Is it time to reconsider a Communist Political agenda for Australia?

Communism in Australia has for a long time had to share the stocks with that old mock of shame of ..: “The love that dare not speak its name”… being held up as almost heinous a crime as sexual predatory behaviour. But why?..after all, it is no more than another political possibility in management of a country.

Consider these latest scandals concerning the Banking / Financial sector..The crimes were of the grubbiest, the most mean in both penny-pinching and spirit of the most elderly and the most vulnerable..and then there is those other associated arms of corporate conglomeracy..: The energy sector, Communications and allied device manufacturers, there is the minerals industry with the coal lobby going flat out trying to both delay the closing down of a dirty industry until the biggest players can offload their stranded assets or to corrupt an already corrupt political group to “keep the home fires burning” and delay much needed climate change legislation…there is the Corp-Agriculture sector with it’s Mega Hedge-fund management takeovers of water licences and working with the banks toward pricing the smaller family farms out of business..there is the mega online retail and marketing business going flat-strap with minimal employment or wages/conditions killing the small and big high-street retailers and putting all those employees out of work.

Then there is casual work contracts, pay-rates, conditions of employment IF and WHEN one gets a half decent or serious job that calls for your presence ON THE JOB for more than one hour a week…No-hour guaranteed employment contracts that keep a person hanging on the thread of a “promise” without commitment and then on a pay-rate that would drive Scrooge McDuck to shame!..and don’t even mention super, sick or holiday pay…and for the love of God DON’T GET PREGNANT!!

Let’s be honest and realistic about this whole capitalist corporation political system..You could put ANY OF THOSE aforementioned corporations up before a Royal Commission and they would be as guilty as the Banks with corruption, bribery, swindling, gouging and any other adjective that describes criminality that it is possible to think of or mention..and then we get people saying that Capitalism is the best you can expect as a social system.

And so we have the cheer squad for capitalist enterprise saying that this is the perfect platform for anyone to get a life and become one of the top earners…the top 1%…; YOU..there in the crowd!…perhaps it is YOUR TURN for the spot on the dias of success!……..Get real..get a life..There’s only one way to the top of the wealth pile if you don’t start with old family money or networks and that is by subterfuge of operating in a speculative, quasi criminal operation…like the above mentioned.

So, having got the “against” out of the way..let’s see what’s the positives for the possibility of a re-run of the communist manifesto.

Here are some examples of the Communist Party Policies for 1960…:

“Monopolies Dominate

Only 104 men from 60 millionaire families in Australia direct 249 companies whose capital is valued on the stock exchange at £2075 million, These monopolies — Coles, Myers, Wool-worths, C.S.R., the banks and insurance companies, the breweries and others — dominate ail spheres of Australian life. Starting on a loan from the Commonwealth Bank, in 10 years General Motors-Holdens has returned to its American owners ; $87 million in profits white increasing its assets by £70 million, Yet this company stands down 8,400 employees, causing them and their families dire distress in order to save a miserable £300,000.

Broken Hill Proprietary, Australia’s most powerful total monopoly, last year made a net profit of £15 million.

Higher Living Standards and Security for the Working People

To combat the growing economic crisis, to increase purchasing power find jobs for the unemployed, the Communist Party calls for:

• Higher wages, a 35-hour working week, equal pay for women and higher rates for young workers.
• Federal and State Government co-operation in stabilisation schemes for each farm industry, to provide a guaranteed price to all working producers covering the cost of production for an amount of produce up to that necessary to provide a living income.
• Reduced taxation on low incomes and higher taxation on the wealthy. Abolition of all forms of indirect taxation or articles of mass consumption.
• Curbs on profiteering monopolies such as legislation to prevent takeovers, strict price controls, capital gains and excess profits tax; reduction of interest rates on hire purchase, housing and farm loans, and nationalisation of the biggest monopolies such as B.H.P., G.M.H. and others. “

…Here…it’s somewhere in this extraordinary index of papers, books and writings …I can’t find the exact docco..:  https://www.marxists.org/history/australia/comintern/sections/australia/pdf-index.htm

HEY!…I would say the above is just the solution we need TODAY!!…and this was way back in 1960???…WTF!!…But there’s more!

