The Money Shot

It had to happen.

It started with the campaign to “stop the boats” and the deliberately deceptive and inflammatory labelling of asylum seekers as “illegal arrivals”.

They’ve always been known for perniciousness toward the vulnerable and a willingness to put polls ahead of people.

It continued with a mind-bogglingly stupid NBN policy, aggressively articulated and resolutely defended in the face of reason.

They’ve always been known for irrational short-termist policy that masquerades as the “economically sensible” way forward.

Bit-by-bit, in some kind of revolting striptease, the prospective Abbott Liberal Government have revealed themselves through these examples and more.  Beneath the tassles, the sequins and the plastic boots, we find the withered remains of a traditional conservative ideology – hateful and demented.  Then, over the weekend, the Coalition dropped its final modesty to the floor to show the world a stunning arrogance and born-to-rule mentality.

Attacks on democracy in Australia generally come small – little compromises on principle and practice.  This a land of skirmishes not revolution.  But often those attacks are packaged in a form that sees them embraced, where they should be reviled.  This is a land of practicalities and comforts, not aesthetics.

In this context, the announcement by Liberal justice spokesperson, Michael Keenan, that, if elected, an Abbott Government would direct the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) to cease its investigations into crime and drugs in sport is one of those significant insignificant statements.  On the surface, it may seem a small and isolated issue – indeed, many Australians might agree that the ACC should be focussing on what Keenan calls “serious crime” rather than endangering their precious weekend entertainment and its phoney veil of fairness.  At its core, however, there is a vulgar truth: here we have a political party attempting to halt a criminal investigation.  For let’s be clear here, the ACC report was not just about half-witted athletes injecting themselves with half-baked substances, it was about the involvement of organised crime in sport – from doping to match fixing.  Seemingly the Liberal Party does not consider drug trafficking and fraud “serious crime”.  We always knew that the Liberals were the party for business and unrestrained capitalism, but this might be taking things a little too far!

The reality, of course, is that the Coalition is not really endorsing such behaviours – not explicitly, at least.  This is just another case of callous poll-driven conservative policy: Australians want to believe in the myth that our sportspeople are “clean” and gracious.  Conservative politics is all about preserving myths, so it is perhaps unsurprising that the Abbott-led Opposition would pursue this track and, in doing so, endear the Coalition to the “Aussie battlers” who just want to watch their teams run around on the weekend, with their wilful suspension of disbelief intact.  Or, at least, that no doubt is the theory.

What is surprising and disturbing is that the Coalition would sell out its integrity over such a peripheral issue.  It’s hard to imagine that “drugs in sport” would be an election issue.  Yet, we see a political party greatly over-stepping the mark and compromising the principle that criminal investigations must proceed without political interference, all the for the sake of scoring points in a bogus class war.

Indeed, not only is the Coalition’s position the ACC “Organised Crime and Drugs in Sport” investigation dangerously unprincipled, it may run counter to the ACC Act (2002) which vests the power to “determine national criminal intelligence priorities, provide strategic direction to the ACC and to determine the priorities of the ACC” in the Board of the ACC.  One can imagine that this was a deliberate and appropriate separation of powers put in place by the government of the time (the Howard Liberal Government) to avoid the carcinogenic touch of politics in the activities of our premier national crime-fighting body.

That the Coalition would even think that it could or should influence the actions of the ACC just speaks to an arrogance that knows no moral bounds.  The striptease is complete and the Abbott “alternative” government is laid bare: it cares not for people, it cares not for the future and it cares not for the rules.  Barring a miraculous turn around in the polls, Australia is headed for a government without conscience. A government that, even in opposition, has boldly, and without blushing, announced its intention to chip away at fundamental democratic principles. A government that through the example it sets will surely draw out the worst in its citizens ... [fades to static]

The Human Trinity

In the past few days, both New Zealand and France have introduced laws allowing marriage equality.  That it is necessary to pass such laws seems remarkable in itself.  Surely, our starting point in all things should be equality – a position that should only be altered where there is genuine justification.  In this light, it is either astonishingly naive or disgraceful disingenuous for Prime Minister Julia Gillard to suggest that she doesn’t want to impose her views on people on this matter, but she will vote against marriage equality on the floor of parliament.  To take away equality is to impose a view.

