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It's All John's Fault! - (Howard S. Emanuel)

Well it must be because it couldn’t possibly be ours...

By Howard S. Emanuel - 5th May 2007 - Back to News

IT'S ALL JOHN'S FAULT!

by Howard S. Emanuel

Well it must be, because it couldn’t possibly be ours...

I can’t help but think that the Australian people are in for a major disappointment in a few years from now when they find that indeed the defeat of the Howard government has not been the act of emancipation that they had hoped for.

The beast has been slain so to speak, a Labor government is in office but still those irritations and worse, not only exist in the community but indeed the sense that there is something seriously wrong in this society, just won't go away.

Of course this scenario is all on the assumption that the November 2007 federal election will result in the defeat of the Howard government and the subsequent election of a Rudd Labor government. What in essence I am saying is that as far as I hear from a great many sections of the community all the ills of this nation are the fault of John Howard and his pesky ministers. You know all those figures we have grown to despise, perhaps even hate, the likes of Tony Abbot, Peter Costello, Amanda Vanstone, and Phillip Ruddock et al. ("but hate is not a good thing you know, very negative human emotion, very destructive, but oh well just this once") .All these people who have done nothing but enslave us to our current values of material gain, self-advancement and it seems increasingly, blindness to suffering and depravation. Those naughty ministers how dare that so fundamentally undermine the commanding ethos of this great nation, you know the one about a "fair go for all".

Apart from anything else makes you wonder doesn’t it just how such an unpopular bunch of folk have managed to have themselves elected to office four times in succession to become the second longest serving government in the nations history.

Pardon my facetiousness and indeed sarcasm but the notion of the Howard government being responsible for all the wrongs in this community is so laughable and so utterly ridiculous that maybe its not even worthy of an honest appraisal. But anyway here goes I shall try none the less.

So okay we have the regressive and highly unpopular Work Choices legislation, the involvement of this nation in a war in Iraq, the sycophancy of our Prime Minister of this nation in his dealings with US President George W Bush, the refugee catastrophe, David Hicks, the sale of Telstra etc etc etc. Sure I agree that these things are frankly reprehensible, that our involvement in the war in Iraq is a moral blunder of mammoth proportions, that the Work Choices legislation is retrograde and takes us back to a less enlightened time and Telstra, well lets sit back and watch how the privatised company manifests its behaviour in the market place. If indications are important we’re in for an interesting time.

Sure I know these things are all dreadful, they are having a profound impact in and on the Australian community; but do you really expect me to believe that all our ills, all our faults, all our blemishes, all our broken relationships for goodness sake are the fault of one John Winston Howard and his band of less than merry ministers. That’s really what you want me to believe? Okay just checking to make sure I’m hearing you right.

So then is Johnny also responsible for the move to a more greedy society, to a society increasingly concerned only with the self, to a society that sits back and watches itself fall into deeper and deeper division as every single day passes, and does nothing. To a society where relationships are broken as quickly as they are made, where the poor have become invisible, where my own rights are paramount, but the right of those around me to live with dignity and hope is all so much hot air and bluster.

Oh sure we all like to write our little letters to the papers and condemn the Howard government for its vulgar policies; then come election day we seem to have a bit of a rethink, we check the bank balance and yeah it looks pretty good, the share portfolio yeah very nice, the housing investments even better, given the housing boom, fuelled by all things, record low interest rates. Can’t this blasted Howard government do anything right.

Well we look at all these embellishments many of us now have and I guess for a moment or two we tussle with our conscience but in the end it’s really no contest at all. You see we’re now so comfortable, so well off that we just can’t bring ourselves to put all this at risk by electing one of those silly socialist Labor governments. I mean look what Gough did, for goodness sakes. Way too much of a social orientation for my liking.

Is anyone looking, I mean can anyone really see me in this polling booth, I mean given all the other crap that’s gone down under Howard, wouldn’t surprise me if they had taken to spying on me as I cast my vote (only wish I was that important that they would bother) Not looking? You’re sure? Oh good then, well to heck with all this silly bloody social justice stuff, to blazes with all the waffle about the environment, I’ll vote for Johnny and add another house to the portfolio, I can buy a few more thousand shares, perhaps even tens of thousands, just think of that; but don’t you tell anyone will you. You know I don’t like John Howard, in fact I despise the man, but gee I never thought I could be so well off.

You see in public I’m one of those modern, enlightened, new age socialist types, concerned with the realisation of the great Australian dream; you remember that one? You know equality and all that stuff. I’ll write my letters of indignation to the papers and stomp all over the pictures of my Prime Minister that appear regularly in the papers, I’ll cast aspersions on the entire government, then I’ll do the most absurd thing you will ever likely see, I’ll vote them back into office so they can continue the carnage. Confused about who I am, no mate not me, I’m just having a bet each way, nothing wrong with that is there?

