Politics

A Political Rant

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A while ago I was thinking about the state of play her in Queensland and in western democracies generally and came to what I thought was a very profound conclusion. Actually, and I digress, “very profound” isn’t correct grammar is it, whether I thought it or not. Like “very brilliant” or “very devastating”. The word “profound” is non-gradable so doesn’t need an adverb of degree. This lesson is the first of today’s contributions to the preservation of Western Civilisation. The second one follows so I’ll start again.

A while ago I was thinking about the state of play her in Queensland and in western democracies generally and came to what I thought was a profound conclusion. There are many problems in the world ranging from the specific, like the war in Ukraine and the covid virus which Joe Biden has just declared has lost its pandemic status much to the chagrin of his medical bureaucracy and many authoritarian politicians, to the more nebulous like stupidity and “racism”. The inverted commas round “racism” are there because generally, it isn’t. It’s mostly just a cover-all insult these days.

But the biggest problem facing mankind (I know, I know, and I don’t care) in my humble opinion is people who don’t pay attention. The inexorable creeping sludge of the many tides of leftism (remember the long march through the institutions?) is allowed to proceed because most don’t notice it until it slaps them in the face – looking at you Venezuela. Remember, you voted for Chavez and now the only way to get rid of him is if he died. Oh that’s right, he did and look what replaced him. Your most recent election was the last one before the next blood-bath. It was probably pretty crappy before Chavez but you weren’t paying enough attention when he offered something that was too good to be true, were you? Now a large proportion of you are on your way to the US. On foot.

Let me clarify. There are well-meaning people who vote Green because they think the Greens are for a cleaner environment. I guess in amongst the wealth-redistributing Marxists there may still be one or two who are, but it’s doubtful. So Greens voters (who aren’t Marxists) are just useful idiots. The vast majority of blacks still vote Democrat in the US. This is despite the fact that the inner city areas of most Democrat jurisdictions (like Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia….the list goes on) where a lot of black people live are, as described by POTUS 45, crime-ridden “shitholes”. And they’re getting worse not better but the residents continue to vote for Democrats for some reason lost in the mists of time. If you don’t realise you are being taken for granted, you are a useful idiot (and you’re not paying attention!).

I just re-read the rest of this diatribe and decided it’s too big a topic for a couple of pages on a blog. More like a book or series of books. So if you don’t want to read on, remember, if someone is seeking and wanting to hold absolute power, as far as they are concerned, the ends justify the means. That’s all you need to know.

Let’s go back the riots in the US in 2020. There are city’s (including those mentioned above) across that country that haven’t had conservative local government for decades. You know the ones. They’re defined by defunding the police, cashless bail, not prosecuting shoplifting if the swag is less than $1000 (has anyone seen a looter waiting at a cash-register?), emptying the jails, providing sanctuary from the feds for criminal illegals, skyrocketing homelessness, crime and drug problems etc etc. Now consider the poor bastards whose businesses and livelihoods were and are still being destroyed by the absolutely predictable mayhem caused by these policies. Many of them would have voted for the scum-bags who allowed these things to happen and are doing nothing to stop them happening now. If these victims of the BLM and Antifa riots and the ongoing lawlessness vote these same people back into power at the next election then (1) they are not paying attention and (2) all sympathy evaporates.

The key words in this rant so far are “inexorable creeping”. I mentioned the long march through the institutions which is eating education, the arts, legal systems and bureaucracies from the inside and is even worming its way into sport like bamboo up your fingernails. There are examples across the world illustrating the various stages in the authoritarian progression (or inexorable creep, if you like) from benign (ha!) smiling (smirking, more like) old socialists like the newly minted Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese all the way through to deranged tyrants like Kim Jong Un. Bear with me here.

If you leave these people alone (because you’re not paying attention) eventually the metastasizing is complete. So we have the currently relatively benign governments like the aforementioned Australian Government (although they are already making very disturbing noises). When we take a further step to the left we find leftist governments in Australia like that in Victoria which has implemented elements of the police state and Queensland where stupidity still trumps evil but give them time (and we will because too many people aren’t paying attention). Further along this highway to hell are New Zealand and Canada. If you don’t know what Ardern and Trudeau are getting up to (not with each other, that I’m aware of), then yes, you are not …. you know the rest.

