From national embarrassment to personal humiliation

Grumpy Geezer

1 year ago

One man’s journey

”Luv, we all get taken out in a box.” (Paul Keating to Julia Gillard after she lost the leadership ballot to Kevin Rudd).

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” (Bertrand Russell).

It is self-evident that anyone aspiring to be PM has a robust self-regard. Even the wiser ones harbour some illusions about their indispensability, but it is the bovine dullards and the zealots who despite all evidence to the contrary are the most convinced of their own exceptionalism. Overlay that conceit with an intransigent religious literalism and we have Tomás de Torquemada redux (sans the austere lifestyle but with the familiar sparse coif and man boobs) – a happy-clapping, prosperity gospelling mutation of that Old Testament fantasist Mad Abbott where their shared dogma is righteousness (theirs) vs the unworthy (check for daily specials). Government to them was a comforting, authoritarian patriarchy where the womens do the ironing, grateful they’re not shot when they get a bit toey (but they are useful for explaining the nuances of rape. Not good according to Jen). And it’s where the flock need not trouble themselves with the Godly mission of the annointed one.

He was a smug windbag, a smirking oaf who lost a staring competition with an electric arc welder and who thought it a good idea to publicly wash the hair of a stranger – a laying on of hands for a retinue of obsequious press flacks to help cultivate an image of not-a-weirdo.

He believed his guile had his deity’s imprimatur – further evidence that the worst people are commonly those affectedly professing their godliness. Having a God whose interests always align with your own is a self-sustaining contrivance – ‘because I have God’s favour everything I do is God’s will’. Quite useful whether you’re burning heretics, brutalising toddler asylum seekers or steering Covid vaccines away from a Labor-oriented state.

He thought of himself as special. Not just the smartest guy in the room but on a mission from his God who showers the pious with earthly wealth but has little sympathy for the poors or the non-believers – a convenient celestial licence to intimidate, silence and persecute.

Bad things only happen to bad people according to the handbook for Jesusing neoliberals:

“There shall no evil happen to the just: but the wicked shall be filled with mischief” Proverbs 12:21.

The Public Service was told to unquestioningly toe the line, the AFP raided the ABC, universities were nobbled, whistleblowers were prosecuted, welfare recipients were demonised and harassed while wealthy fridge magnates, party mates and the temples of Yahweh wallowed in buckets of public largesse – no strings attached.

Endorsement from the ethereal realm also over-rides the scientific method. Voices from burning bushes prevail over the observable phenomena of quantum mechanics, expert concensus of pending ecological collapse are ignored because, ya know, the Rapture. Selective, credulous acceptance of biblical contradictions facilitates literal beliefs in comical superstitions that excuse all sorts of bad behaviour – persecution of non-conformers being an historical favourite. It also dispenses with any need for accountability to anyone other than a omniscient, omnipotent yet paranoid phantasm whose tantrums kill millions. The Oaf’s whole Jesusing routine was more than just a PR ruse; he truly believes that secularists are ungodly heretics to be re-educated or reviled.

“Australia is not a secular country… As US Senator Joe Lieberman said, the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. I believe the same is true in this country.” (From his maiden speech to Parliament).

He was fully onboard the 7 Mountains Mandate looney train, at least in spirit (no pun intended).

He facilitated the infiltration of fellow pulpit pushers and the punishers and straighteners of the anti-gay/anti-trans bigots and he sought succour through fellow fabulists – flight risk Brother Stuie and personal bag carrier and co-conspirator Alex Hawke.

He has not introduced one single policy of benefit to this nation – indeed he has failed to even articulate any vision or forethought beyond politicking. During his tenure the country has not progressed in any way – going backwards in most international rankings.

His incompetence, the vindictive nastiness, government as a manelovent force, the hypocritical piety, the cultivation of division, the rampant cronyism and graft, the secretiveness and intolerance of dissent, the five ministries megalomania, the incoherent gibberings designed to frustrate enquiry, the bullying, the tearing down of conventions and standards, the denigration of expertise – the whole horrendous revivalist circus of the worst PM in our history; a national embarrassment who is deserving of the most humiliating removal from our consciousness.

Serial fuck-ups and the application of the smirk removal cream of public approbrium for his failures and his facile, dress-up brand management failed to dent the impervious narcissism of belief in his own ‘genius’ and self-image as a ‘master strategist’. His shamelessness has survived his ostracism to the opposition backbenches where his unemployability stands out like a hi-vizzed walrus at a choir practice – the guy whose smarm included “if you’re good at a job you’ll get a job“, the guy who initiated the dob-in-a-bludger hotline. This is schadenfreude tied in a big, pink bow.

The denigration from his Tory cohort was shrugged off:

“He fucked us and his fingerprints are absolutely fuckin’ everywhere on that. The bloke thinks he is a master strategist. He is a fuckwit.” (Anonymous federal Lib MP).

“Everyone wants him to piss off. But people don’t want a by-election,’’ a senior Liberal source told news.com.au. (Julia Banks, ex Lib MP – “menacing controlling wallpaper”).

Catherine Cusack ex Lib MP – “… it’s just all come a bit late for the Liberal party. The party I joined 40 years ago and loved. The party he has ruined.“

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells – an “autocrat [and] a bully who has no moral compass”, “He has used his so-called faith as a marketing advantage.”

Gladys Berejiklian – “a complete psycho”.

His appearance before the Robodebt Royal Commission elicited humbug not humility.

It took 330 years before Torquemada’s remains were dug up and belatedly burned auto-da-fé. The NACC may be a more timely seal on The Oaf’s deserved humiliation but I doubt we’ll see any genuine contrition.