I was gobsmacked when I read this Tweet today (19/07/20):
@VikGrujic
@DanielAndrewsMP I will not wear a mask. I will not pay a fine. I will not comply. I will not bow down to you. Whatever you’re [sic] next set of demands are, I will not comply to either. I’m a proud Australian. Born free. Nothing will take that away from me. No virus. No dictator.
Many years ago, in the mid-70s, I was part of a group which established a branch of the Family Planning Association in the Northern Territory. We had an education sub-committee which, successfully, encouraged the Education Department to introduce a Human Relationships program into the secondary education curriculum.
Part of our approach was to stress the fact that to claim a right, requires the claimant to accept a responsibility.
Governments are elected to make decisions for the population of their electorate as a whole, keeping in mind that some people need protection from others, while other people need protection from themselves!
COVID-19 has been shown to be a potentially very nasty beast.
It certainly does not kill everyone who contracts the infection.
In general, those most at risk are the elderly and those with a compromised immune system.
But, more, insidiously, among many, apparently healthy people, the disease can be completely debilitating – in fact some are already despairing of ever recovering completely.
Some people can become infected without displaying obvious symptoms.
We have no vaccine.
We are still unsure how long the incubation period is.
We do not yet know whether an infected person who recovers can be re-infected.
(With all the known unknowns, this becomes like shades of Donald Rumsfeld! – but it is no joking matter!)
“No man is an island … ” is a well known and important quotation.
Unless we live in total isolation, much of the time our actions impact on other people, and vice versa.
Government laws and regulations are largely designed to protect individuals and other entities from adverse consequences from the actions of others.
The person responsible for the Tweet above does not deserve to mix in society.
His total failure to see himself as other than in isolation, going by his statement, totally disregards the fact that his actions affect others, and his apparent refusal to accept that others, also, have the right to not be harmed by those around them, means he should not be allowed to be in society!
America under Trump has helped to support this sort of selfish attitude, which says ‘I will live by my rules and you can live by yours, but don’t tell me what to do!’, ignoring the fact that we are all citizens of one Earth.
We have developed a cult of individual rights and freedoms which threatens to destabilise society altogether.
It has long been evident in the context of global warming, where the ‘right’ of shareholders to demand that corporations carry out their duty to make profits for them, has drowned out the voices of those who say they have no right to destroy life on this planet by their actions!
So I hope that those who know the tweeter, but do not share his attitude, will make it very clear to him that he is a selfish git who does not deserve any help or support from a society for which he does not give a stuff!
I end as always – this is my 2020 New Year Resolution:
“I will do everything in my power to enable Australia to be restored to responsible government.”
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Trumpism has a voice in Australia. So many who only think of themselves not others. Such foolish selfish individuals are too many in number. They play the victim card when it happens to them but don’t care about others or think the economy is more important.I am ashamed my own parents think Donald Trump is Gods gift and love Dutton and read the Australian. They used to read The Age and care about people . So easy to fool some people who think they are victims of Unemployment, immigration holding down wages failing to see murdoch and his ilk destroying free thought and critical analysis. So much easier to blame everyone else but the real culprits such as the liberal lying cheating, low life. I am so sad democracy has no voice in Australia albo gets no airtime. I thought that the liberal nats would be toast but alas 3 more years of lying, pork barrelling, would a federal ICAC clear the air no alas we have seen from the Gough dismissal that betty and the CIA made sure Australias wealth would not benefit its own citizens. As a nurse this selfish individual makes my blood boil. We are trying to protect people and this imbecile thinks only his rights matter. What else to expect from a federal govt that promotes the individual over and above the needs of society. MAKES ME SO MAD.
There are too many who believe that an ignorant, totally self centred fixation is liberty, and the rest of us and the world can get stuffed. You cannot argue with such bone thick stupidity. A Vik Grusic may be a descendant of the spirit, even a family, of Chetnik or Ustasha types, or just old European fascism waiting to exude. We have this old fascist filth from Europe here in too great a shitload, the Bolt, Albrechtsen, Akerman, Hildebrand, even Murdoch and half of the festering pox of his media maggot menagerie. An ignorant insolent supremacist egofixation, a righteous ratbag rubbish ranting rave, this is it for these supremacist turds, and no sense or science or facts will deter the turd from being deterred. Fist f—–g frauds and fatalist fanatical fascist types abound here and we imported too many more after the wonderful entertaining demise of Adolf and Benito. If you want to recall fascist atmosphere and culture, lift up a pig’s tail.