The next stop is various state governments in the US like California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Minnesota and Oregon where BLM and Antifa do as they please with apparent impunity as outlined above. The US Government is proving to be particularly evil as it harasses its political opponents and cows its population with its covid mandates and declarations around domestic terrorism, white supremacy and MAGA voters as well as its joint venture with the media and big-tech. And whilst the US and Iran are ostensibly poles apart, I bet the people who run the Biden administration (not Biden himself, obviously) look lovingly towards Tehran and their complete control over all institutions including deciding who gets to run in their “elections”.

Talking of theocracies like Iran (and Saudi Arabia) some would consider them rightists rather than leftists because they are supposedly religious conservatives or whatever. These are arguments for political scholars. It’s a debatable point but remember the left is about one thing alone – getting power and holding it by whatever means available because the ends justify the means. So the Ayatollahs, the Saudi Royal Family, the US Democrat Party and its subsidiary the Biden administration and socialist political parties everywhere have that in common.

Then we have countries like the old Soviet republics including Ukraine. Yes, Zelenskyy has replaced Paddington Bear (now that he’s left the building with Queen Elizabeth) as everyone’s favourite cuddly toy but he ran a regime (before the war) with all of the trappings of a leftist dictatorship – restricted press freedoms, corruption, jailing of political opponents and banning of opposition political parties. And there are others like Uzbekistan and Belarus.

And Africa’s another book entirely. The word “Zimbabwe” should cover it for now.

Moving on we have the big five – Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, China and North Korea. Whether or not the people in these countries are paying attention is irrelevant because without massive upheaval, they are already lost. The rest of us, however need to observe these places and take notes.

I used to believe the left and the right were heading towards the same destination, it was just the road being taken which was up for debate. How naive. I don’t believe that anymore.

So there are examples everywhere of what can happen if you vote for socialists but more significantly, leave them in power too long. Inevitably it will all go to shit and uncontrollable debt will be the least of your problems.

And if you don’t believe that the “civilized” left believes the ends justify the means, check out this Sam Harris interview.

https://twitter.com/alexandrosM/status/1560061984699064320

RIP PJ – We’ll Miss You Mate

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I didn’t know Patrick Jake O’Rourke but I have been known to steal his middle name for various anonymous activities and correspondence (taps side of nose with index finger) like sending “secret admirer” valentines to the child bride. I haven’t done that yet but planned to a couple of days ago. Procrastination got the better of me. And this is the second time I’ve mentioned him recently as he figured in my most recent Christmas message

Like I said, I didn’t know him personally but after reading and still owning 18 of his books (I think he wrote 19), if we’d had an opportunity to have a drink which is something we have in common, we’d have had plenty to talk about….between drinks. Those books are now dog-eared and torn and the type has been read so many times it’s starting to fade. Unlike novels where once you know the ending there’s no point backtracking, his books overflow with one-liners and tragi-comedic but somehow appropriate expositions on politics and economics and life in general that you just wish you could remember so you could steal them and appear witty and politically erudite all at the same time. Of course there are very few “comedians” or like PJ, literary humourists, capable of this as most of them these days are from the Robert DeNiro “fuck Trump” school of applied hilarity.

He was born in Toledo, Ohio whose other famous resident was Max Klinger. The mashing together of their relative portrayals of the absurd somehow makes sense. PJ died today of lung cancer complications. I suspect cigars and whisky were all that remained of a youth that majored in practical chemistry while studying English Literature. He said this about suicide : “Guns are always the best method for a suicide. They are more stylish looking than single-edged razor blades and natural gas has gotten so expensive. Drugs are too chancy. You might mis-calculate the dosage and just have a good time.”

PJ has many claims to fame. He was editor-in-chief of National Lampoon magazine before the movies began to appear. Later and around the time when Hunter S Thompson was creating mayhem at the same publication, PJ was foreign correspondent for Rolling Stone magazine which mainly involved him reporting back from war zones. That makes about as much sense as being the tobacco correspondent for Men’s Health. He has contributed mirth and scorn to the lexicon ever since those heady days.

I first encountered PJ in 1977. The CB and I were on our way to Tasmania and I needed something to read on the ferry from Melbourne to Devonport. I spied a magazine I had never heard of called National Lampoon and that edition’s theme was Sex. A no-brainer really in an innocent age of no internet and therefore no internet porn. But thanks to the internet you can pull National Lampoon out of archive and see the humungously famous magazine cover – Buy This Magazine or We’ll Kill This Dog. I’ve even provided the link for you.

https://ia800706.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/8/items/NationalLampoon_201812/National-Lampoon.iso

 Most recently he wrote A Cry From the Far Middle which contained the usual quota of quotables, one of which was the rules he taught his kids to live by – keep your hands to your self and mind your own business – or as he calls them, the Clinton rules. Bill, keep your hands to yourself and Hillary, mind your own business.

