It is sometimes difficult to remember that the idiotic member of Pauline Hanson’s One Notion Party, Malcolm Roberts is still in the Australian Senate. He has been the source of much hilarity during his tenure, notably when he was made to look a complete moron in Senate hearings by the then secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Michael Pezzullo1, and was made to look decidedly ignorant by particle physicist Brian Cox in not understanding global temperature increase2, and lastly, when trying to convince people he was not a dual citizen, simply because he believed he wasn’t3.
Now Roberts has outdone himself, and shown that he is so profoundly ignorant that it beggars belief. In response to someone’s Tweet about advice on mask wearing to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, Roberts responded on Facebook with the following:
““Trust the science” they say. It would be a lot easier to trust their science if it didn’t keep changing.”4
Nothing demonstrates his ignorance more than this. While I realise that he is referring to the Covid-19 pandemic, the medical advice dealing with it is changing from day to day as discoveries are made. More broadly, this statement by Roberts is astonishing in its simplicity, such that in two sentences, Malcolm Roberts shows that not only doesn’t he understand how science progresses and paradigms change, but that he doesn’t understand how the modern world came to be.
Sources
surely (i suspect it hasn’t been attempted) one may have a modicum more success, if the world could be explained, using apparatus he would be familiar with. Crayons.
Clive,
That made me laugh out loud!
I seriously doubt that the clown in question could discern which end of the crayon to use. What is even more scarey than the fact that he is a senator is the number of raving lunatics who actually voted for Roberts. They constitute a valid argument for licencing voters and ensuring applicants have an IQ in at least double digits.
YM,
That is something I have often thought about. I know a bloke who is convinced that sikhs are taking over the country, because the local taxi service in his country town is run by a group of sikhs. Deep down, I suspect he is worried that he will be treated by ‘these people’ as he treated them when he could get away with it. How thick and/or gullible you have to be to believe that sort of drivel should make you ineligible to vote. However, politicians are such venal bastards, they would try to subvert the system.
no no no, we can’t have malcolm handling the crayons. although, on second thoughts. if we remove the “do not swallow” label. 😀
I’m sure Paul Keating could tell our unlearned ignoramus Roberts what he is (- Mal being in the Senate and all). I think the Keating reference, made many years back, contained the word “swill”? Unfortunately Aussie voters seem not to pay attention enough to the mental and personal qualities of the senate applicants, These are the state representatives up top, who finally decide what legislation will pass and what will not. Their job is profoundly serious but I wonder how many of them treat it that way? If Roberts, by some bizarre, unbelievable, cosmically catastrophic chance went into the lower house and tried to become PM in a spill, the phrase “Vote Mal, eat Pal!” would have to resurrect itself from the 1970s. (re Fraser). That poor guy Roberts, has an IQ almost less than that of the very seat he sits on in the Senate! Truly, what a farce we have in Cannotberra.
One really has to wonder about that ignoramus and the calibre of the clowns who support him. It would indeed be difficult to discern the difference in IQ of both Malcolm and his supporters. I seriously doubt if a scale low enough to measure their IQ has been created.
YM,
I find it hard to believe that anyone could actually vote for someone as dim as Roberts. To believe that ‘yes, he is the bloke I want to represent my concerns about the future of this nation’ simply demonstrates the limited abilities of some voters. I have (distant) relatives who think that Pauline Hanson is someone to vote for. Last time I saw them, I just shut up. However, now, I’d ask them why, just to try to understand the logic. I expect it is something akin to the reasons people voted for Trump.
I was advised when young to just vote for your pocket. I didn’t heed that advice. I think of the not so well off and my kids, etc.
But many do vote for their pockets. Or they think they are. Perhaps it partly explains why so many LNP vegetables get elected. But the funny thing is many voters are being conned in all sorts of ways.
Warren,
Yep. Many people, and there are very many of them, don’t know what they are voting for. They are simply unengaged with politics. As a consequence, the politicians wave around a few favoured words like ‘jobs’, ‘tax cuts’, ‘secure borders’, ‘retiree tax’ ‘debt and deficit disaster’, and the gullible fall for it in spades, and keep voting these charlatans into parliament.