‘The world is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel.’

I came across that quote recently while scrolling online. I have no idea who said it. Depending on which corner of the internet you visit, it was either Horace Walpole, Jean de La Bruyère, or somebody else entirely.

Whoever said it, they would probably be fascinated by modern Australian politics.

For years, we have been told that feelings matter.

Politicians, journalists, academics, and activists have spent decades urging us to listen to people’s lived experiences. We have been told that subjective reality matters. That empathy matters. That people deserve to feel seen, heard, and understood.

Fair enough.

Politics has never been purely rational. Human beings do not experience life through spreadsheets and economic models. We experience it through hopes, fears, frustrations, and aspirations. Any political movement that ignores that reality is destined to fail.

The problem is that some feelings appear to matter more than others.

As Pauline Hanson and One Nation continue to gain support, much of the commentary follows a familiar pattern. Hanson voters are angry. They are fearful. They are resentful. They are reacting emotionally rather than rationally. Their concerns are explained away as prejudice, misinformation or an inability to adapt to a changing world.

What is striking is not the criticism itself.

It’s the contradiction.

For years, Australians have been told that if people feel excluded, unheard, unsafe, or marginalised, those feelings deserve recognition. Yet when millions of Australians express concerns about housing affordability, immigration, social cohesion, the cost of living, or the direction of the country, those same feelings are suddenly treated with suspicion.

Apparently, some feelings deserve empathy while others require correction.

This is where much of the political class gets it wrong.

The rise of One Nation is not occurring because millions of Australians have suddenly stopped thinking.

Feelings are not the opposite of thought.

More often than not, they are where thought begins.

People compare what they were promised with what they have experienced. They compare official narratives with everyday reality. They compare the confidence of politicians with the uncertainty they see around them.

And then they draw conclusions.

One can disagree with those conclusions.

One can disagree with Pauline Hanson herself.

But dismissing those concerns as irrational is not an argument. It is a substitute for one.

The real question is why this keeps surprising so many commentators.

Every poll seems to trigger another round of articles asking what One Nation voters are trying to say. Yet the answer is hardly hidden.

People support Pauline Hanson for many of the same reasons voters supported Brexit, Donald Trump, Reform UK, and similar movements across the Western world.

They believe important decisions are increasingly being made without their consent. They believe their concerns are dismissed more often than they are addressed. And they increasingly suspect that many of the people shaping public debate are more interested in explaining their frustrations than understanding them.

Whether those perceptions are correct is almost beside the point.

Politics is ultimately driven by what people believe to be true. This is the great misunderstanding at the heart of the One Nation phenomenon. The establishment keeps asking why people want to vote for Pauline Hanson. Pauline Hanson keeps asking those people why they’re angry.

That does not mean she is always right. It does mean she understands something many of her critics do not. People will tolerate being disagreed with. They will tolerate being criticised. What they will not tolerate forever is being ignored.

Politics has a habit of rewarding people who ask questions that everyone else has decided they already know the answers to.

For years, the establishment insisted that feelings mattered.

The rise of One Nation is what happens when millions of Australians decide to hold the establishment to its own standard.