Even though you’re no longer with us PJ, you’ll be making me laugh for as long as I am still capable of doing it.

Do You Remember When…

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Back on 9/11 (this year) I intended writing one of those “do you remember where you were when….” essays but I forgot so I’m writing it now. I finished the (paying) work I do each week yesterday and the (non-paying) garden work half an hour ago and it’s raining so I thought I’d impose a bit of cancel-culture on procrastination to fill in a few minutes until beer time. Incidentally, that’s the only time you’ll see the words “cancel-culture” here other than as a target of disdain and ridicule.

There are very few events in human history that warrant remembering what you were doing when they occur because most of those memorable moments are the reasons you remember as in, I remember what I was doing the day I got married – I was getting married.

No we’re talking about disconnected events fusing together into an unforgettable nuclear marriage of inconvenience. For me, only three immediately spring to mind.

The first was when Kennedy was assassinated on November 22nd 1963. I was a small boy getting on a ship in Southampton in the UK with my family to travel to Australia. A note was left on each table when we fronted for our first meal onboard advising us of what had happened. As master of ceremonies at one of my brothers’ wedding, also on November 22nd I was able to remind him that an event of earth-shattering infamy happened on that day, some 30 odd years before. Also, Kennedy got shot.

The second was the actual day of 9/11. I was in Seoul, Korea and had been out with a work colleague, our agent and some customers for dinner and drinks and on returning to our hotel our Korean agent received a phone call from his wife, advising him that a plane had flown into a building in New York – no other details. After a suitably shocked exchange of comments we retired to the bar. On returning to my room and turning on the TV, the full horror of the events that day were revealed.

Seoul is a garrison town for the US army and the hotel I was staying in is next door to the imposing Seoul World Trade Centre. It’s not uncommon to see military activity in Seoul both in the air and on the ground at the best of times. At the worst of times it was chaos. Organized chaos I’m sure but you can imagine the traffic when all but one entrance to the very large army base are shut. And there were more than the usual number of choppers in the air, many buzzing around the building next door, not to mention the troops on the ground. Seoul is after all, only about 50km from North Korea.

Incidentally, I’ve been to Korea over 60 times (I used to keep count) and have never been to the DMZ. The Child Bride has been to Korea once and when she went to the DMZ she brought me back a hat.

After doing what we had to do that day we made our way to the airport to catch our flight to Osaka to connect with our Ansett International flight to Brisbane. Ansett was doing it really tough right then and rumours were swirling that they were about to go under. As we flew into Kansai airport, I saw the big bird with the “A” on the tail – relief. After boarding (and getting upgraded to first class – some good things did happen on that trip) I was privy to a conversation between two flight attendants which filled me with, not so much dread considering what had happened the day before, but considerable disquiet. They weren’t sure whether the plane would actually leave Osaka. Fortunately, it did – relief.

Our flight was scheduled to fly from Kansai Airport to Brisbane and then on to Sydney. Bearing in mind that the airline was on its last legs (wings? wheels?), the announcements as we approached Brisbane went like this:

We’ll be landing in Brisbane soon. Please ensure your belongings are stowed….etc

A few minutes later…..

We’ll be landing in Brisbane soon. Would all connecting passengers please deplane and re-board when the announcement is made. We’ll be in Brisbane for approximately one hour.

A few minutes later…..

We’ll be landing in Brisbane soon. Would all connecting passengers deplane and wait for an announcement regarding your onward journey.

A few minutes later…..

This flight will now terminate in Brisbane. The ground staff will advise arrangements for your onward connection to Sydney.

A few minutes later…..

Please be advised that all of the passengers heading to Sydney will have to make your own onward arrangements. We don’t know how we’re getting there either.

The airline had expired while we were travelling between Japan and Australia.

And the third time was only recently so only time will tell whether it sticks with me but I’m betting it will. It was one of those occasions that will only happen once in your life – my father died.

My mother and one of my brothers and I had been to see Dad in the morning and it was not a pretty sight. He was in stage 7 of Alzheimer’s which means an inability to swallow, amongst other things. Mum struggled to even look at the handsome athletic man of her youth now a shriveled shell of a man struggling to breathe. We left after a few minutes and returned to her home about 10 minutes drive away from the nursing home Dad had resided in for the past few years.