“In foreign affairs, Australia has no independent voice. The Menzies government slavishly follows the plans of the American billionaire war planners, and offends and threatens our Asian neighbours.

The 200 million (pounds) spent each year on so-called “defence” enriches the monopolies but contributes very little, if anything, to the security of our nation”…

Need I go on?…

As many of us have lamented so many times on this blog and elsewhere that we are sick in the body of repeating ourselves and nothing happens..well, folks..there you have it..it’s been said since 1960 and before and still the monopolies rule, the corporations get richer and more powerful and the politicians keep marching out from under those same Latin-logo’d porticos and nothing changes..Now why do you reckon that is?..Perhaps those capitalist promoters are right..: THIS is the best we are going to get, so wrap up the banners, take down the barricades and shut-the-f#ck-up!

COMMUNISM?? …HAH!…who needs it?…I mean ; look at China today..where has communism got them!!? Do they bow their heads shamedly to a foreign yoke?..and does Russia?..or even tiny little Cuba?…but then here we are….on our f#ckin’ knees and baring our arse to be kicked down the road by anyone that has got the dosh to buy our politics…

That Australia Day Honours list.

Look..I’m not jealous, BUT..Why are there never any tradies given the gong for “job well done” when it comes to recognition of one’s efforts..Why is a fast runner, a media queen, a diligent scientist or even a bee-keeper held in higher esteem than your local honest tradie…ok, ok…your local tradie?…

Why are accolades of swooning compliments pasted with wincing obsequiousness icing-like over those selected from elite and popular pastimes while the merits of great..even supreme sacrifice to one’s trade skills overlooked for the glittering prizes…Whyyy, I don’t like to boast or to blow my own trumpet on such sensitive issues, but I have distinct recall of certain customers back in my trade-working days who would heap praise upon my carpentry skills when a solution for a particularly tricky bit of construction was called for..

“Joe..you’re a genius!” was more than once heralded upon my skills with saw and mallet..”How did you think of THAT?” was another fulsome acknowledgement toward my capacity and dedication to my trade..AND..not just me!..there were others…I’m sure…I mean..look at Keith the plumber who worked out the re-routing of the black-water septic under the floor of Jack Androlopolous’s granny-flat secretly into the neighbours sewerage pipe..They toasted a retsina or two to THAT idea..or Ron-th’-brickie, when he suggested it would be a better thing if they plastered over his brick-work for appearances sake..a solution avoided before out of mistaken sensitivity….but where were the accolades for THAT self-sacrifice.. those great achievements?..where the glittering prizes?..not for the tradie the PM handshake…the trophy upon the wall..the embossed certificate or that piccy in the paper..Nothing , save a disgruntled phone call of “So where the hell are you?”…or “WHAT!…more materials?”..and it’s back to the blood sweat and tears on the job without the least thanks..

And don’t even mention the cultural contributions gifted to the nation by the tradie…f’rinstance..I suppose many of you have heard the expression used in surfing mythology of “hanging five”..being, of course the practice of hanging five toes over the nose of the surf-board whilst skeeting down the face of a wave…Well..I bet you don’t know where THAT little icon of surfabillia came from…: Tony Simmioni and the fifth-floor concrete pour of the Waymouth St Telephone exchange…Yep!..hard to believe, eh?…but there you go..it happened that Tony Simmioni, the carpenter foreman in charge of the pour there, was standing on a plank on the edge of the concrete pour observing, when the concrete pump hose did a sudden flick, like they do, and knocked the edge of the plank he was standing on and it swung out of a sudden over the edge of the scaffolding and Tony was suspended out over the edge of the building, five floors up, in a crouching position, arms akimbo as he kept his balance and his front left blunstone boot was hanging over the edge of the end of the plank whilst it pivoted and hovered over the abyss…and for just that short moment, before he was swung back to safety, he held that now well-known classic position of the surfer in juxtaposition with the wilds of nature at his back and his trusty surfboard under his feet, a mile-wide smile upon his face and those five toes hanging over the nose of the board…”hangin’ five”..

One of the labourers there at the time..a shortish blond-haired young bloke named “Farrelly”…”Midge” was his nick-name if I recall, was heard to comment upon the sight of Tony Simmioni wobbly-legged hanging over the edge of the plank..

