To be or not tobe

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*