Gone out the window

We were on the train this morning and for the first time in a long time noticed the truly stuffed in our society and how comprehensively invisible they are to most of us. “Stuffed” in the bad way, not ‘stuffed’ like a Liberal politician after a fine meal and a cheeky Chateau Quelquechose or two (at the tax-payer’s expense). And we saw clearly what it is that we hate so much about what Howard has done to our country.

Once upon a time we seemed to care about our society as a society; as a community, you might say.

If someone was down we picked them up because they were part of our team. We looked after them. Now it is all about looking after No. 1. It’s not because people have become more callous. We have just had to learn to look after ourselves in order to survive and avoid being the ones who are stuffed, ourselves.

We have had to learn to be selfish, because all around us has grown this culture of greed fostered by Howard.

We at Values Australia have nothing personally against “stuff”, acquisition, money – even lots of it – but we can’t seem to enjoy it the way we’d like to when others can’t find enough for them or their kids to eat. Or a bed to sleep in, or something to hope for and look forward to in the future.

These days, of course what we prefer to say to these people is, “get over it”, “stand on your own feet”, “if you can’t get a job these days you’re a lazy dickhead who deserves to suffer.” “Where’s me bloody Plasma?”

Ultimately, a society is judged not by its average accumulations of wealth and belongings, not on its greatest and wealthiest but on its very least – on how the community looks after its own, its most needy, and lifts them up. That takes a real, not a rhetorical, sense of community – a whole community – a responsible community.

And that is what has gone out the window as a direct result of this nasty, hateful, selfish, grasping ideology of John Howard’s.

And that is why he must go, before he irreparably tears apart everything that actually made this the best country on earth.

As Captain Whyte, a lifelong Liberal voter, said:

“I’m sick of living in an economy; I want to live in a society”.

And, for the christians — as JC his very self is reputed to have said:

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”