One of the myths that politicians, and the media that covers them, like to propagate is the idea that politics is very complicated and difficult to understand, so it’s easier to just not pay attention.

Political journalists help spread this myth by turning everything into horse-race journalism – who is ahead, who is losing, how high the political stakes are and how this is all very important and nuanced and complicated.

So complicated it’s just impossible to simplify, so you are just going to have to take our word for it that it is very complicated and important and difficult, while we reduce everything to political gamesmanship.

Politics is not complicated. And anyone who pretends it is, has the luxury of not having spent their lives beholden to it. You can see that in some of the mind-numbingly stupid conversations being had right now.

Blind Freddie and his dog can see why people are turning to populist politicians in response to decades of rising inequality, economic instability, ballooning house prices and every other betrayal that comes from living in the find-out era (after years of f–king around).

But the people who have made careers telling us this is all so very complicated and that you’re wrong for thinking that ensuring people can access affordable housing, health care, food and education, a job market that sees employees as human not capital, and a government that is focused on fairness, equity and values, are apparently living in another universe.

Oh, it’s identity politics, the practical liberals tell us. Fascism is wrong, but they do have a point – here is my 3000-word essay on how it’s actually anti-fascists who are to blame for the rise in authoritarianism. Or, my particular favourite genre of this increasingly dangerous discourse, maybe some people just need to die or have all their rights stripped away so that we all don’t? Here’s who needs to be sacrificed.

In the US, all of this led to Trump. In the UK, it’s led to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, which is currently discussing how not going to Brazil for the UN climate conference might keep Trump happy and stop people turning to Nigel Farage’s Reform party, which on current polling, would sweep to power tomorrow if an election was held.

Because the answer to not giving people hope that things can be different, that there is a better way, is obviously to keep doing more of the same, but giving in on the worst impulses of your political opponents, who have scapegoated entire communities to make up for their own lack of policy ideas, while also abandoning any tiny progress you might be doing.

That’s worked out SO WELL historically. This discourse is so stupid, Kamala Harris is running around on a book tour talking about why she lost the election, still unable to understand why she lost the election. “Oh she just didn’t have enough time,” the Very Smart Centrists proclaim, about a campaign that just promised more of the same, but with a Republican in the Democratic Cabinet.

Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump in New York. Photo: Anthony Albanese

Which brings us to Australia, where the Prime Minister is fresh from a selfie world tour, and the resulting commentary has largely centred around just how far he should prostrate himself in front of Trump, and what lessons he can take from Starmer, who has mastered the technique of capitulating for no gain while also making everything worse.

The Coalition may be the only political movement more prostrate than the UK Labour Party right now, so the Australian Labor Party is swanning along without major challenge to its “progressive patriotism” agenda, which at the moment is an offering of more of the same, but also asking for patience.

And yet, the same questions the US and UK centre “left” movements faced, are being screamed here. Apparently, this is not cause for alarm bells.

The result is a growing apathy in Australian politics. That is not a good thing. The more apathetic people feel, the more they lose hope things can change, the more they turn to disruptors who tell them they are right to be angry, without any actual answers that don’t make things worse for those already just trying to survive.

It truly isn’t complicated and never has been. If governments ensure people’s basic needs are guaranteed and affordable – then hope doesn’t seem so hopeless.

Pretending it is any more complicated than that, only takes us closer to the cliff’s edge; we know what happens when populations enter free fall.

Amy Remeikis is a contributing editor for The New Daily and chief political analyst for The Australia Institute