We had been there for about twenty minutes when Mum’s phone rang. Now those of you who have frequented nursing homes will know that a lot of the staff are Asian, in this case many were from the Philippines. My Mum still speaks with a distinct Manchester accent but, ironically struggles with other accents. She hates ringing the phone company or the electricity company because she will generally find herself talking to someone in Manila or Bangalore. Anyway she could not understand what the lady who rang was saying. If I hadn’t been there to take the call maybe she still wouldn’t be aware that Dad died just after we left.

I cheated a bit with the third example. It wasn’t a disconnected (from my life) event that imposed  itself on me to the extent that it never leaves but, what can I say other than I won’t forget that day.

I just thought of another. The day Gough Whitlam was sacked as Australia’s Prime Minister on November 11th 1975, I was at university. There was a great rending of garments, wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the communist student union types. My lot, we did what we normally did – went to the pub.

Not Happy!!

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted because it’s a bit of a struggle at the moment. As you dear reader know, I try to lace my missives with the quirky and ridiculous and funny. While the second of these currently applies to world events in spades (am I still allowed to say that?) it’s the allowance of a piece of Seattle to be hived off into a new country type of ridiculous and not the frocks worn to the Oscars type of ridiculous that I’m talking about here. As a consequence I’m mad as hell as my previous post probably indicates although it has to be said the intransigence of the “authorities” has moved on from a mere virus to a threat to Western Civilization. And aren’t the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and the North Koreans loving it.

I’m mad as hell because I cannot imagine a parallel universe where what is happening now around the world and especially in the USA would be tolerated by sane people. A very very small minority of morons is being allowed to dictate terms to the silent majority because left wing politicians (where they have jurisdiction) and a complicit traitorous media are supporting them and promoting them and level-headed law-makers are doing nothing about it. And you want me to kneel because of my white privilege? How about you just fuck off.

Yesterday Victor Davis Hanson said that the wind went out of the #MeToo sails when Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault. When it’s one of your team and that person can’t be jettisoned as collateral damage like Harvey Weinstein was, the hypocrites on the left are as toothless as a sock-puppet. Watching various A through F grade celebrities splutter and bluster when confronted with this inconvenient Biden truth (remind me again of the Kavanaugh fiasco) makes me laugh….with disgust. As a corollary it’s likely that the coalition of thrill-seeking middle-class teenagers, Antifa scum, perpetual student rent-a-crowds, gang members and lazy, good for nothing drug-addled chancers will only be forced to disperse the day after they are given Nancy Pelosi’s address. Then Democrat governors and mayors in cities that have been controlled by the Democrats for many decades will be ordered to re-take control. If Trump hasn’t already done so.

The irony of what is going on across the USA is that the people most affected by the riots in places like Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, St Louis and Washington DC – residents and small business owners, black, brown and white – are the people who regularly and monotonously vote for the clowns who are allowing this to happen. Nobody deserves to be innocently caught up in a self indulgent block-destruction party and see their life’s work go up in flames especially when Hollywood shit-bags are providing funding for the occasionally arrested arsonists, thieves and thugs who have taken your life’s work off you. But if you keep voting for them, my sympathy only stretches so far.

And where do you think all of that money that Hollywood and beneath contempt, virtue signalling corporates are donating is going? Into legal-aid funds? To feed the inhabitants of CHAZ or CHOP or CHUMP or whatever the hell name the “warlord” who runs the joint has dreamt up today? To pay for the removal of garbage? To house the homeless? To buy weapons (and drugs and attendant luxuries) for Antifa? If you chose the last option go to the top of the class (when the school reopens). If you think that’s too harsh tell me who has control of the bank accounts and who their auditor is.

I just hope for their sake, that all of the skipping and jumping, selfie taking, isn’t it all such a spiffing wheeze with all the like, chanting and like, marching and like, swearing (not too loudly), fresh faced (but masked), outer suburban teeny-boppers who just love, like, sticking it to the man as long as they can borrow daddy’s car, aren’t still hanging around after bed-time when patience runs out and the vigilantes arrive or the legally sanctioned shit really hits the fan because their new chums from CHUMP most definitely won’t have their backs – more likely their back-packs.

I Don’t Remember Voting For This?

