The horror...Yvonne from Patterson Lakes
Harold Hark
5 June 2003

We don't know the enemy. We assume the enemy, somewhere deep inside, has innate values that correspond to ours.

We are wrong.
John Bennett

Anyone who happened to hear the last ten minutes of Virginia Trioli's ABC Melbourne Drive show the other day (3/6/03), will today be suffering from lack of sleep owing to nightmares.

I've had two howlers, and I know for certain that they will be recurring for the rest of my life.

What caused them? Talkback caller Yvonne from Patterson Lakes.

This dinky di representative from the old fogey demographic that supports John Howard cackled with the voice of a horror film scarecrow as she boasted of how her friends think the world of her because she calls the ABC all the time. Why? "Because I like to talk," she cackled in octaves normally unavailable to the human voice. "I just like to talk. My friends all think I'm crazy!" When asked the question pertaining to that segment of Virginia's talkback: "What do you think of the Prime Minister's decision to stay on," Yvonne from Patterson Lakes cackled again as she gave her approval.

"Why do you think John Howard should remain as Prime Minister?" Virginia then asked.

Yvonne from Patterson Lakes smugly replied, "Because I like him."

"Is that a good reason?"

"I like him (cackle), that's good enough for me." More cackling.

"What about Peter Costello?"

"I don't like him."

"Why"

"I just don't like him." The cackling grew intense.

If Federico Fellini were alive and filming in Australia, he would have hired Yvonne from Patterson Lakes as one of his grotesque extras, perhaps for a film entitled La Stronsa Vita, or I Cologni.

There was something infernal about this talkback caller. Maybe they're all like her. I never listen to chump radio, so I never hear the scum that so influence our government. But Yvonne from Patterson Lakes seemed to sum up John Howard supporters everywhere. Medicated by booze or silent majority approved drugs, with appraisals of worth based on nothing much at all other than basic primate hatreds or fawning crushes. No interest in understanding Howard's base motives or willingness to face the disastrous consequences of his actions.

We've all met people like Yvonne from Patterson Lakes. Catch them unawares and they will agree that education is a good thing, especially for all. That medical care should be available for all regardless of financial status. That the fair go is the best thing about Australia. But in the same breath they will fall over themselves with praise for John Howard. Confront them with the fact that he represents the opposite of the social mores, the values, they just agreed were important, and they clam up and walk away.

People like Yvonne from Patterson Lakes are fragmented, larval individuals, whose brains have little more substance than a pork roast. They are the mindless victims of reactionary incubi. Perhaps they are sociopaths like the leader they so dearly love.

Whatever, they represent entry-level humans, the masses that dictators and demagogues feed on like vampires. They are as alien as clumps of sod to the grace and intelligence of a humanity blessed with a brain capable of transcendence. As such, they are reminders that the rest of us have a duty to use our brains, to think clearly and above all to listen to our hearts. I may be a first class stronso, but I'm aware of it. They know absolutely nothing of what it is to be a human being, however imperfect. They are like a different species, or like the pets we have in our homes. We have a duty, therefore, not to hate them but to pity them in the true sense of the word, and to somehow remind them that they are more than fodder. It is our duty to nourish these unformed souls throughout their meaningless lives. This is not elitism, it is reality. The true elitism is with the cynical manipulators who capture their infantile adulation, and afterwards throw them away as if they were bits of rubbish. I am admitting to a burden here that I wish was not mine and which I mostly try to relinquish. I don't want to be "my brother's keeper", especially when I have a tendency to despise him or her. But I am letting the human race down when I shrug off this burden. For when the likes of Yvonne from Patterson Lakes and the rulers who have eaten her soul -- John Howard and George W. Bush -- are in the ascendancy, chaos and savagery are the result.

Just look at the world today.

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