There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.*
The L/NP tree-house club, like many RWNJ organisations, is defined by what it's against rather than what it's for - where conservatism is a constant battle for preservation of the status quo; where anti is easy and initiative is hard. It's where bias beats brains.
The only constant is change yet these trogs forever fight against it whenever it threatens their privilege and their incumbent pandering to the greed interests of their cohort. National well-being and vision? Phhht! Their thought bubbles and brain farts are reflexive responses based on the crude Tory dogma of Hayekian and Randesque fuck-you-Jack neoliberalism seasoned with the Lib's very own game of mates and the Nat's agrarian socialism and fossil fuel boondoggles.
Which brings me to The Thug. The head veg is wholly defined by who he hates and he's driven by the reichwingers' grievance manifesto of hostility to lefties, greenies, those with darkish skin tones, gays and trans, gig workers, unionists, academics, scientists, clean energy advocates ...fundamentally, anyone not a fellow RWNJ punisher and straightener in on the grift.
A head kicker, the hard-right, glass-jawed potentato to whom 'going clubbing' means baby seals, flatters himself that he's PM material. He has the instincts of a goon but lacks the intellect for original thought or leadership. His is a "what would Joh do?" cronyism and a try-hard-Trumpy trashing of integrity and basic decencies. His cultivated hard man persona is but a variation of Tony Abbott's bulging ball-bag affectation. But Abbott's bunking with the boofy AFP wallopers when in Canberra had homo-erotic undertones - flicking each other with wet towels in the showers and plaiting each others' hair no doubt further disturbs the macho vigour of The Thug's self-image.
Contributing to the laddish character of the Potato patch is an oft-basted root vegetable, the empurpled member for New England, Drunkerby Joyce. The David Copafeel of federal politics has now added a new skill to diversify his sex pest and lagerphile repertoire - backstroking on the asphalt swimming pool. In 2017 the then Tory government called for alcohol and drug testing of welfare recipients with Barnaby declaiming "You can't go to work if you're smashed..." hypocrisy being one of Drunkerby's most versatile talents.
All of the Big Swinging Dick bombast, the boozing and bullying, the staff fondling, allusions to shooting toey women protesters, the tabling of seminal works by a Lib staffer, tea-bagging and rusty tromboning in the Prayer Room and plausible rape allegations, surprise surprise, tends to turn the wimmins off and they fled in their thousands to Independents, Greens and Labor. And so The Thug, PM option number two, resolved to soften his image as a reboot. Cuddly Pete and Smiley Pete though had the shelf-life of a Liz Truss lettuce.
The Lib/Nat brains trust relieved the ladies ga-ga of kitchen duties and pointed them at the cameras when the Great Schmo's gynophobia became too apparent to ignore. These ScoHo's are now rebadged as Spud's Noisettes. Perversely, to be permitted access to the boy zone the girls need to demonstrate they can be just as egregious as their male colleagues - a challenge they've readily risen to.
Ley Zee the flying none is the most prominent. Suss drew the 'beligerent outrage' role during casting. I won't drag out the slur that Mad Abbott and the RW crazies used against Julia Gillard - let me just say that it's been posited that Suss weighs the same as a duck and would float if thrown into a pond. Suss's performative indignation is a natural fit for someone whose life choices have collapsed her face into a permanent sulk of disappointment.
Phlegm fatale Michaelia Cash provides back-up vocals. Waving her arms about like she'd walked through a spider web, her bogan-toned hyperbole delivered in a mad cat lady on crack meets North Korean news reader lady style sends a warning to our youth of the dangers of VO5 addiction. (Although perhaps her hysteria is due to the wind changing direction on her when she'd dialled the Just For Her© "muscle toner" up to 11).
Calamity Jane Hume graduated 3rd in the nasty class at the National Arboretum behind a
Hydnora Africana and a Amorphophallus titanum which goes some way to explaining the inane, smug condescension that belies her role in 9 years of Tory incompetence and graft.
One of the first things Morrison did as PM in 2018 was to intervene in the Senate preselections in Victoria to ensure that Jane was re-endorsed. Luckily Hume's ex-husband got the contract as one of the debt collection companies for Robodebt. Jane's thoughtful insights include: "We don't have policies. We're in opposition, we're not in government" and that an ICAC could deter “good” people from entering public life!
Jacinta NameYa-Price, the RWFW's "some of my best friends are aborigines" cover for their overt racism has maybe outlived her usefulness now that The Voice has been successfully sabotaged. Jacinta could find out anew what it's like to be pushed to the fringes.
Rortess Bridget McKenzie.xls is as come hither as the dot of shame on Barnaby Joyce's moleskins. That this shot-gun wielding, fat-shaming, beligerent loud mouth is seen by the Nats as softening their image says a lot; particularly about their perspective that their electorates are populated by credulous rubes - not that they're wholly wrong.
But, back to the main theme - The Thug. His embrace of autocracy, his inherent peeing-in-the-hotel-kettle nastiness, his rigid adherence to Tory dogma and a wit that is a 3G modem in a 5G world makes him entirely predictable. A national leader? He is more out of his depth than Harold Holt. In naval terms he's a rudderless shit. He will never be PM.
*Apocryphyly attributed to Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, a French lawyer, politician and one of the leaders of the French Revolution of 1848.
