I was inspired this morning to write something about the election, which, until then, I had been reluctant to do, because, well, most of it was obvious and plenty of other great wits had already summed it up, even if I disagree with the Trump derangement analysis.
Karen Vale wrote an article published two days after the fall of Rome (for conservatives) that was brilliant, thoughtful, and insightful. The Teals, she argued, were dead in the water. Seat warmers, serving no practical purpose other than to mouth therapeutic half sentences as she put it and to show the latest fashion that only teal Greenbacks can buy.
She’s right about this and she’s equally right to call out their political redundancy. Nothing more than poseurs, but the harbingers of what may yet be coming from the fairer sex. This was a very quirky Nietzschean vision of the future ‘Ubermensch’ I thought; an interesting reflection of what is yet to come.
She went on to paint the picture of this person and I quote:
She won’t beg for approval. She won’t talk in therapeutic half-sentences or compromise herself into irrelevance.
She will be sharp, eloquent and intellectually dangerous. She will dress with intent. Speak with precision. Laugh when she pleases and silence a room when required. She won’t flatten her femininity to fit into the boy’s club, and she won’t soften her authority to keep other women comfortable.
Was it possible, I thought, that she was channelling Margaret Thatcher or Giorgia Meloni? Perhaps I was just so deflated and depressed at the prospect of another three years of these clowns running around under the Burley Griffin big tent, as Rowan Dean aptly refers to it. Anything sounded better than the ‘Tower of Babel’ confected nonsense coming from these catwalk phoneys. One of them even blamed the death of a prominent footy player on climate change, recently.
Maggie of course was a hero to my generation, while we were battling the early stage cancer of the Liberal Party in the 80s. Yes, the early signs of tumours were everywhere and, for a while, despite it being like the siege of Vienna, we battled back, took control of the agenda and ended up with Howard as Prime Minister; but the chemo was short-lived with bouts of odious infighting and treachery emerging in the post Howard era.
So, we are here and, Don Mclean provided the immediate antidote to any romantic reminiscence, I may have lulled into;
With no time left to start again
So, come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
’Cause fire is the Devil’s only friend
Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan spell
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
Has the music died or are my fists of rage enough to ‘fix bayonets’ and have another crack for the sake of my kids, who are by this stage bereft of any political ideology other than that provided by the mainstream podcasters like Rogan and Petersen.
Surely no one accepts that either party has a role model worth listening to, that is within cooee of the leadership. The Liberals will dish up the Teal wannabe Sussan Ley, Angus Taylor who didn’t do the work, or Andrew Hastie who failed to win the argument about women on the front line despite his SAS credentials. Even Matt Canavan voted in favour of that censorship bill in the Senate.
For what it’s worth, if any of the apparatchiks are reading this, my four kids aged between 20-33 years old, told me that the Liberal party didn’t stand for anything discernible. That’s a terrible indictment of the party generally and the campaign specifically. Who did they support? I hear you asking, well I don’t know exactly but there may have been a Pauline in the name somewhere. Why, did I hear you ask, well maybe because she is the gutsiest politician in Australia on our side.
Pauline Hanson has never tried to be Margaret Thatcher. I remember her maiden speech in September 1996 and was perhaps the only Liberal at the time who thought, fantastic, we have new blood in this fight: but what did Howard and Abbott do, they demonised her. Now, Pauline is still there, a lonely figure on the right, watching the disintegration of the core values of conservative party politics.
She alone has stood guard over the basics and while her career is in the afternoon phase, let’s hope that the new eine zähe Frau, that Karen describes is as good as this one has been. It is true that the right side of politics needs strong women. It is not true that their absence has cost the conservatives power. Moreover, it has more to do with too many weak men, than an absence of tough girls.
Most people, and I use this term in its general sense, follow leadership. Leaders don’t come from quotas. Women are not a commodity subject to the balancing scales of political activity. Having more of anything that is mediocre is just more mediocrity. Look at the Teals, they are all women, venal and hypocritical. Not an original thought for three years.
No, what the right side of politics needs is a core group of people who can lead the battle of ideas, prosecute a case and argue their point. Senator Jacinta Price is smart, practical and tough. She also has that unique ability to make you feel like she cares. Many of the, so called, tough ladies don’t have that ability, just like many of the men make you squirm the moment they open their mouth.
I’ll leave you with some admonitions from the great Zarathustra:
‘There are three metamorphoses of the spirit. The spirit must become a camel, a lion, and finally, a child.’
‘The spirit must bear much, and kneels down like a camel to be loaded and speeds into the desert.’
‘In the loneliest desert, however, the second metamorphosis occurs; here the spirit becomes a lion, who would be master … here he seeks out his last master and wants to fight him … to fight with the great dragon. ‘Thou shalt’ lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered in scales and on every scale shines a gold ‘thou shalt’.’
‘The lion is needed for the creation of freedom and a sacred ‘no’. He must find the illusion and caprice even in the most sacred … the lion is needed for such prey.’
‘What can a child do that a lion cannot? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a first movement. A sacred ‘yes’.’
‘And he who has been lost to the world now conquers his own world.’
Karen, I hope you are listening. Her name may be Zarathustra!
