Does The Thug hate you? Probably

To identify what the abominable No Man is for, we have to filter out what he’s against. From there you can extrapolate whether you are amongst the things he hates.

That wooden, cadaverous demeanor is a veneer. Underneath it he’s a testy prick.

He’s always angry. Fear and loathing are his tools of trade, a sock full of sand is his preferred persuader.

He’d tear the wings off his kids’ butterfly collection as practice. He’d gift them a 15-year-old dog for Christmas so he’d not have to abandon it by Easter.

He flatters himself that he’s a leader but his befuddled disposition is the reveal – you can sense the dust bunnies floating by in the vaccuum behind his eyes. This bloke is no enigma, there’s no mystery nor depth. He’s an obtuse, incurious dullard and wowser, a bovine oaf, a head-kicker, a bruiser, a punisher and straightener. There’s no grand plan, no imagination nor ambition beyond the realisation of his nastiness and the gratification of the ego of a hateful but otherwise unremarkable pissant.

I doubt that he’s even fully aware of all that he hates. Let us consider:

“Lefty” and “woke” are his go-to pejoratives.

“Inner-city elites” is a handy slur from the anti-elitist who heads a party of entitled, privately-schooled toffs, captains of industry and billionaire robber barons. With five investment properties and a salary of $432,239 p.a. he once billed us $23k for a jet to a Newscorp event sponsored by Gina Rinehart to talk about the cost of living crisis. Apparantly he’s an egalitarian who can nevertheless indulge in white truffles with gavage-fattened foie gras canapes with Patagonian toothfish char-grilled over Wollomi pine woodchips and a cheeky Louis Roederer Cristal Brut at Big Vag’s birthday extravaganza. Our man of the people also dines with a billionaire Indian steel magnate and is gifted objets d’art from foreign officials.

Putting his Master Of Hypocrisy credentials to one side, if there’s any calculation behind The Thug’s hatefulness it would be the turning of the dial to orange. ‘Vote for me because I hate the same people you do.’ Enmity trumps empathy. Every time.

Racist demonisation of immigrants, while an inherent far-right ethos, is also a useful tool to desensitise us to other atrocities. Calculated assaults on the vulnerable and marginalised are reduced to the natural order of things, easing the path to greater evils.

The ready targets of The Thug’s dehumanisation are brownish toddlers, brownish adults (Indian mining nabobs excepted), Africans (unless they’re white farmers), Muzzies, Lebs (not sure where he currently stands on wogs and dagos) and China – although he throttled back the Sinophobia when the Libs got a kicking in four marginal seats with large percentages of electors of Chinese heritage.

The Thug would have us believe his gratuitous indifference to the mass slaughter of Gaza’s children is because the disemboweled, headless tykes pulled from the rubble were likely Hamas operatives. They are disposable lives in service to his attempts to wedge Labor on immigration and an excuse for him to wave his favourite terrorist scare schtick. If anything exposes The Thug’s effluviant character it is this.

Not a monster©. Kirrily Dutton

When a politician equivocates about the mass murder of innocents then they’re telling you how they’d treat you if they could.

Tony Abbott: “I crippled the NBN.” The Thug: “Phhht!” The sabotage of the Voice to Parliament is his defining achievement. It was an insult to Indigenous dignity, denying that their original inhabitants’ status was deserving of recognition. It was a trial run of the palatability of his coontedness vs Albo’s naive trust in our better angels. It reinforced his belief that his hate and division is a winning play.

He’s a physical manifestation of tourettes – Frankenstein’s lab fugitive, charisma-free and aesthetically unpleasant. He may laugh at the thought of refugees being poked with sticks through a wire mesh fence, chortle at Pacific Islands sinking beneath the waves and clench his butt cheeks to force a smile for the cameras but what he doesn’t understand are irony or sagacity. Nipple clamps and a ball gag for a Friday night thrashing with a riding crop are the closest he’d ever get to having benign fetishes.

Cartoon by Alan Moir (moir.com.au)

As aware as a Cheviot beach lifeguard, as marketable as a recycled Snowtown barrel, as reassuring as a bushwalk with Ivan Milat – this race-baiting sewer of hate and division is the best the Tories can offer? This… thing… is supposed to have national leadership appeal?

The hate-monger has evident antipathies:

Workers.
Unions.
Bipartisanship. Always leave open any oppotunity to divide.
Saying sorry.
Troublesome 10 year olds. Lock ’em up.
Same sex marriage.
Anti-discrimination laws.
Rainbow socks.
Net zero.
Greenies. His war on the environment doesn’t mean he hates all life on earth – simply that he’s sceptical about much of its relevance to his own interests.
Free speech. Yours.
Frank and fearless advice – zero tolerance of inconvenient facts.
Scrutiny.
Criticism.
Responsibility. This bloke left Home Affairs and Immigration in total chaos.
Accountability. He’s “… never a big fan of lawyers, or abstractions like the rule of law * …”
Medicare. As health minister he cut $50 billion from hospitals, tried to introduce a $7 GP tax and secretly launched the Medicare Privatisation Task force.
Your superannuation (but not his own).
The Guardian, The Age, the SMH.
The ABC, the AEC, the BoM, the CSIRO.

*Fellow Tory elitist George Brandis.

Billionaire mining magnates are the obvious objects of his affections and deference. Others getting a pass are the rabid racists and xenophobes, the easily frightened, the chronically stupid, Trumpers, eco vandals, Swedish au pairs and Murdoch’s bin rummagers. Tame Aborigines Jacinta NameYa Price and Uncle Tom Mundine should probably keep an eye on the bus schedule – their value has a finite shelf life.

What about you? Are you brownish? Leftish or centrist? Are you fair-minded? Environmentally aware? Are you a poor, a migrant, a refugee? Are you now or have you ever been a member of a union? Are you Indigenous, flamboyant, a public servant? Are you Sally McManus, Louise Milligan or Laura Tingle? Have you ever voted Labor, Green or Teal? Have you ever offered a down-and-outer a helping hand? Are you accepting of any of the above?

If so, does he hate you?

Yes, he probably does.

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.