This brings us to the point of what it is that “justifies” inequality with regards marriage.  The silent spring in this debate is religion.  While many of our political leaders may skirt around the issue, the underlying premise that marriage is a bond between a man and a woman stems from the 2,000 year old writings of Palestinian goat herders.  In a previous post I commented that the protections for religion or any other ideology or way of life should not exceed the protections from them.  So why should religion be granted such primacy in public policy and debate?

Guest commentator, Kosmos Samaras, provides us with his views on religion, its relevance in modern society and the myth that religious spirituality is somehow more compassionate than atheism.

 At least you can get a nice view of the stonings from up here...

Some of my first memories of religion are my mother’s stories of saints and how they kept a watchful eye over us: protectors, god’s servants.

I conjured up images in my mind of giants in the sky, floating up there with their super powers, ready to come to our rescue whenever danger was near. My five year old mind did not struggle to visualize such super beings, given I was already a firm believer that Superman was actually real, that Santa did eat at our kitchen table on Christmas Eve and the devil did sometimes try to hide under my bed.

Looking back, it does seem that the child mind was very easy to please, and accepting of all things supernatural.

I used to think that I had “one over” on the devil under my bed when I went to sleep with a crucifix, firmly clutched in my hand, as I hid under the doona. Little did I know that I was clutching an instrument of death on par with the guillotine. For those of you who don’t get into the habit of studying the tools of executioners; the crucifix was the Romans' favourite method of execution. At times, thousands would be strung up on these morbid constructions, a truly nasty way to go. A very Christian doctor goes into some detail here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC9krDwjfZE

I’m sure the devil under my bed may have been chuckling to itself, as I clutched a symbol that exterminated thousands of human beings over many centuries. Hardly the halo I was looking for, but, then again, a five year old should not know better.

As the years rolled by, and life and its full reality exposed me to more and more of the human experience, these super heroes suddenly were not so super. Sitting at home as a young teenager I was watching a documentary on the Jewish holocaust, from memory it was on SBS.  It was one of those classic mega-documentaries, running over many nights and containing many interviews with survivors relating their nightmarish stories. As I sat there, looking at images of thousands of cadavers being bulldozed into massive pits, I turned to my mother and asked why god/Jesus and his saints allowed this to happen. The explanation was on par with: “god works in mysterious ways”. I’m sure my mother was simply trying to bat away such difficult questions, given her real belief that human beings are responsible for all their own deeds.

But it was my next questions, which remained unanswered that set me on the path to atheism. It went something like this. So who was told that god/Jesus works in mysterious ways? Why do billions of people believe in another god? Why is their god or their beliefs less real, less mysterious than ours? Where is the archaeological evidence that proves our god is more real, more mysterious than my Turkish friends' god?

As a child, the search for rational and logical answers was not needed. After all, I was still looking for the man in moon and the Easter bunny in the bushes, and listening for the big fella on Christmas Eve. That’s ok and, in fact, it’s extremely important that children are allowed to process their new world through the prism of fantasy, fairy tales and mythical worlds. It allows them to over time understand the real world and, for the most part, its ugly nastiness in small steps. Physiologically and psychologically it’s good.

But as the years rolled on, I looked for facts and evidence. My predicament became more entrenched as I slowly acquired a passion for history. That passion for me has now become a door to the true human condition. History does not only teach you about events, places and famous people, but more importantly it reads to you the true story of human beings.

For example, it’s not difficult to work out why ancient people, almost universally, had some form of religious belief. The ancient mind had no real science at its disposal to explain even the simplest elements around them. Even water was explained away as a mystery, cloaked by a god. Neptune, I’m sure, was an easy substitute for the good old molecular heresy of “H2O”.

The world back then was flat and ended somewhere in the vast ocean – where giant monsters lurked, waiting for stray sailors who ventured too close to the edge of the world. The moon was not some planetary object, orbiting and dancing with the earth’s gravitational pull, no it was a god. Thousands of years would pass by before humans would kill off the moon god by landing on it, planting a flag and televising it to the world.