“I reckon I could maybe hang five toes like that upon my “Malibu” surfboard down at Moana …”

Here’s the resulting song!.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgx3p3wlqMc

And so history was born…but did Tony Simmioni get a mention in the song…noooo way..no accolades for the tradie…and another thing..I bet not many of you really know how the discovery of the “X-ray” really happened..but “Smokey” the clumsy, inept electrician could enlighten you…but hey..that’s another story..right now, I gotta go back and listen to ANOTHER boring story of the development of Quantum computer physics or something..

It’s SO unfair!

A Refugee…

This response was posted on The AIMN blog as part of a heated discussion on the board about the status of refugees…: Were they “real” refugees or were they “economic” refugees?…

What is termed;  a refugee?

I come into this conversation late as last night I was doing my best to avoid the study as that is also where the tele is and my better half likes to watch Q&A…and I can’t stand it!….So I came in about where someone was querying evidence of refugee status of the young man involved.

This seems to be the hat-rack that many Australians hang their hat of doubt upon..: Q: “Are they “real” refuges or are they taking advantage of us?”

What is a refugee?…A woman escaping domestic violence is a refugee…A gender challenged individual escaping torment of their family is a refugee…both are sometimes escaping from a life-threatening situation..but they do not have to flee across borders to do it. So why is a refugee from , say ; Pakistan not staying in India or Thailand or Indonesia, where surely their religion can offer them sympathy instead of fleeing to Australia?..

Yes..let us ask why many refugees do not seek “safe harbour” in sympathetic religious nations..

For the sake of brevity, I will use a “demographic’ we are quite familiar with in this country ..the “German” pioneers who came and settled here from the 1850’s…These pioneers were refugees themselves after the Kaiser Wilhelm structured the “German Federation” to include many areas of Eastern Europe into the greater German Borders. There were many eastern peoples who had neither cultural, spiritual or name connections with the German State..and they paid for it and their situation was betrayed by little more than their surname.

Many names we here in Aust’ now are familiar with were refugees from oppression back then..Names like Lehman, Modra, Koch(ie), and many others were Wends or Sorbs of Slavanic extraction, not German…some of these names were changed to disguise their original location identification…umlauts were dropped off, vowels or consonants changed or moved..and one never carried papers that could positively identify oneself if you travelled to the west for work as many pogroms were happening where you could be murdered if you had the wrong name…one case was a relative  who travelled to Gdansk for work in the shipyards and was murdered because his name identified him as eastern German..and a possible Bolshevik..yes, even that was enough to get you killed in those unsettled times… Another migrant from after the war I grew up with had a letter removed from their surname as it could be mistaken for a Jewish surname by the Nazis..In Italy, there are those names that will identify you as coming from a certain region of the country..North, Central or South …the same as in England..and on it goes..

So in reality, in those above mentioned countries that we, as cocooned Aussies consider one and the same are in reality NOT safe harbours, but just more danger…as we identify Kiwis by their dialect, so do other nations identify quite swiftly those dialects as coming from another place..I have a mate, an Italian who grew up here in Oz who travelled to Italy to his home town of his parents near Naples, he went to Rome for a bit of sight-seeing and while there, bought some cherries from a market stall, asking for them in his local dialect..the stall-holder, a Roman, gave him the bag of cherries with the remark : “Here you go sir…cherries…fresh from Naples this morning!”…you see, he had picked his dialect….Even myself on a trip to the Eternal city back in the seventies was shocked at so many beggars and I remarked (in Italian) to an Italian person back at my hotel…: “Where do all these beggars come from!!?”…He grunted and mumbled back ; ”Mostly Australia.”

And as for proof of refugee status..just the act of fleeing from all that is familiar ; family, friends, geography and culture..ease of movement, of slipping on familiar clothing, old shoes for a stroll down the street…Look about your desk there next to your computer…that stub of pencil or pad or paper to casually scribble a note down to remind you of something for later..gone, all the memories ..gone, no past to reflect upon save what you can conjure up in a troubled mind…uncertainty, bad food and health and strangers..all is gone all is enemy…all is a future lost unless one gains that elusive safe harbour and here we are in Australia, a land where we have made even the original occupiers refugees themselves in their own land ..refusing to recognise another in need of a home…

Shame on us….shame on us.

https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/beautiful-dreamer/

 

This Island Earth.

