The ideological ground occupied by Quadrant, Fox News, Quillette, The Australian, Sky News, Infowars et al. is founded on the same essential creed: under the banner of identity politics, the Left is undertaking a deliberate campaign to police speech and behaviour in order to create a society in which conservative dissent is erased

In a recent interview with ReCode’s Kara Swisher, Mark Zuckerberg explained that the reason Facebook allows conspiracy theorists and, specifically, Holocaust deniers, to disseminate their views on his website is that, ‘At the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.’

This scandal differs from the typical cycle of outrage: we’re not angry, we’re dejected. The reporting and comment have been elegiac. Commentators appear to be genuinely upset. ‘I have never seen such emotion and anguish on a national scale,’ wrote journalist Tracey Holmes. ‘Please tell me this is a bad dream,’ former Australian captain Michael Clarke tweeted. Speaking on ABC Grandstand the day after the event, a tearful Jim Maxwell sounded as if he was broadcasting from a funeral. So what exactly is being mourned?

According to a recent article in The Economist, Australia is, per capita, the world’s most lucrative gambling market. As a nation, we lose $20 billion per year, and poker machines account for more than half these losses – around $11 billion. A 2010 Productivity Commission report recommended introducing a range of safeguards including a maximum bet limit of $1, arguably a reasonable measure, and one supported by Andrew Wilkie, Nick Xenophon, the Greens and various lobby groups. In New South Wales, the current maximum bet limit is $10, meaning a player can lose an average of $1,200 per hour.

Writers’ festivals are strange institutions, often literature-adjacent rather than literary. Discussions tend to revolve around the idea of books rather than the books themselves: what a book means, how it was made, how the author feels about it. When we subject writers to interrogation before an audience, what is it we want from them?

Reading books as tools or cures risks devaluing literary pleasure, taking enchantment and diminishing it with a utilitarian vocabulary. Certainly literature can bolster our emotional and intellectual equipment, but too much advice about how best to read describes literature as if it had a reducible, quantifiable outcome, as if a book were consumed by its reader and alchemically transmuted into intellect or aptitude.

The proposal and ensuing conversation show how the languages of government and art are incompatible. They are incompatible because art cannot be described in the vocabulary of the state without invoking purpose and commerce. Moreover, ministerial jargon does not admit moral ambiguity: those who govern traffic only in moral conviction. Embedded in any political polemic is the aspirational and patronising assertion that ‘We can all agree on x’, where x is to do with hospitals, education, terrorism etc. How could you disagree with this obvious good? Do you hate children? Do you love bombs?

Among a random selection of 10 comments on a recent Taylor Swift Instagram post, two are collections of heart emojis, three declare their love, with variations in spelling and length (‘Lolololoveeeeee’), one announces that ‘I drew Taylor!!’ and another disturbingly and impenetrably explains that it is ‘so good to be sweet’. One girl tells Taylor ‘You should’ve invited me @taylorswift’ to the perfectly lit scene. It’s safe to assume that Taylor does not know these people.