Selfishness and stupidity can and do accompany brute late capitalist individualism, as in “The country is on fire and I am supposed to lead it, but my girls deserve a nice holiday in Hawaii, so off we sneak.” However fascism is different. It has the cult of the Leader and it enforces herd mentality, eg thousands of right arms raised as their godlike saviour arrives, deliberately late. There is here a conformity to herd rules and doctrines rather than selfish, near solipsism. I can imagine that moron bashing his wife if she timidly asks him to wipe his boots.
We imagine this idiot puffing out his chest, but we have also the mass of (white) human bodies writhing wormlike on some Sydney beach as restrictions are eased. Crowd stupidity. Vulgar solo anarchist. Dictator whose soldiers and police torture and kill dissidents. CIA, Stasi, brute greed.
Meanwhile Adani grabs farmers’ land in NE India, builds a huge power station to burn our coal, are to export its electricity to Bangladesh. The local farmers cannot grow or buy food any longer.
As vast corporations are allowed by governments to destroy local populations, we must suffer too the ‘born free’, the hysterical masses (whether piling onto beaches or screaming at Leader approved rallies). To define the Croatian immigrant or whatever he is as fascist is simplistic.
Morons come in all shapes and sizes. Wisdom nowhere. No escape.
Simple solution for Vik Grujic; arrest when in public when without a mask, detention until a close date in Court to face breach of Health Order charges then when found guilty, sentenced to three (3) weeks solitary confinement, preferably on Manus Island or Nauru.
Some Aussie’s call 911 for Emergency. Such is their lack of connection to their own country.
24 years of ideological wars surreptitiously waged mostly by the LNP has
destroyed our culture.People no longer know why or what there protesting for.
Because we can’t seem to get on the same page on most things these days.
The way we and other countries allow our major decisions to be made at the direction of the USA (and, to be fair, China and Russia) is featured heavily in George Galloway’s latest MOATS on youtube. Galloway is controversial but honest, and he invites contrary views and debates with them. He is not afraid to have guest speakers who are not remotely in tune with Galloways opinions. His show is, for me, the most stimulating political discourse available,
Australia is never featured, unfortunately. Probably because our govt is in lockstep with US and UK.
@ Egalitarian
Altogether too many Australians are seeking their ‘inner selves’ by ramming their heads up their own fundamental alimentary orifices, many of whom, along with a mob of others, can be justifiably described as “sheeple” – running around in circles, happy to be fleeced at every opportunity before ultimately being led to the slaughter.
(I believe that I have expressed those opinions previously – so please forgive me if, like boiled cabbage, I often repeat.)
Good read, Rosemary. 😀
I have been reminded lately of that incredibly clever response to smoking before we finally realised that the smokers need to be excluded. The one where the person talks about how you like a smoke and it means you need to blow out smoke while you enjoy it. So you blow your smoke into the air I breathe. I enjoy A drink and makes me need to pee. How would you feel if I peed all over you?
Or something much more poetically clever.
Whether this Grusic is real or a fictionalized version of an LNP supporter or may be one of Murdoch’s wet dreams come to to life, if one must make a comparison, look no further than an interview shown on Fox News in America and picked up and tweeted by Barry Cassidy. When asked why these Trump supporters refused to wear a mask, among the usual claims of freedom to live as they liked etc, one respectable looking middle aged grand mother, offered this gem : ” I don’t wear a mask for the same reason as I don’t wear underwear, I like all parts of my body to breathe freely ” Could it be Grusic’s aunt ?
If this tweeter (or is it twater) caused the death of someone’s elderly granny or grandad maybe even his own by such crass stupidity his probable response; “well they was old wasn’t they”.
Self entitled twat. The human gene pool desperately needs a good dose of chlorine, and soon.
Ross
You have it arse about. ‘Tweets’ don’t ‘twatter’.
‘Twats’ are ‘tweeters’.
All of the governments that directly concern us deliberately held off on trying to find a vaccine because they were convinced that only the old and unproductive were vulnerable. It took the virus to attack people close to the seats of power – a member of Trumps family, ‘Snake eyes’ Dutton, and Blowjob Johnson – to alert them that THEY might be at risk.
As Norman Gunston (the Aussie Forest Gump) used to say – ‘This oi beloive.’
Re:
So the learning ‘outcome’ of your program was already predetermined? It was to be a forced feeding of pre-masticated food to those who were conceptualized as dependent beings?
A pity.
New England Cocky
He should not be granted solitary confinement. He should be incarcerated with other non- conforming citizens in places where he could be mask- less to his hearts content. In the slammer. Hotbeds of viruses, actually. So he can be as brazenly courageous as he likes.
Matters Not – maybe my wording was clumsy because it appears you have totally misconstrued what I said.