How No Can You Go?

The good, the bad and the clotty.

Dear Reader,

I am pleased to report I’ve received lots of pleasant feedback about my musings. More than one person has relayed they’ve read my pieces out loud to family (c-bombs omitted) and shared them. I’m quite stoked with the metrics and I wish to thank those who have been effusive with their praise. I was doing my food shopping Monday and a woman stopped me to say how much she enjoyed reading these missives (yes, a woman!).

I enjoy writing and it’s something I’m gaining more confidence with. In fact, as the walls of censorship close in and the Darren’s capitulate to Karen’s in comedy clubs around the country, this may be the only place I can share my thoughts. I’ve written a lot over the past 3 years, most of which I am too embarrassed to publish and the pieces I really like, I’m saving.

Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy these meanderings. Or they irritate you.

The Troller Coaster

The last two weeks of the campaign are upon us, which means the crazy is only going to get crazier. Watching on though, one cannot help but wonder…. Who on earth is doing the marketing for the Yes campaign? Surely, this is the last time anyone engages that coterie of searing intellects. If he was alive, Edward Bernays would be laughing his head off. “Manufacturing Consent? More like Manufacturing Resent amirite?!”

At this rate, the PR firm in charge of the campaign would struggle selling heroin to Nick Cave in the 90’s. The strategy of celebrity endorsements isn’t working. What should be a simple message to convey has been complicated by fumbling, bumbling and incompetence. Not since Kevin Rudd’s mining tax, the NBN, housing policy or Mr Garrison’s “Fancy New Vagina” has anything been butchered so badly.

The Male Gaze

A couple of weeks ago I wrote, “In my view, the biggest enemies of the Yes campaign are the white progressives, or the “White Saviour Industrial Complex.” They have a strong 5th booster energy about them”. Then, as if the heavens sent celestial confirmation of my assertion, days later this image appears from a Yes rally. Now imagine for a second, you’re a serious person, attending a Yes event, with your daughter and this bloke walks by.

Your perspicacious 8 year old sees this masked, muffin top muppet and asks, “Daddy, why is that man wearing a leather mask, doggy collar and shirt that doesn’t cover his belly to a rally about the referendum?” You scramble for an answer that doesn’t sound homophobic, intolerant or in anyway bigoted. You’re concerned she may repeat your clumsy answer in front of a school mum, who may see it as confirmation of your fascist sympathies she suspected since discovering you attended Dave Chappelle. But you’re also trying to avoid using a word like fetish, BDSM or pup play, lest it open a further line of unwanted questioning and she Googles it on her iPad to end up watching something wholly inappropriate like Disney, Netflix or ABC Comedy.

It’s a path beset by landmines. You think quickly and tip toe around the bad words, saying something simple, yet effective… “Haven’t they taught you this at school?”

“Pup play” as its defined by the website I looked at, is someone who is “eager to please and enjoys being told what to do, both in and out of the bedroom. In pup play, participants are challenged to act out canine behaviours in a sexual or BDSM setting.” I don’t want to kink shame anyone, (except people into feet; you are depraved, sick individuals) but I will never understand how anyone could find acting out canine behaviours in anyway sexual.

But whatever floats your boat. Part of me admires the bravery, which is not to say I think he’s a good boy for this display. Quite the contrary. However, “eager to please and enjoys being told what to do”….. When it comes to the politics of our recent past, is there a more perfect description of the Yes adherents or modern progressives generally? Conditioned in a way that Pavlov would marvel at in a culture with Stockholm Syndrome. ‘Fuck me, I’ll do what you tell me. Govern me harder Daddy.’

And then, 10 paragraphs into could the whole thing be anymore absurd and chill, he gives you this clip:

I published this on my Instagram last week. Now I have nothing against drag queens. I’m old enough to remember when they were cool, funny and reliable sources of disco biscuits. But this…. well, lets just say not only is this not cool, it is not helpful. It is however, funny albeit for the wrong reasons. Upon seeing the video, a fellow traveller from the “far-right” commented:

“So much respect for Indigenous culture going on here. It is unbelievable. If there’s one thing I have learned after spending 20 years going on country to Aboriginal communities, is that their cultures are deeply centred around patriarchal and matriarchal roles. Nothing could be more offensive to those cultures than ‘gender fluidity’. What a mess”.

I’m still scratching my head trying to work out what relevance gay kinks and terribly dressed drag queens who can’t sing have to the referendum. Is an entire month of taking MDMA dedicated to celebrating their existence and identity insufficient? It is funny though, as it’s an accurate reflection of the allotted cultural space in this country for those oppressed by history. It goes ANZAC Day, Sorry Day, NAIDOC Week and Pride Month.

Not every issue has a “queer” dimension and not every space needs to have queer representation, whatever the word “queer” means nowadays (every time I say that word in my head, it’s in the voice of William F. Buckley). A referendum about Indigenous recognition is one such issue and many Australians are simply homo-fatigued. Next thing you know, the alphabet people will be asking for their own advisory body for issues which specifically affect them. Oh wait, that already happened. “I’m a trans woman and when I go on country, I demand to be initiated into women’s tribal law!”