Like the modern child, ancient people had no capacity to use other forms of information to explain away the unknown. Diseases were the work of the devil; famine was met by hunting down those nasty women in the village, otherwise known as witches, and killing them for casting a spell on this year’s crop. Sadly thousands of women met their end at the hands of men wielding a knife in one hand and a bible in the other. We now know that failed crops may have had something to do with drought, lack of soil rotation or infestation.

The modern adult no longer has to hunt down single women in the street to explain away bad tidings. They no longer need to search for the hotline to the church to order an express exorcism for a loved one who obviously is suffering depression. Natural disasters are just that, the workings of nature and not some massive hand of god pushing half a mountain of snow over the lives of thousands of people in South America.

But this is all the beauty of growing up. You go from using the child-like mind to make sense of the world around you to using a progressive method of interpreting life based on logic, reason and science.  Humans have always tried to make sense of the world and today we have far greater tools available to us as a species and as individuals than ever before – tools of logic, reason and science.

As an atheist, however, I tend to not look upon religious adults as ignorant, but rather as people still harbouring their inner child and refusing to let go of the comforting and nurturing embrace of the afterlife and a protector god who, like our mother or father, watches over us, even when we are elderly and in our twilight years. Its equivalent to the complete security most humans would have felt when embraced by their mother as an infant, something most struggle to free themselves from all their lives. Do you remember that embrace? Most do and continue to look for its comfort in the many human constructs that take place in oddly shaped buildings on any given Sunday, Saturday or any other special religious day and even in their daily prayers.  

But if you can bravely leap from such easy comforts, you can look upon this life with eyes wide open to see and adore its glorious complexities, its forms and its sensitivities. Life becomes extremely precious, where it begins and ends. Freedom becomes a virtue, where it nurtures life and improves the human condition for all.  This then becomes the passion of the atheist: the trinity of life, freedom and equality ... [fades to static]

Under The Gun

Like many of us, I’ve spent the past few days horrified and, yet, transfixed by the footage of the Boston bombings. Saddened. Sickened. Absorbed by the tragedy.  And as each day passes and none of the usual suspects claim responsibility, we are drawn inexorably toward the conclusion that this was the act of some lone “home-grown” lunatic or, at least, an isolated coalition of the deranged.  Another product of a society with some sickness at its core that withers humanity and, in its place, allows the weeds of malevolence to grow.  A society that claims to live under grace but, in reality, lives under the gun.  While the United States spends its time prosecuting the case against the violence of other nations and cultures, it has lost sight of the deformities in its own reflection: the cruel affliction of violence twisted in on itself.

America, when will you be angelic?

Consider these statistics on gun violence in the US from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence:

·         there are around 30,000 deaths each year from gun violence;

·         around 1 in 3 gun deaths are homicides, giving 33 firearm homicides every single day;

·         38% of all gun casualties are children and young adults;

·         gun homicide is the leading cause of death for African American men and women aged 1-44 years;

·         from 1982 to 2012, there were 61 mass murders in the US across 30 states – an average of three per year; and

·         these mass murders are getting worse – the five worst mass murders on record have occurred in the last five years.

In the face of these numbers and their human costs, the US Senate rejected seemingly moderate gun reforms aimed at keeping weapons designed for no other purpose than to kill other human beings out of the hands of those who might seek to apply this purpose.  While the US does have broader cultural issues around guns and violence that it must address, the rejection of these gun reforms by the Senate is a very specific failure of morality.  It is a failure of the morality of conservative politics.  These reforms were voted down by Republicans – seemingly for political expedience and gamesmanship – despite the overwhelming support of the American public. They were voted down on a hollow justification of “individual rights”, by the self-same people who oppose marriage equality and sustain government intervention in the relationship between consenting adults. If, as is reported, some Republican Senators describe this as a victory, it is only a victory for cowardice and hypocrisy over humanity.  A victory for the moral terrorism of machine politics. 

America, when will you be worthy of your best hearts and minds, instead of pandering to the dystopian prayers of your worst?

