Human being?
or
Howard being!

Harold, he's here to help!
Harold Hark
14 June 2002

Believing that Illiberal Party supporters suffer from a profound ignorance of their own humanity (let alone anyone else's), it has been my intention for some time now to help them become aware of their failing.

To this end I wear a button that states in clear red letters on a white background: FREE THE REFUGEES. When they react to it negatively, as they always do, I ask them how they manage to live with the shame of supporting the incarceration of children in concentration camps. Or how they feel at having been taken for a fool by John Howard. Then, if they haven't punched my lights out, I offer to counsel them on methods for extending their one-dimensional natures to that of the three dimensions enjoyed by the rest of us.

The button I wear is distributed by the Refugee Action Committee. I have another which states: FIGHT RACISM. FREE THE REFUGEES. While I prefer this button, it is distributed by the Socialist Worker, whose name is clearly printed at the bottom.

Now, we all know how Mr and Mrs Zombie Australia react to the word Socialism. The poor things have been Pavloved into sleepers of hate at the mere sound or sight of the word. After going regulation rigid, their faces shut down like venetian blinds being drawn in the deepest, darkest heart of the suburbs, and from their mouths escape naught but monosyllabic grunts of state-fed hate.

To a man and a woman, they have succumbed to Illiberal Party propaganda that refugees are queue jumpers and thus illegal, that we have already taken too many, that they are going to take our jobs and molest our children, and anyway, they are not real refugees but cashed-up wealthy folk who just happened to have chosen leaky boats for transport. In short, they should be detained at all costs because, in reality, they are not humans like us.

It's as if their only functions in life are to keep their minds firmly inactive, to consume the products the chump channels tell them to, and to retain John Howard as their Glorious Leader. For only He will protect them from that which they fear most: their ever-lovin' humanity.

I have nothing against the Socialists, but, in terms of usefulness, they have as much chance of getting the public ear as, say, a group called Paedophiles for a Better World. So, to keep confrontations strictly on subject, I always wear the former, FREE THE REFUGEES.

Stuck in the burbs as I am, and in an Illiberal voting one at that, I can always count on a 100 per cent repulsion rate when people behind the desk or counter read the button.

It's phenomenal. It's depressing. It's life in John Howard's Australia.

Let's start at the doctor's office. I'm rarely sick so I grab whoever is available at the nearest bulk biller to have a little wax syringed from a troublesome ear. Ominously, my doctor is man in his fifties named Ratched. (Why would a doctor in his fifties be working at a bulk biller?) I ask him if he is any relation to the nurse in Ken Kesey's "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest." Fitting the profile of a mature age, non-reading conservative, he doesn't know who I'm talking about. But never mind. He probably works here because he wants to, the big time of yachts, cocaine, and long-legged blondes not his cup of tea.

We repair to the syringing room and as he is placing a filthy yellow towel over my shoulder he notices the button. He reads it and drops the momentarily held corner of the towel over the button with as much force as can be mustered from a light piece of cotton.

"Everyone hates that button," I offer, in hopes that he won't remove the wax with a knife. "I'll bet they do," he replies, shooting cold water at great velocity into my ear. Our discussion, an exchange of staccato bursts of mutual dislike, ends when I offer to educate him on the evils of the government that has apparently made a fool of him. He replies by shooting a fire hose of freezing water into my good, wax-free, ear. Out in the lobby I feel dizzy and he kindly shoves me into a chair: "Don't want you falling over," he spits.

(A week later and what little I can hear out of both ears sounds like its coming from the inside of a gourd. Tony "Sluggo" Abbott would no doubt cheer, claiming I got what was coming to me, while Daryl "Fry 'em while I nap" Williams will have already taken a call from the doctor, one of a burgeoning class of hard-up moonlighting ASIO operatives, and be setting aside a choice cell with my name on it, equipped with a 24/7 rotating shift of inquisitorial Ratcheds.)

The following day I indulge in an errands spree at my favourite home away from home, the Barren Valley Shopping Centre.

Needing new batteries for a watch and a calculator, I drop by the Minit-Fix Watch Repair Shop. The bloke on duty rises to greet me. Between workbench and counter his wan smile changes to the carapaced expression of the body snatched. He's seen the button. Our verbal exchange is confined to his grunts and my knife-turning bonhomie. He instructs me to return in ten minutes for the batteries. Leaving, I vow to offer my helpful services...once our business is concluded.

