To be or not to be
Friday evening...
‘David is eighty three and so we are not really latenighters so would 6.30 to 8.30 be about right?’
Two days later we were having dinner at Sue’s..
‘You see Sue I can’t doorknock for the Greens because I would lose my patience and start arguing with people..Greens policies are self - evident to me. The reasons people don’t vote for them are all irrational and so people are unpersuadable to me.
People don’t vote for the Greens mainly because they are greedy or because they have been intimidated by bullying politicians and their proxies in the mass media.
The beleaguered voter is told to be frightened of everything and every body..terrorists, criminals, refugees, migrants , incurable infectious diseases, the GFC, the collapse of the iron ore price, the low dollar, the imminent collapse of house prices. We’re told to be frightened of losing our job, our mortgage, our superannuation. Email scammers, credit card hackers, floods, spiders, snakes and bushfires..they are all coming to get us. We live in a permanent state of fear and anxiety…
We’re even scared to open the door…scared of our neighbours. We can’t let our children out of our sight and are scared to smile at little children in case we are thought to be sexual predators..Parents are now even afraid they will be abused by their children in old age!
This fear is not an accident-it is absolutely necessary. It is essential for politicians and the mass media so they can make us do what they want and make a lot of money out of us… respectively.
Fear is what makes the developed world go round. It oils the wheels of the economy. Without it the economy would collapse.
But once it is whipped up, fear cannot be dispelled so easily and the anxiety and adrenalin it creates is addictive. You can’t just say to people …stop being afraid and anxious! It doesn’t work like that. Have you ever heard of a smoker or a drug addict stop using because they were told to stop it!
These same irrational fears and emotions are involved in making the decision about who to vote for in an election.
We have more than we need but we live in an anxious and joyless world in the west. The only places where I have seen real joy and exuberance are in Africa or South America….where, paradoxically, most people have little or nothing. Unfortunately, their own ruthless and powerful elites are doing their best to change their own joyful cultures into joyless ones like our own.
Saturday morning on my way into Woolworths
A deep sonorous voice booms to my right..
Ha! Ha! Ha!…Yeeaaaaahh!
‘You look like you’re bearing the world on your shoulders mate …you look like you’re on your last legs!'
I looked up and scowled. At first I didn’t recognize him..then I realized it was Brian an - old tennis friend. I stopped playing about a year ago
Ho! Ho! Ho! …you look like you are carrying the whole world on your shoulders he said again.. . Ha !Ha! Ha!
He was bending down and hunched over -mimicking my stooped gait…
He guffawed again with that mocking jocularity Australians use to indicate they like someone. They think it is funny to mock people..it is the Australian sense of humour..
Dad used to say..
‘Stand up straight! shoulders back!, look straight ahead! … and smile!’
I didn’t understand why he kept saying it at the time. He also had it written on a card in the toilet in the eye line of the person sitting on the toilet…I must have been a scowling hunchback even as a child
Dad must have been disappointed in his youngest
I never did listen to him much. It was an ego thing
This harangue from Brian was also an ego thing: I veered towards him – ready to meet his raucous and very public challenge.
He was part of a group of ‘Meals-on- Wheelers’ raising money by doing a barbecue.
Taking a ridiculous and completely uncalled for risk, I heard myself blurt out…
‘Whaddyu expect mate? . I was avoiding you…I thought you might be part of a group of *Liberal party stooges?’
I didn’t know Brian well enough to approach a risky subject like politics and make such an outrageous remark in public. I was way out of line.
It just came out. It was his turn to be disconcerted. Haw haw haw! he blustered on..but I could see he was taken aback at my boldness. (I did know him well enough to know that he was a ‘dyed- in- the wool’ Liberal which is of course why I said it). I wanted to stop him in his tracks.
Why do I keep doing this? I have this constant, uncontrollable urge to take on people like Brian and burst the bubble of complacency and self-satisfaction which surrounds them like a halo. I want to prick it like a balloon and see the gloating face inside collapse.
Pop!!
I can’t stop myself. It just happens.
Brian was pretending he hadn’t heard me
‘You really looked like you’re carrying the world on your shoulders Don!! he cackled’
‘Yeah…well last week I was on my way into Woollies when I was accosted by these liberal party stooges Its enough to drive you to drink!’ I said ignoring his comment.
‘So when are we going to see you again at the tennis?’ Said Brian, pointedly ignoring my political comment.
‘Ahwwww I dunno ..I don’t think I think I can do it anymore..’
Brian guffawed at what seemed to him was a ‘double entendre’
‘I..I play golf now… I said, embarrassed…’I keep injuring myself at tennis –all that jumping and leaping around at the net. I just can’t stop myself..’
‘Where’s the problem –is it the legs?’ said Brian
Well..yeah..anything below the waist - it just doesn’t really work any more
I was embarrassed again-this time by myself.
I didn’t want to pursue this line of conversation. Unofficially, I was acknowledged as the best player at the club of oldies and the truth was that although I officially stopped playing because of my injuries I was aware there were a few players-including Brian, who had my measure and were on the verge of knocking me off my perch! This might well have been be part of the reason I stopped playing!
Pretty pathetic isn’t it?
The week before, I was proud of myself that I had walked passed the Liberals and (quite rudely), brushed them aside with a contemptuous flourish of my hand
Being a Protestant, I immediately felt bad and guilty.
But the guilt didn’t last. After pretending to go into another shop and after a respectable pause, I circled back and re-engaged another Liberal just long enough to dismiss him with a similar gesture.
On my way out of Woolworths I avoided Brian, but as I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye I caught him looking at me with a bemused grin.
‘I’m sure he was saying to himself…Whaddya know ..…Don’s a bloody lefty!’
To be or not to be?
Should I be polite to someone like Brian who votes to bankrupt me?
Is it not my politeness that allows people like Brian to continue to screw over his neighbours? My politeness is the silk Pete uses to bind and trap us in his web.
They’re everywhere-these people who vote to bankrupt their neighbor, whooping and guffawing and laughing at their own jokes. They all think they are so very funny.
Politics is war and war is not polite and not funny. Thank God I don’t have these sort of encounters every day because I don’t go out much. If I did I would be exhausted.
Sue and David were lovely. She was larger than life and talked non-stop. He said very little and served the food on cue. Its so hard to get into people’s houses here- and even harder to get them into ours.
“You must be tired after getting up so early Maria?”
It was 8.45 and this was our cue to leave. Sue was ex-army
I wonder how long it will be before she finds some other way of patronizing me and I take offence.
Brian just thought he was being friendly. He and others in the tennis club liked me because I made them laugh.
But when I ‘come out’ and show my political views in this way my usefulness is outweighed by the threat they now perceive me to be. They’re afraid..
Fear!
Brian will blank me from now on. That’s the way it is.
I’ll tell you something , Brian!
My grandmother used to say..
‘There’s nothing as queer as folk!’
and I was just a wee lad so she wasn’t referring to me
*For those of you outside Australia the Liberal Party in Australia is the conservative party*