It is staggering that this violence exists, let alone – for all practical purposes – it being government sanctioned, in a comparatively wealthy and sophisticated society.  This is not happening in some anarchic, war-torn, poor and emergent republic.  This is happening in the so-called “great republic”.  This is happening in a nation that continues to dictate morality to the world.  It begs the question: why do we listen?  How does the US maintain any influence and authority on the world stage? How does a nation so riddled through with hypocrisy and eaten away by inequality find the strength to stand on that stage and carry the audience away in a wilful suspension of disbelief?  Of course, the answer is obvious: they’ve got the guns.  Violence and fear are America’s damnation and its salvation.  Violence and fear destroy the soul of the nation, but also sustain its glistening, star-spangled facade.  The choice has been made.  America’s future is now slung in the holster upon its hip ... [fades to static]

Maggie's Farm

So many column inches in so many places have been written about Margaret Thatcher over the past week that it feels almost redundant to add further to the topic.  Like so many, I have my own experiences of Thatcher’s Britain and the desiccated and broken lives blown out the exhaust pipes of its engines.  But these stories add little more to what we’ve heard and read already, other than to further confirm the bitter legacy of power untempered with humanity.  Besides, it would be tough to top comedian Russell Brand’s remarkable piece that appeared in The Guardian: I Always Felt Sorry for her Children.

Rather, at the end of the week that was, perhaps the more interesting question is to now ask what is to be made of the reactions to Thatcher’s death?  To consider the haze made visible by the moonlight, as Conrad might put it.

It would be tempting to conclude that time has caught up with, overtaken and now looks back in disdain at Margaret Thatcher and her legacy.  Certainly, much of the discourse around her death has focussed on the viciousness of her reign and the moral vacuum in which she encased it.  It is easy to become drawn in by the drama, emotion and humanism of this narrative.  But it is not the full picture.

When I was a kid – an oddly politically-conscious lad living in Melbourne’s outer fringe – my understanding of Thatcher’s Britain arrived to me via popular culture: The Young Ones and the other heroes of the alternative comedy movement, The Clash and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole.  Then, in the late 80s, my family moved to England for a year.  Nestled away in the Cotswolds, I can remember being amazed at discovering that a lot of people actually liked Maggie.  How could that be?  How could so many people be so wrong?  Surely, there was only one way to feel about such a tyrannical figure?

 

God, you’d think Devil Woman had never been written!

Even now, this division exists.  For every person rejoicing that the wicked witch is dead, another bemoans the loss of an admired leader.  This is not just a British phenomenon either.  In Australia, we see the hard-faced, hard-haired daughter of Maggie, Julie Bishop, chastising Foreign Minister Bob Carr for daring to challenge the unreality of Thatcher’s noble image by relating a story that underscored her innate racism and the lens of conflict through which she viewed the world.  But Bishop is not alone in seeking to protect the mythology of Thatcher.

Here in lies the paradox: that the reaction to Maggie’s death reveals that Maggie isn’t dead.  The world has not moved on beyond the grasp of Thatcherism and a conservative politics of rampant individualism, of reprisal rather than fairness, of brutish authority rather than stewardship, of division and dollars and the building of economies rather than nations.  We hear the echoes of Thatcher’s voice in those who speak about deploying drones to help “stop the boats”.  We see the flicker of Thatcher’s merciless swinging cane in the cuts to TAFE funding in Victoria.  We feel the chill of Thatcher’s shadow when we hear PM-in-waiting Tony Abbott talk about “Australia Inc.” and “adaptable workplaces”.

No, Thatcher’s passing does not signify anything.  It is just another twist in the writhing evolution of conservative politics, where the skin is shed but the beast remains the same.  To review and debate Thatcher’s legacy as though it were an artefact and unconnected to the conservative politics of today and, equally, to celebrate her passing as some kind of final karmic justice is to focus on the tail of the beast rather than its head.  And that just seems a good way to get bit ... [fades to static]

It's Not You, It's Me

Easter is a time rich in mythology.  This is perhaps why the Fairfax media chose to run this fairytale by chief political correspondent, Mark Kennedy, over the weekend: Simply Put, Gillard is Indestructible. In it, Kennedy argues that Labor’s best shot at the next Federal Election is to play up Prime Minister Gillard’s “toughness” ... seemingly because, well, it works in America.  He humbly writes:

“Strength in leadership is not a preoccupation unique to the great republic, however ... if Labor strategists are not thinking about strength and toughness right now, they should be.”