I’m as appalled as any at the ongoing shenanigans of the Howard government, but do I believe that the Prime Minister and his government are solely to blame for all the ills we face. Of course I don’t, the notion is frankly ludicrous. Sure I understand that public policy is designed to encourage and shape society into a particular model and yes I know that bad public policy can and does have terrible impacts in the community. Sure Work Choices will mean a great struggle for many; sure those impacts will have ramifications in the family unit and in the community. Sure the repugnance of the government’s policies on a number of issues affects the community and in the end demeans us as a peoples.

But if we don’t like all these things as I constantly hear the bleating liberal lefts telling me we don’t, why don’t we do something about it, why don’t we invest some of ever- increasingly precious personal time into changing the situation. Alas sadly it seems that the capacity for the Australian community to act in a proactive way against government policy they dislike has declined dramatically in this nation in the past 20 or 30 years.

Just as an example have a look at how the community of the 1960s and 70s protested against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The protests were many, they were ongoing for the entirety of the war, they were often tough and intimidating and people invested a great deal of their own time and personal resources to rebut a very unpopular government policy.

Compare that to the situation with the Iraq war and one could never say the same level of commitment has existed in regards to ensuring the government of the day either reversed their policy position, or was voted out of office. We had one spectacular flurry of activity at the outbreak of the war when the hordes took to the streets, then nothing but a ghostly silence except of course for those infernal letters in the papers, filled of course with the obligatory

Self-righteous indignation.

It seems that protest means something very different from what it meant all those years ago. It no longer means fight till you win; no, ones involvement is now measured in terms of personal cost. A Sunday protest in the park is fine, but a day off work, some personal financial resources committed, some hardship endured, heavens no, that will affect my lifestyle and my standard of living. I’ll protest and while I’m at it I’ll make sure that I tell all my friends that I did, never mind that we failed to finish the job.

It is the responsibility of all of us to face up to who we are as a nation of peoples and more importantly who we are as individuals and the actions we prosecute. Or are we to blame the Prime Minister even for those.

Each of us makes choices everyday about the way we will address the issues that confront us, each of us how ever inadvertently has a hand in the development and ongoing impact of those issues, therefore it is the responsibility of each individual in the community to change the way we do things, to change the values we have or rather construct the ones we currently don’t have. Each of us must take responsibility for the quality of the human relationships we have, no one else can or should accept this role.

Do I think that the election of Rudd Labor Government will bode well for this country? I will say only that this Labor government will very likely be like many of its predecessors. Socially focused it seems in the policy room, but in office something a little less affluent shall we say. But in the end it seems as though the Senate majority that the Howard government currently has, has not served either the government or the Australian people well and has done little expect let the ideological monster off its leash. This consequence as much as any could well lead to the defeat of the government in November this year.

So be it. What is more troubling to me is just what are we going to do, just whom will we blame for our continuing ills several years into a Labor administration. What is more troubling still, is when, just when will the penny drop, just when will some character come to the fore in this country, character that will allow us to be brutally honest with ourselves and admit to the truth. And that truth is, that as much as we like to indulge in self-aggrandisement and any amount of ego massaging, the fact remains that we are currently a divided and traumatised society, a society that has fundamentally botched the golden opportunity we had been given to be a leading society in the world.

Just whom will we find to blame for this one god only knows, but given our history with these things we will manage something I am sure. Of that I have no doubt, unfortunately.

For Gods sakes we’re all culpable, we have all spent the past decade milking Howard’s booming economy for all it’s worth, growing nice and fat and rich, but at the same time publicly deploring the mans social agenda. I guess whatever one believes in, what ever action one may take there is nothing more disconcerting for any of us than to witness blatant double standards, to witness deceit, to watch those who prosper pretend to despise the benevolent hand that feeds them.

As they say, in the end you are either with us or against us. That is character coming to the fore, courage to make a choice, to make sacrifice to uphold principle. Sadly in Australia these days it seems we have less national character and more duplicity. This of course can only lead to further confusion in regards to just who we are as a nation, just what we are and importantly just how we move forward into the next generations. I mean how do you move forward without a map, without some understanding of just where we currently are.

Not much of a legacy to leave our children, a national agenda of blatant self-interest, a breakdown of social cohesion, rampart division and an increasing focus on all things related to money. In the end you can’t buy quality human relationships, but in the end it is these very relationships that will sustain us long after the economy has turned sour and all the loot has gone.

Wake up Australia you’re dreaming if you think you can blame all this on just one man, you are quite frankly deluding yourself and worse still you’re deceiving yourself and the rest of us at the same time.

It has to stop!!

Regards,

Howard S. Emanuel

www.HowardEmanuel.com

Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: howard-emanuel@hotmail.com

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