Suicidal hubris or a trick up the sleeve?
Has this federal government lost its grip on reality, fooled by
its own rhetoric, destined for a grisly political death or do they have a
grand game changer ready to be unleashed?
The Abbott Government seems to be on a mission to systematically
annoy, exploit or degrade as many pockets of the Australian electorate
as they can in one term of government. But for a party that regards the
power of office as an end in itself, they appear to be running a flawed
strategic agenda.
Let’s not kid ourselves, this bunch really do want to get themselves
re-elected. They’re not a squadron of kamikaze neo-con pilots, biting
off the last piece of ideological territory before their poisonous
political movement crashes to its inevitable death. They are not that
stoic.
Who can forget the embarrassing three year tantrum Abbott threw when
Julia Gillard beat him to the punch, negotiating her way to minority
government?
The madness we are witnessing are the actions of a government that thinks it belongs in power.
The men in blue ties hold every hope of being re-elected. They may even
be under the impression that the things they are doing are contributing
to their chances of re-election.
Since coming to office this government has waged vicious attacks on
our most vulnerable, acted as an unabashed lobbyist for our most harmful
and moribund industries, ignored, denied and chastised science, killed
off promising new industries, skipped their way excitedly into a
religious war, ignored a global health emergency, defamed global
leaders, pursued nasty political vendettas, punished its detractors and
nobbled our national broadcaster.
And they’ve done it all without whiff of charisma. The people
inflicting these horrible wounds are not classy, well-spoken, smart
practitioners of the dark arts. No! Our tormentors are a ramshackle
group of misfits: a punch drunk Luddite who struggles from word to word
in every sentence he delivers as he gaffs his way across the domestic
and international stage; a hateful, angry, glutinous, cigar-smoking
leaner; an eighteenth century dandy with a nasty streak wider than the
gap between rich and poor; an extreme Christian zealot who thinks crimes
against humanity are not quite harsh enough; an asbestos defending,
globe-trotting lawyer who rates a mean stare amongst her greatest
attributes; and a smooth talking could-have-been hero of the Australian
centre who lately has taken the strange step of selling his soul on
national television in defence of the man whose job he coverts.
Ramshackle? This mob are an outright circus of evil clowns and it
makes the pain, torment and burden just that much more difficult to
bear.
But bear it we must. And we also must, apparently, tolerate the fact
that all of these crimes against Australia and what we stand for are
committed within an atmosphere of dishonesty and hypocrisy that has
never before plagued our land of sweeping plains. We are served
undergraduate linguistic gymnastics, developed by the Abbott Ministry of
Truth, for which we pay millions, designed to convince us that black is
white, up is down and herpes is good for us.
And yet, be assured, this mob expect to be re-elected next time around.
Can the support they receive from Rupert and his anti-democratic,
anti-truth attack dogs be that reassuring? Is Abbott and his gang of
shifty fiddlers betting the farm on the power of Bolt and friends to
spin their lunar right, IPA-inspired agenda?
Murdoch certainly has been putting his best foot forward when it
comes to his little game of telling people what to think and who to
hate. To give some perspective, Bill Hayden, Whitlam’s last Treasurer, recently told Wayne Swan that Murdoch’s current behaviour was ‘three to four times worse’ than at the time of the dismissal.
That’s heady stuff. But it’s still hard to imagine that our
government of power-hungry, ideological vandals could be so trusting.
Would they really put all their eggs in one basket? Murdoch may have
cranked up the mendacious absurdity, but his readership is declining
rapidly at the same time as the Fifth Estate is gaining competence,
credibility and readers.
Either this government is drunk on hubris, fooled by the ease of
their 2013 election win with misplaced confidence in the support of the
world’s most evil media ‘empire’, hurtling their way towards what the
polls have long suggested will be a landslide loss in 2016. Or they have
one last, grand nasty trick up their sleeve; a devilish plot to
frighten, threaten and corner an under-informed public into voting for
them again.
Let’s hope it’s the former and that the damage done in the meantime
can be reversed, because trying to imagine what that devilish plot might
be is enough to send shivers down your spine.
A guest post by AIMN reader David Frizzell.
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