It’s a remarkable piece in that it masquerades as analysis when in fact it’s based on two myths shakier than a toddler yipped up on an Easter Egg chocolate rush.

The first myth is that Gillard is actually a “tough” leader at all.  On this issue, I won’t comment further here as it has already been beautifully dissected and debunked by Michael Koziol, writing for The Spectator, in his piece: How Does Julia Sleep?  Koziol writes:

“‘Tough’ might be an appropriate descriptor of Gillard the political operator, but it would be the wrong one to characterise her leadership. A tough leader, I believe, would not have capitulated to Tony Abbott and forced Kevin Rudd to dump the Emissions Trading Scheme. A tough leader would not have surrendered to the big miners and renegotiated the mining tax into insignificance, breaking the budget in the process. A tough leader would prosecute the case for Labor’s compassionate stance on asylum seekers, rather than racing the Coalition to the bottom of the scrapheap. A tough leader would stand up to the unions instead of abiding loyally on every question, from 457 visas to gay marriage.”

The second myth at the heart of Kennedy’s fantasy is that “toughness” exists as some kind of universal virtue for a political leader.  That it is part of the fanciful (and engendered) “great leader” archetype and a panacea to other failings.  The reality is that there is no default quality or style for a political leader.  What matters is not the characteristics of the leader per se, but how their qualities, style or persona speak to the electorate at a particular time and place.  It is how these qualities make us feel about ourselves – our attitudes, our futures, our pasts and our place in the world – that really matters.  Our political leaders forget at their peril that it isn’t who they want to be, but what we want and need from them that determines their success.

 

“Toughness” plays out in the United States as a consistently valued characteristic in its leaders because much of American culture is based in an entrenched narrative of persecution.  From the Pilgrims to today, it has been the US vs The World – a nation that grew up fast in a nursery of conflict and paranoia.  This is why intelligent people in the US will talk, straight-faced, about the right to bear arms.  This why US foreign policy at its core is little more than “to re-make the rest of the world in our image”, through fair means and foul.  This is why the US leads the way in UFO sightings and conspiracy nuts.  In this environment, “toughness” in a leader brings comfort – it says, “Read my lips, your fears are validated but you are protected”.

Take me to your leader.

Australian culture does not exist on an entrenched narrative of persecution or, indeed, on any such singular theme.  We are a nation too immature, too multi-faceted and too lucky to be defined consistently over time by a single narrative.  Ours is an evolving cultural story that changes and grows like a developing child.  At any given time, one narrative may dominate the mainstream, but our history shows that such a narrative will be transitory.  We have been characterised at different times by narratives of dependency and, equally, of defiance, of generosity and, too often, of fear.

More recently, our culture was perhaps best seen through a prevailing narrative of guilt.  We achieved a level of sophistication as a nation to allow self-reflection.  We recognised that we were very much the lucky country and our luck had been built on exploitation.  Depending on our world views, this recognition was internalised or felt to be (unfairly) thrust upon us.

Former PM, John Howard, read this narrative and exploited it to his great success.  He was no inspiring or charismatic leader, nonetheless he made us feel better about ourselves: we felt better about being self-centred, better about being “a little bit” racist, better about prizing material gains and better about being unrepentant for our past.  Howard placed his hand upon our furrowed brows and absolved us – this was his genius and his crime, and both were greatly rewarded.

Through this lens, it can be argued that Gillard’s great failing has simply been a failure to understand what the electorate needs from its leader now ... a blindness to the prevailing cultural narrative and the corresponding relief she needs to provide.  Hence, we see this churning identity, as she casts about in the dark trying on personas ... but nothing connects.

This, in part, may be due the sense that the prevailing narrative is shifting again.  Guilt is giving way to gratification and even fear.  But we are in the process of change.  There is flux.  At this precise moment, we are a nation of uncertainty.  Thus, what the electorate wants in its leader is stability – not survivability and crisis.  On that score, Gillard is mortally wounded and playing the “indestructible” card would just bring attention to the instability that enshrouds her leadership – both in a political and identity sense.  More importantly though, it again puts the focus on the wrong place: Julia’s story, rather than ours.  Sorry, Julia, we’re voting for us, not for you ... [fades to static]