 

This Island Earth.

 

Beauty is absorbed into the ether, like raw energy,

Each unto its own moment does flare and burn.

Each upon age does lose its attracting power.

Such vigor waning , hour upon hour.

She lives, she sees..her breath I breathe,

This Beauty ,

This island ; Earth.

 

This island Earth..

A patience shaped in an eon of years

Mountains, trees..east to west

Desert, seas..around generous girth..

All of life a painful birth..for this island Earth..

Now mute, that soil of ravaged earth,

Speaks a language I no more discern,

Where once I tilled with bare hand..

. . . and DID understand.

Mute ; the soil that gave ME birth,

Speak to me!..my mother silent,

This island ; Earth.

 

This island Earth…

Waiting, waiting, rain softly falls in stacatto’d drop

Rapping, tapping, upon patient crow’s shellacq’d back..

It’s gimlet eye to sprightly espy

From vantage perch on a tree’s barren bough..

Beauty’s last breath;  just another roadkill death.

But for the moment, just a moment..stay still!

For there is purity here in the kill,

While Beauty’s vacant eye adores the open sky..

Between the seconds of decision,

Before crow scavenges its share of flesh,

All is so perfectly plain..and calm,

On this island Earth.

 

On this island ; Earth,

What beast is man with his awful plan

Myself, called to hand deliver death

On Beauty’s last breath .

Lain’ before me in wracked injury,

Smashed bone and eye..body awry,

Limp crawling agony demands such a thing of me.

That I must kill what is yet fearful of death,

Save one wild eye and treasured breath,

That I must kill and kill and kill…what’s left..

What’s left to die on roadside breadth..

For this island ; Earth.

 

This Island Earth..

Lament, fair children, Lament fair child,

Lament for what you will have to abide.

Born to us a gift supreme, sight sublime,

Beauty’s hand to hand in mine,

But now I turn mine eyes askine,

Now in shame and guilt decline

To walk hand in hand with thine.

Whilst fair Beauty and her entourage

Lay dying in irreversible damage.

And ponder I, why ‘tis always encouraged,

That we pluck the prettiest flowers,

But leave the weeds to flourish..

On this island Earth.

 

 

 

A Strange Coincidence.

 

“ It is a strange coincidence that in the same years, in which Labor was creating beyond the Canberra Bubble, a work to last for decades, there was enacted in LNP headquarters one of the most extravagant political farces that was ever produced upon the stage of  Australia’s history.  The usurper “regents of the commonwealth” did not rule, but shut themselves up in the House and sulked in silence.

The former half-deposed government did not rule, but sighed, sometimes in private amidst the confidential circles of the political offices, sometimes in chorus in the senate-house. The portion of the moderate middle-class LNP which had still at heart freedom and order was disgusted with the reign of confusion, but utterly without leaders and counsel it maintained a passive attitude – not merely avoiding all political activity, but keeping aloof, as far as possible, from the political Sodom itself.

The Right-wing Anarchists On the other hand .. the rabble of every sort never had better days, never found a merrier arena.  The number of little great men was legion. Demagogism became quite a trade, which accordingly did not lack its professional insignia — the threadbare mantle of “Pauline’s People”, the shaggy beard, the long streaming hair of the media queens, the deep bass voice of the Queensland con-man; and not seldom it was a trade with golden soil.  For the standing declamations the tried gargles of the theatrical staff of the MSM were an article in much request; Speculators and Businessmen, aspirant working-class and intern-slaves, were the most regular attenders and the loudest criers in the public assemblies; frequently, even when it came to a vote in the House, only a minority of those voting consisted of citizens constitutionally entitled to do so.

“Next time,” it is said in a letter of this period,”we may expect our lackeys to outvote the Retirees-tax.”

The real powers of the day were the compact and cashed-up bands, the battalions of anarchy raised by adventurers of rank out of negative geared lackeys and blackguards.  Their possessors had from the outset been in some cases numbered among the Labor party; but since the departure of the honesty and courage of the fourth estate, “who alone knew how to impress democracy, and alone knew how to manage it”, all discipline had departed from them and every partisan practised politics at their own hand.

