And It Really Does Send You Blind Or My Conversion On The Road To Damascus…

Ok, for all those heathens reading this, Saul used to persecute Christians… Now, in spite of my support for marriage equality, I’ve never gone out of my way to do that, even though some of them have felt that I was mocking them for their religion. That’s not true. I wasn’t mocking them for their Christianity; I was mocking them for their lack of fashion sense, which I understand will still be all right, even if Scott Morrison’s religious discrimination laws got through unamended.

Anyway, back to Saul. He used to persecute Christians until, one day on the road to Damascus, God struck him blind with the words, “Saul, Saul why dost thou persecute me?”

Now, Saul was a clever sort of a chap for someone who never married because… well, he just didn’t, ok? In these political correct times, I can’t say, but let’s use some sort of innuendo to besmirch the poor man because that’s what we do now that I don’t have the freedom of speech to come out and say that he didn’t like women. Saul straight away that the best way to get away with his past crimes was not to seek forgiveness as Jesus suggested. It was to pretend that he was someone else entirely, so Saul changed his name to Paul and started writing letters that people eventually passed off as gospel.

Similarly, I can see the writing on the wall and I’ve decided to embrace religion so that neither God nor Scott Morrison needs to strike me blind. Why? Well, I could suggest that it’s because God told me directly, but that may be considered blasphemous by some and, believe it or not, blasphemy is still a crime in a number of Australian states.

The difficulty, of course, will be finding a religion that suits me. I want one that has a similar signup clause to the Coalition’s approach to climate change action. I want to sign up and get all the benefits, but I don’t want one that forces me to change my lifestyle in any meaningful way. And by meaningful way, I mean, at all.

This sudden conversion may seem a little insincere but  I have been thinking for some time that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. All the tactics that we’ve tried to create a more just society have just been defeated by wedge politics, so maybe the only way to start pushing people back to some sense of sanity is to jump so far to the ridiculous that you make Pauline look like a bleeding heart leftie! (One could never do that to Peter Dutton; he’ll look like anything other than Voldemort in the Harry Potter films!)

Instead of using reason and evidence, perhaps we should start saying things that will split the Coalition. Here’s a list of ten possible ways to wedge the Liberal Party which you could use for Twitter or a letter to the Editor:

1. Why hasn’t the Labor Party been declared an illegal organisation and its members all been stripped of their citizenship?
2. How dare the Federal government allow our schools to teach foreign languages as part of their LOTE programs!
3. Why don’t the “quiet Australians” get two votes at election time?
4. Abolish the judicial system and let Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt decide all future cases.
5. Isn’t it time for removing the dole in Queensland because now that Adani has begun work there are plenty of jobs and anybody who isn’t working must be a protestor?
6. Let’s introduce six months compulsory National Service for all ten-year-olds where they get taught Australian values and the importance of coal while spending time learning how to survive in the bush.
7. Why do we drive up the price of newspapers by paying journalists when they just regurgitate the government’s talking points?
8. Instead of locking up asylum seekers wouldn’t it be a greater deterrent if we were to simply drown them? (Actually, we may already be doing this but we don’t know because it’s an on-water matter)
9. Shouldn’t aged pensioners have to meet the work test too?
10. Let’s raise the medicare levy by two percent and give the money to Gina and Rupert so they can create more jobs.

Yes, I do realise that you’d need to be careful because the current mob may take them seriously and start implementing them, and while it could be argued that this would certainly lose them the next election, when I look at the number of stuff-ups in the previous year, I can’t believe that they didn’t lose this one.

Whatever, my religious conversion is only lacking something to convert to, so once I have that, and once the new religious freedoms are in, I’ll be able to say whatever I like because isn’t everything a religious position?

Mm, I’m sure that Angus Taylor said that climate change was the new religion. Does that mean that nobody will be allowed to dispute anything any deeply committed Greenie says because it’ll inhibit their free speech?

Interesting times!