The leaders of the Yes campaign must be pulling their fucking hair out watching how this is unfolding. And surely, there are some in the campaign who can read the room? I struggle to believe they could all be so tone deaf, but then again, not much would surprise me at this station in history.

In the final fortnight of the campaign, I’m excited to see who are the next celebrities to come out in support, proclaiming on their socials, they’re voting yes. Last week, former PM Malcolm Fraser’s granddaughter came out to say that had he been alive, he would have voted yes and that “he would have found ‘if you don’t know vote no’ abhorrent.” This cute contribution omits her grandfather isn’t someone you would consult about the Constitution given his role in the 1975 CIA coup Whitlam Dismissal. While she has this insight into a dead man’s perspective, I am curious to know what Malcolm would have thought about the war in Ukraine and whether or not it strengthened the arguments in his book Dangerous Allies (what a fucking irony that is).

NRL Panthers star Nathan Cleary posted on social media hours after the grand final win, a video in support of Yes. Correspondingly, in the AFL GF, the real national sport, Indigenous AFL star Bobby Hill lit up the MCG on Saturday winning the Norm Smith Medal. He hasn’t said anything, but one wonders how much pressure will be put on him and the AFL in the coming fortnight.

Picture Me Wolin

While many adherents on both sides are yucky, the Yes side has other allies whose support fuels skepticism and conspiracy to the advantage of the No campaign. Corporate Australia is firmly behind the Voice, with many companies in the top 20 of the ASX publicly supporting it. It’s the who’s who of socially responsible corporate citizens, from Woodside, BHP, Rio, Coles, Telstra, Qantas, ANZ and CBA. A rogues gallery of rapacious corporates whose sins include but are not limited to censoring arts festivals, destroying sacred sites, price gouging Australians, laundering money on an industrial scale all the while making enormous profits.

ANZ Chief Shayne Elliot confirmed in Senate Estimates ANZ has donated to the Yes campaign. However the size of this donation won’t be revealed until after the referendum. It begs the question, are all of those companies throwing in a few bucks? How much money is being thrown at this? And now that corporate Australia has washed itself with woke Holy water, who would be sceptical of their demonstrated, long standing commitment to the public interest? As a general rule, if corporate Australia wants something, it’s no good for the public. Besides, why can’t they just mandate it? Weaponised shame and white guilt isn’t working so why not blackmail with their employment again? Implement a ‘Vote no? No job’ policy.

And then there’s this…

Traditional Aboriginal Clot Painting.

Pfizer… Seriously?! I mean, this is some more South Park type shit. Even before the Wikileaks disclosures and the vaccine, it had a reputation as the most criminal corporation in the world (we know about). The name is synonymous with corruption, fraud and state capture. Call me naive or whatever, but SURELY it cannot be good optics to have your campaign endorsed by Pfizer. I know from my own experience, not all support is good support and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the Uluru Statement from the Heart to get myocarditis.

So this is what I see. A confused, demoralised and fragmented polity, suffering a loss of social capital, with institutions either captured or corroded and nobody to make sense of the mess. The Lucky Country run by second rate people, who long ago stopped sharing the luck and have since set out to sow discord. Constant hyper divisive propaganda misdirecting us from the government’s Soviet style digital censorship regime, while elites loot the economy with impunity and the structure of inverted totalitarianism is consolidated while we watch the sport. Bewildering theatre of the wilderness of mirrors, agenda dysphoria amidst the phantasmagoria¹. Perhaps its not a South Park episode we live in, but rather the documentary series Hypernormalisation.

If the referendum fails, it will be attributed to misinformation and the inherent racism in Australia. Acres of print will be dedicated to fuelling the culture wars by decrying our colonial character, lamenting the lost opportunity to reckon with our history for a moment of national absolution through recognition. A generation of Indigenous people will hear No as a howling rejection of their identity as the First People of this land. Similar to the booing of Adam Goodes, what is said, will not be what is heard. All other factors will be ignored or dismissed, with the divisive and simplistic explanations of racism and disinformation amplified.

Internationally, particularly in Asia, it will make us look terrible. But as a pathetic American vassal who betrayed East Timor and indefinitely detains refugees, its not like we particularly care what our neighbourhood thinks anyway. It’s sad, ugly and painfully true but as Oscar Wilde said, “the truth is never pure and never simple” hence the human propensity to avoid it.

So here I am. Sitting with my bleeding heart and black armband view of history, looking at a sea of blue hair, rednecks, white noise, yellow journalism, grey areas, “dickheads and dinosaurs.” All you can do is laugh. One thing I have to confess, which I feel bad about but will nonetheless disclose… in the immediate aftermath, I will have the popcorn and lube ready for the pearl clutching social media indignation of the white champagne socialists and new age lefties, who did so much the help the No campaign. It makes me laugh. I don’t know if that makes me a horrible person, but let they/them who is without sin cast the first stone.

1. That is the best pun/$30 word combo you will hear anywhere.