Forza
Magoosolini

Cometh Philistinian
Harold Hark
12 July 2002

"How is it that Australians have become unthinking servants and courtiers to one of the most fearsome empires known to history?"
Tariq Ali: The Clash of Fundamentalisms

The answer: Because, like Americans, like the people of all nations, Australians are selfish, weak, inattentive and easily led. The majority of human beings are as slow as barnyard animals when it comes to looking after their long term best interests. Short term, no worry, but long term? All they can see is the fodder beneath their snouts.

What separates thriving democracies from poverty-stricken totalitarian regimes is simply leadership. The man who stands up and tells 'em what to do and how to think. (Excepting Margaret Thatcher, rumoured to be a genetic male, women rarely get a leg up. Er...) Democracies tend to produce leaders who think outside their skin; totalitarian regimes never do.

These days even democracies are vomiting up leaders who are no better than the simpleton tyrant Slobodan Milosevic. George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, Silvio Berlusconi and, let's be fair about this, John Howard, are some of the most heinous examples, while Tony Blair, the fundamentalist Christian, is not far behind. His bubbling, boyish enthusiasm tends to cover up his drive to get as much of the spoils of the "war on terror" as he can.

Big Dubbya, the most terrifying joke ever played on this planet of woe (Hitler was no joke), is leading his fellow Umeruhcans and the rest of us foreigners down the tubes faster than the fastest speeding bullet can be manufactured by the Military-Industrial complex that pulls his trigger.

Ariel Sharon is in the grip of not only his own militaristic, bullying behaviour, but an historically reactive hatred of anyone who looks cross-eyed at Jews. Big Dubbya should have drop-kicked Sharon as well as Arafat, but Sharon doesn't belong to the religion that begat the twin tower terrorists. Sharon is thus left free to lead the Middle East down the tubes faster than the fastest missile can be manufactured by the Military-Industrial complex that helps to erect his aging weanie.

As for Arafat, let's hope this weird little obfuscator is not representative of the Palestinian people, even if he is their representative.

If L'il Dubbya (that's our Johnny) wasn't always on the verge of a nap, Australia would likely be as shafted as Italy by now. Besides Big Dubbya, Silvio Berlusconi is certainly a role model for our little fella to look up to.

Silvio should have been buried after the scandals of 1994, which saw his government sacked. But, unlike Kerry Packer, Berlusconi is a politician. He fought back, thanks to his "television dictatorship". Fans of Italian culture and cinema will know the acronym RAI as well as their ABC. But Forza Silvio literally tells the public broadcaster what to do. Sound familiar? Coming soon!

Howard, who is just now warming to grand illusions, has matched Silvio by politicising the public service to his own ends; by turning the parliament into an executive dictatorship currently consisting of Howard, Tony "Sluggo" Abbott and Peter "The Jerk" Costello; and by effectively making the military subservient to Coalition demands. What's left? The ABC and the judiciary, whose equivalents Silvio has already pocketed. Once they go here in Oz, John Howard's conservative dream of a neurasthenic Pleasantville will be complete. Wait, I forgot his agenda to destroy the unions and terrorise dissent.

Who knows, because of a majority of easily hoodwinked rubes and marks, L'il Dubbya may become the greatest tin pot dictator of all time. And Philistinian (as he might then be called) will be ruler of Austruglia and hardly anyone will live here any more and those who do will be just like everyone else, that is, at the evolutionary stage known as "entry-level". What a grand playground for overgrown pre-adolescents this once proud nation will be then!

But I digress.

Regardless of their national origins, all these leaders are beholden to the Gog and Magog of world domination: the Multinationals and that which stimulates their salivary glands: corporate globalisation; and that Military-Industrial complex, itself salivating from arms sales to countries waging terrorism on countries housing their industries. Short-term? The definitive definition.

Margaret Thatcher's memorable reduction of life to dog eat dog: that there is no society, only individuals and families, has won the day. We are part of economies now, where once we lived in societies. In short, business, the grandest of anal-retentive pursuits, has finally predominated over all other human endeavour.

Leading the charge, as Tariq Ali says, is America, "the parochial culture that celebrates the virtues of ignorance, promotes a cult of stupidity and extols the present as a process without an alternative, implying that we all live in a consumerist paradise."

Australia could have been an island (continent) of vision in the sea of vapid conformity that is overtaking the world. But we elected John Howard, our own antithesis to the Enlightenment. What a revoltin' development.

(Based on an article by Tony Parkinson, The Age 6/6/02.)

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