Even now, no doubt, these people fought with most pleasure under the banner of freedom; but, strictly speaking, they were neither of democratic nor of anti-democratic views; they inscribed on the — in itself indispensable — banner, as it happened, now the name of “by, with and for the people”, and then hence that of the party or that of a party-chief; Palmer for instance fought or professed to fight in succession for democracy, for the senate, and for Morrison.

The leaders of these bands kept to their colours only so far as they inexorably persecuted their personal enemies–as in the case of Morrison against Shorten and Pauline against Muslims — while their partisan position served them merely as a handle in these personal feuds. We might as well seek to set a charivari ( charivari – a noisy mock serenade performed by a group of people to celebrate a marriage or mock an unpopular person.) to music as to write the history of this political witches’ revel; nor is it of any moment to enumerate all the deeds of character murder, besiegings of political offices, acts of incendiarism and other scenes of violence within the realm of various cities, and to reckon up how often the gamut was traversed from hissing and shouting to spitting on and trampling down opponents, and thence to throwing eggs and the drawing of metaphorical swords.”

 

The above piece is a direct quote from Theodore Mommsen’s chapter 8 fifth book on his “History of Rome” published in 1866, with just some name changes and localising of events … Yet the accuracy and pertinacity of his words ring down through the ages, as does his direct recording of those events that led to civil war and the collapse of the Roman Republic.

What we are witnessing in these times is a turning point similar to that of the end of the Republic of Rome where an accumulation of top-end wealth and power had condensed into the hands of only a few people and corporations and they were using their power and wealth to corrupt the machinery of State.

Australia has reached an age where, like the ages of a young person growing toward maturity, the country must choose a direction knowing in its heart of hearts that it cannot continue down a path of endless partying, boozing and avoiding responsibility toward community, work and family and the needs of a social state … If the realisation of confronting those same corporations and peoples that would steal the wealth of our commonwealth seems too frightening, then we must bend our necks to the yoke and accept the role of slaves to their greed and desire. We must watch helpless as our children become play-things to their material voluptuousness, trapped in a fantasy world of narcissic glitter and bling with no self-respect and even less for their fellow citizens.

It is a treasured maxim that those things most struggled for are the most valued, the same maxim exists for relationships, likewise for communities … I believe it is high time we as a nation grew from the naive carousing youth to a more mature adult and gave greater consideration to who we are, what we are and where we stand in relation to the rest of our world.

That .. or we are valueless as a people and nation.

 

 

The Parable of the Patsy.

Every day I care for three big warmblood horses. Every day I take them out to the paddock or groom them and change their rugs and feed them…I know them well after around twenty years of attending those horses. They can be dangerous things, horses..if you move too sudden around them, if you do something on their “blind-side” or if you treat them harshly…they will remember..and they will repay you when you least expect it!….and when just one rear leg is as big as a person and is all muscle……they can be deadly. Best to know what you are dealing with and act accordingly.

Take the mare for instance..she was my horse when I used to ride…I don’t ride anymore…but she was originally broken in by a man who trained race horses and he broke the horses in with a method of harsh discipline instead of the more favoured to me of;  “conciliatory persuasion”…so she became a handful when I had to take her out after I stopped regular riding. I believe she developed a hatred toward males due to that person’s methodology of horse breaking…I would go to the gate and she’d be there looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth..I’d hook the lead-rope on the halter and then open the gate…..and she’d come barrelling out like it was the Marrabel Rodeo, all bucking and double-barrelling trying to get away…and I’ll give any budding horse handler out there a bit of sage advice for when you get such a horse acting like that…Two things..: Hang in there as close to its front forequarter / front leg as possible and whatever you do…; DON’T LET GO OF THAT LEAD-ROPE!!

I got to thinking about the above analogy when I was responding to some on twitter who complained about me saying that the best use for old LNP ministers was not to give them soft postings in ambassadorships, but to just get rid of the bastards..and as for Howard, we could indeed use HIM by filling his pockets full of sand and use him for a bit of sand-bagging come the next flood! There were those “forgiving” types that saw my lack of sympathy as a cruelty, rather than a condemnation…hence this article..