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Let’s get one thing straight about this virus panic. The people making the decisions and the people enforcing the new “rules” have no skin in the game. Politicians, run-of-the-mill bureaucrats, health bureaucrats and police are not taking pay cuts (okay, there is an occasional example of tokenism) and are not in danger of losing their jobs. In fact their pay and the subsidisation of their jobs comes from the very people who they are destroying with their decisions and enforcement of “rules” which are not real laws because they have not been legislated. More on that later.

It makes my blood boil seeing state premiers parroting the old better safe than sorry clichés like a bunch of boof-head footballers after a game running through the phrases they have been told they are allowed to say (and the only ones they can remember) by the club PR machine while not actually saying anything of value.

People are getting mightily pissed off with the imposition of poorly explained and in some cases, useless restrictions like not being allowed to play golf. Don’t these clowns know how big a golf course is. Maybe they should restrict it to people with a handicap higher than 15 so they’ll know for certain that policing of social distancing rules will be totally unnecessary except at the tees after which balls will be sprayed all over the fairways and beyond.

The people who pay for everything – EVERYTHING – are being smashed through unemployment, business closures, both temporary and permanent and yes, domestic violence and suicide. Some of us in the payer category are willing to take the risk of getting life as we know it back underway, so back off those of you in the payee category. One more week, just to be doubly sure, is another business that is lost forever, another bout of depression and another smack in the mouth.

I repeat, we the ones who are taking all of the economic risks are willing to take the one in a million or three hundred thousand or whatever it is risk of catching a virus that may have no material impact on our health. So what if there’s a spike. We’re paying for the hospital and protective equipment. We’re paying the doctor’s and nurses’ salaries. You, governments all over the world, can print more money and completely fuck our economy and collectively the global economy for generations and put your hand on your heart and say “it was the virus what done it” because you are protected from the consequences.

The vast majority of these closet totalitarians have never run a business and on the left side of politics, most have never even worked in one. So we get these directives such as in stage 1 of the enlightenment, restaurants can allow 10 customers inside. The cost of opening and operating a business like a restaurant can only be covered if a majority (at least) of the seats and tables are occupied. It is cheaper to stay closed, as in the proprietor loses less than if the place opened for a small fraction of its capacity. But that is beyond the ken of our betters.

I’m reminded of the US constitution which begins with the words “We the people”. In more normal times, governments are elected by we the people based on their policies which we the people have approved through the ballot box. They then enact those policies and we the people have no excuses if we don’t like the unintended consequences which invariably occur when the actual policies begin with the words “Wouldn’t it be great if….”. Think of any green policy and that’s exactly what you get – unintended consequences. I should say that’s exactly what you would get if the electorate was collectively stupid enough to vote for those clowns. But never forget, half of the population has above average intelligence and half of the population has below average intelligence so also never forget the quote sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson – “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance”. Unfortunately we sometimes do forget and the current governments in Queensland and Victoria get elected. And the unintended consequences flow like a river.

I’m a bit of a student of American politics (the reference to their constitution may have given that away) and I never cease to be amazed at the standard of politician they elect, in many cases repeatedly. Fortunately the place is big enough to elect a majority of sensible people and the founding fathers inserted enough checks and balances in the constitution to ensure the more mutinous actions of a few (like what is happening now) are stepped on. But that doesn’t stop short term stupidity like electing Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or the governor of New York forcing nursing homes for the elderly to accept Covid-19 positive patients or giving booze and dope to the homeless as is now happening in California, all of which are being cheered on by the deranged main stream media and its cable and Hollywood lickspittles. People on the east coast and the left coast despise the people in flyover country and you can see why the feelings are mutual. And why there are now uprisings by the people against the ludicrous lockdowns in areas where the only virus is what you get on your computer from porn sites.

Speaking of Victoria, their government is the closest we have to a pack of rabid socialist totalitarians so as you can imagine, they are loving this virus. Governments of all stripes (especially the Victorian government) are ordering we the people around and fining us (and worse) if we don’t obey. I don’t remember voting for this shit. The ease with which the population has agreed to be confined to their homes by the imposition of threats must be a thing of wonder to those with dictatorial ambitions. A coup would be a piece of cake.

And I understand the three strikes rule will be implemented in Victoria in a couple of months if there is a second wave of infections. Three social distancing infractions and you will be executed. And all the infected will be banished like lepers to Philip Island, to live out their miserable lives in isolation where they can’t steal the oxygen from and pollute the bloodlines of the chosen ones. Godwin’s Law says that in an argument, whoever compares the other with Hitler first, loses. I wonder if the same applies to eugenics.