickety boo at trucking water to bushfire hit communities, but what experience do they have in work like tracing people's contacts? Surely that's a job for police detectives or better yet, get the members of any true crime forum onto the job. I guarantee you'll have the kindergarten best friend of any COVID-19 patient identified, tracked down at their workplace and possibly doxxed before you've had time to practice reciting Murdoch's assigned talking points before tonight's appearance on Sky News. 

So I can see that the sustained attack on Andrews is spiteful, partisan and illogical whilst also despairing of the situation for residents of the locked down towers. But the defence of Andrews has swung too far in the opposite direction in some quarters. Just as there were a few years there where you couldn't criticise the Iraq war without being asked if you wanted Saddam Hussein back in power there, so too criticism of Andrews' handling of the towers' lockdown is seen as an attack on all that is good and true by some of Labor's most vociferous Victorian supporters. How can you criticise him at such a difficult time when he's under such attack from the right? People who criticise Andrews are dragging down the left, too ideologically pure and have no idea of the complexities of running a government.

But if I defend aspects of Andrews' actions from the worst of the attacks from the right, I don't want to be misunderstood that I'm not dismayed and disgusted by the implementation of the hard lockdowns at the social housing towers. Because politics isn't an all or nothing proposition. It's not a team support. You shouldn't be for or against Dan Andrews or any other politician. There hasn't been such a sustained attack on a political figure in Australia since the pile on on Julia Gillard, whom I also defended against misogyny even though I disagreed with her on gay marriage, welfare reforms, environmental action, asylum seekers and wearing blackface. It's the same with Dan Andrews. The attacks on him from the right are partisan, nonsensical and exhausting. But in saying that the public housing lockdown in Melbourne was rushed, poorly executed and has a whiff of racist opportunism (which obviously failed to placate the braying Murdoch mobs) I'm not attacking Dan Andrews, but evaluating one of his policy decisions in the face of the evidence - and acknowledging the real human suffering it has caused.

No one is all good or all bad (well, there are a few exceptions). Turning politicians into cartoonish figures of adoration and loathing does no one any good, least of all those affected by political decisions. Evaluate each decision on its own merits, not by cheering or booing the decision maker based on your allegiance. And that my friends, is how you think for yourself.