Let’s get this straight…Many of these old LNP “warhorses” were killers…killers in the exact meaning of the word…Howard was a killer in both a domestic sense with the  policies he put in place concerning the indigenous peoples and with the plight of the refugees he abandoned to their fate, and in the illegal war he conducted in collusion with some allies in the Middle East…and so were some other LNP ministers, those robo-debt collections have resulted in many suicides and death by abandonment, as has the de-funded health system..you can dig around the internet to find statistics and “kill-rates” on the separate insidious actions by these killers…just Google “Democide” for a quick overview of domestic policy deaths.

So now we get many people in this nation so easily willing to “forgive and forget” those guilty parties and even to consider using the “experience gained” by those persons in positions of influence..AGAIN!!…no, no…no forgiving and no forgetting..we don’t need a bunch of comfortably well-off Middle-class “lefty” patsys telling us what ought to be done with these killers..they need to be investigated and brought to trial…It happened under Rudd with his lousy “Church Gate” interviews, his “piety vanity” where he left in place so many LNP appointed sleepers and they screwed him and Gillard AND the rest of us over…and then there were the Murdoch/BCA “moles”; …the “Cardinals” that white-anted both administrations and left after damage done to take up juicy positions in the private sector…we know who were the rats, and we don’t need telling who needs condemnation or contrition.

Malcolm X explained these patsy “killer apologists” well…: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98Jmw5o9ulA

The same is happening today..where we have the patsy placators comfortably sited on zombie blogs, coming along after the bastards have been voted out pleading the case for their “consciousness of kind” equals…”Don’t be too hard on them” they complain..or; “that’s just trolling abuse”..and the best one..: “We got to be better than this.” …. The bastards are killers..KILLERS!.. and the patsys say we gotta be better than this..”show example” is another…yeah!..I’ll show example..give me a horse-whip and ten minutes alone and I’LL show example!

Because there IS a class war going on..it has been going on for many, many decades…Look around you and you can see the damage done with the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the rapine and plunder of our country’s resources and environment…closer to home; the homeless, the long term unemployed..either too old or too unskilled or damaged…THEY are the “political prisoners” of a capitalist agenda…Look to the mortgage belt home owners and the aged..struggling to stay in their homes , working two or three jobs just to make ends meet while the bankers and so many LNP pollies swan around with bulging property portfolios in ostentatious luxury…these mortgagees are the “hostages” that capital trades with to gain political advantage in times of democratic elections…oh there is a class war going on all right, and it is being fought out right under our noses…and if any think it is going to be won without a hard fight, a long fight played out in the political arena, on the streets and here on social media..then they are either too blind, too welded to the centre-right aspirant ideology or too naive to be aware….or they too are just another patsy.

So, no, I don’t want those “House Negroes” coming behind any radical call for investigation and enquiry into the actions of those many traitors in the conservative echelons of our State…after all, if I was to run an enterprise that drove many to suicide or harm because of the actions of my management principles in that enterprise, I’d have to answer for my failure of duty of care…so why do those ministers not?

Let the law do the required action and let the laws punish the guilty parties…..yes, let the law be done AND be SEEEEN to be done..and let the citizen body look to oversee just how efficient the law goes about its required job.

Proverb:

“Look not to the foe’s eyes for hint of remorse, but rather look to disarm the weapons from his hands…..then, he is yours.”

The Argument for Absurdity.

 

There was a reason for the growth, in the middle of the 20^th century for the genre of “Absurd Theatre”. The realisation or belief that many ideals nurtured from a millennia or two of perceived reality no longer served a world reeling from two enormous wars and the systematic mechanisation of the killing machines in those conflicts…against such brutality, one’s life seemed meaningless and neither a binding faith in religion or social fairness mattered one iota!

The “Theatre of the Absurd” rose from the ashes of wasted humankind…it preached, along with a cynicism in the fantasy philosophy of economic fairness and social cohesiveness, in a purpose in life a possibility of confronting ourselves and creating a new consciousness of a belief in a new paradigm of society. The universal destruction throughout Europe and Asia with both wars and the extreme and brutal loss of life affected everyone. There arose in the arts a search to reconstruct meaning and rational in the everyday lives of so many citizens.

Samuel Beckett’s ; “Waiting for Godot” heralded in a new concept of absurdist reality… Tom Stoppard’s later production of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”….is considered another later absurdist play.