The jolly looking woman at the express lane Safeway till is in her mid-50's, a woman you can just see coddling your toddler on her matronly lap. To my surprise, she turns feral. "I don't see why we should let them in uninvited!" "Maybe because of their desperation?" "Desperation my foot, they're all rich!"

Eating the impulse to invite the ample woman to commit suicide for the sake of human evolution, I offer the following observation: "You poor thing. After all these years of thinking yourself a decent human being, it must hurt to know you've really been on the side of swindling swine."

Scampering away on eggbeater legs, I drop in at the Smokeshop to purchase some pipe cleaners. The pasty-faced, cancer-ridden woman behind the counter looks like a revivified corpse. The glistening runkles of her potato face crack with the force of sundering glaciers as her sunken eyes crawl over the button. (The ensuing sneer will remain for days.) Not a word issues from her parched lips as the transaction takes place. Helpful to the core, I offer: "You probably think you're going to die an agonising death because you smoke too much, but I'll bet it's because you support John Howard. Now, he doesn't care if you live or die, but if you switched your allegiance to the human race, your health might improve." "Jayzus Christ!" she explodes, shards of saliva-saturated tobacco flying in all directions, "where the hell did you come from?"

On to the chemist. The words of Jesus mean nothing to the career Illiberal who advances to help me. On her lapel, she sports the insignia of two little fishes performing mutual oral sex on each other, meant, I believe, to indicate her Christian leanings. She is steaming over the button, as she fetches the packet of Panamax. "Do unto others?" I suggest as a reply to her unvoiced objection. "Don't give me that Socialist tripe. They're just here to take our jobs." (So maybe I should wear the other button after all?) Doing what her ilk does best, working the till to register a sale, she positively bristles when I offer to buy her a latte in the Food Court (she's one of those statuesque, highly made-up Aryan types who appeal to my occasional S-M fantasies) and reacquaint her with the Christianity she has so obviously has misunderstood. The back of her declines the offer.

Speaking of Christianity, there is one other encounter I should mention, which occurred some months ago. After dropping my daughter at school every morning, her dog and I continue on to the newsagent. On the trek, we almost always encounter a frail octogenarian on his way to mass at the nearby Catholic church. Seeing the dog is clearly a highlight for him. He beams as he bends over with effort to stroke the kindly animal's jowls. One morning he even got around to acknowledging me. I was chuffed. "And how are you, today?" he asked. As it was a few days after the November election, I answered: "Not so good, thank you." I pointed to the button. Well! The transformation was gobsmacking. He stood as tall as he could and let loose a barrage of racist hatred the likes of which would have made Jean-Marie Le Pen blush. I was that taken aback all I could do was give him a smart "Heil Howard!" As the dog and I continued on our way, I realised the old duffer represented a significant number of churchgoers these days. The Christians in name only who are ritually killing time at church, but who have lost all contact with the reasons for ever going there in the first place.

The dog and I still see him two or three times a week. Out of the goodness of my heart I decided early on not to offer up my easy plan to spiritual salvation.

The bloke at the watch repair shop has the items ready. Once the transaction is completed (but certainly not before), I say, "I see by your expressionless face that you don't agree with the sentiment of my button." "People who throw their children into the ocean or who sew their lips together are worse than animals." "But John Howard lied about all that. Haven't you heard?" "John Howard is a decent man. If he lied it was to protect our country."

At this point I fervently wished I were Steven Seagal. "How will you live with the shame when your children grow up to discover you were little more than a neo-Nazi?" Little did I realise that he must have been wishing he were Arnold Schwarzenegger, for he leaned over the counter, his burly nose nearly the size of my face: "Soon we'll be burying commos like you. Just wait and see!" "But I'm here to help!" "Go back to the Soviet Union!" he concluded, turning on Arnold's heel.

What could I do? This poor man, and indeed all the Howard supporters surrounding me in that sea of shoppers straight out of George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" are goners. John Howard has bought their souls or coerced them into regressing to the age of apes still gazing idly at bleached bones without a clue as to what to do with them. Sadly, the monolith of evolution has passed this lot by.

On my way out the sliding doors, I resolve nevertheless to continue my quest to revive the souls of these stars in John Howard's horror film. Even though I know they are incapable of revivification.

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