These two plays are a good example of how the theatre is the best suited genre to show how people are separated from the reality of their position in society by placing the central characters in a situation of isolation from the “real-world” around them…They then act out a false reality that is, however, true and relevant to their particular immediacy…..So do the two characters in “Godot” debate reasons for the person they await in not turning up, then move on to various subjects pertinent to their state…reality is suspended and an absurd existential world opens up…and we; the audience just watch as the drama unfolds before our eyes.

Such a world of vague uncertainty is what now exists in the political realities of our State. So many varying ideals of religion or philosophy have come kicking and screaming out at us from vested interests or fanatical groups that there appears little room for logic and reason to pull up a chair!

There is a deliberate movement to create such an uncertain political state by the corporate world to make the general voting public untrusting in social ideals that demand a “change of rules” of government priorities from corporate management style of trickle-down economics that rewards the top echelon of wealth to a system of social benefit economics that gives greater priority to social equality in work / care / wealth to lift the lower suffering demographic to a decent standard of living.

Coupled with a fast destructing environment, the realities of life ; work / play seem to have been shanghaied by an extreme fantasy world that only exists within the digital spectrum of the internet and the “smart-phone”. Alongside the somewhat banal entertainments of so many facile self-promotion and product promotions on Instagram and other forms of social media app’s, is the more insidious access to targeted fraud and bullying…or just the good old-fashioned threatening emails!

What we have to ask ourselves is whether we want to continue down this road of cynical disbelief in a capacity to re-create a social system based of fair distribution of sovereign wealth of the nation to many more of the nation through deliberately sculptured policy, or do we want to instead hide underneath a blanket of false reality marketed by the controlling influences of corporate power?

I believe we have to momentarily suspend the cynicism and let be put in place the foundation of a democratic socialism that will change the structure and core of governance. I believe we have to STOP the conversation of “how can we afford to . . .” and start the discussion of “How can we afford to NOT . . . “ .

In a recent article ; “The Tradesmen’s Return”, I proposed that the best managers for governance ought to be taken from that vast pool of skilled people well-experienced in all the machinery of production. Again, I propose that this philosophy be incrementally adopted within the ranks of Labor so that those with appropriate skills AND training AND experience be the ones selected to run for office. There can only be positives in the adoption of this notion and we will surely be spared those grossly incompetent buffoons that are now peppered throughout our Parliament!

Lastly, I would direct your attention to that great absurdist novel ; “Catch 22”….at a particular point where the characters “Orr” and “Yossarian” (much like the two people in Beckett’s “Godot”) seriously discuss in totally surreal terms Orr’s hatred for another officer in the corps..: (From Wikipedia)..

 

“ Orr seems to take offense at Appelby, who is patriotic and a conformist. Appleby is also a renowned table tennis player in the squadron, “who won every game he started until the night Orr got tipsy on gin and juice and smashed open Appleby’s forehead with his paddle after Appleby had smashed back each of Orr’s first five serves. … Pandemonium broke loose.” While Orr is a small man, Appleby is large, strong and athletic, and so is able to get a hold of Orr and almost “smite him dead”. However, Yossarian intervened and “took Orr away from him.” Yossarian fights Appleby instead; this is the first instance in the novel of Yossarian’s protectiveness of Orr. The next day, Orr informs Yossarian that Appleby has “flies in his eyes”:

“Oh, they’re there, all right,” Orr had assured him about the flies in Appleby’s eyes after Yossarian’s fist fight with Appleby in the officers’ club, “although he probably doesn’t even know it. That’s why he can’t see things as they really are.”

“How come he doesn’t know it?’ inquired Yossarian.

“Because he’s got flies in his eyes,” Orr explained with exaggerated patience. “How can he see he’s got flies in his eyes if he’s got flies in his eyes?”

Logical..of course…..but totally absurd….I remember a Ernest Hemmingway bi-line in reporting on the conflict in China in WW2…where Hemingway tells a Chinese general what was the opinion of the British military brass of the Chinese army..to which the Chinese general replies..: “Do you know why the British General wears a monocle?..no?…So he will never have to understand more than what he sees”.

Let us enjoy the absurd as a genre of entertainment, but I believe we ought to step away from such in our real world and seek to re-establish logic and reason in governance.