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America takes leave of its senses
Volume 31 #23
November 16, 2016
Predators become prey A couple of top-feeding apex predators have been taken out, and with any hope they won’t be creating any more carnage. The problem is that others will take their place. They were swimming around in the NSW parliament fishtanks (there are upper and lower fishtanks) and were forced from their well fed enclosure. The most vicious carnivore was the leader of the National Party, Troy Grant. As a former Dubbo cop, Grant chewed through civil liberties and human rights without hesitation. The other was a lesser threat, deputy leader and education minister Adrian Piccoli. Both have been replaced by new leader John Barilaro and deputy Niall Blair. Last weekend’s by-election in the western NSW electorate of Orange was the trigger for their demise; voters in that region had previously backed the Nationals overwhelmingly, but thanks to the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party – and with help from Labor preferences – those big National Party fish have now become the bait. The greyhound ban and council amalgamations have been blamed as the cause, but considering the volatile nature of modern politics, those could just be symptoms. The western world is clearly now in the grip of a new voter movement which threatens the major parties who are reliant entirely on inaccurate polling and useless focus groups it seems. This type of voter generally lives regionally and has seen a decline in their living standards. Evidently they are not too concerned with environmental protections or addressing climate change. While those issues were not directly canvassed in the Orange by-election, the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party stands for loose environmental laws. Ironically Labor say they understand climate change and the need for biodiversity, yet backed this donkey of a party for expediency. Protectionism is another issue for this emerging voter block, and with a larger majority, they may start to put the brakes on the 30-year globalisation experiment. Protectionism of industries and jobs is just another way of expressing a very basic and obvious human desire: equity and fairness. Globalisation has clearly not delivered entirely on that promise and it’s likely the loss of these apex monster politicians in the NSW Nationals Party is just the beginning. After all, almost all of these top-feeding apex predator politicans represent globalisation in all its forms. Hans Lovejoy, editor News tips are welcome: editor@echo.net.au
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irst the Poms abandoned common sense in backing Brexit and now the Yanks have voted against their own best interests (and those of the rest of the civilised world) by electing Donald J Trump. This was not a rational decision; it was the ultimate political gesture, a defiant middle finger towards what they imagined was The Establishment, by which they actually meant anything and anyone they resented. It was the act of a demented driver who deliberately veers across the median strip into the oncoming traffic: he knows it will certainly harm him, he may not survive, but with any luck he will take a couple of expensive imported limousines and their fat-cat passengers with him. There will be carnage and mayhem, but what a spectacle – that will show them all. The irony is that the chief beneficiary of this craziness will be the biggest, fattest cat of all, the immensely privileged elitist who has made a career and a fortune out of gaming the very system he now affects to despise, and who now stands to immeasurably enhance his own power and wealth. Trump does not have an agenda for change – it is hardly even a wish list of fantasies. Deport, ban or jail everyone he doesn’t like; destroy affordable health care for the poor while handing out huge tax cuts to the rich; end foreign trade and reopen the coal mines, restart the assembly lines and deliver a chicken in every pot and a pussy in every hand – and, of course, make America great again. In the meantime, break off all treaties, nuke anyone who objects and build impenetrable forces around the nation in the style of North Korea. At the very least this would de-
stroy the economy, the Great Society and Pax Americana; at the worst, it would precipitate World War III and the end of the end of civilisation. Fortunately, this mad plan is utterly unworkable, but this does not mean that it will not do immense damage before the country comes to its senses. Trump’s victory speech is seen as conciliatory, but his record speaks – or rants and gibbers – for itself. The best that can be hoped is that to some extent the poacher can turn gamekeeper; that he will appoint and trust reasonable and experienced
xenophobes, misogynists and ignorant, although unfortunately many are. The problem is the rampant and obscene inequality of the society in which they live. They see the rich getting steadily richer, more rapacious and more selfish as they are left further and further behind. In Australia their anger would be called a class war, the politics of envy, and would be excoriated and dismissed by the conservative media. In America they were just ignored – until they decided to blow up the joint. And, America being Amer-
The death-wish drivers who put Trump in charge will have to realise that they have been conned. by Mungo MacCallum underlings who will restrain his craziest impulses. The report that the veteran right-wing zealot Newt Gingrich has the nod as secretary of state does not inspire confidence. Trump has promised to drain the swamp, the morass of greed, arrogance and corruption which is best embodied in his own Trump Towers, but we will leave that aside. It may sound an appealing idea, but swamp-draining can have unexpected consequences. Some of the wildlife therein is not especially appealing, but it is vital to the survival of many beyond its immediate borders. Trump will eventually have to acknowledge this truth – or at least we hope he will. And his followers, the death-wish drivers who put him in charge, will have to realise that they have been conned. It is not entirely their fault: it is not primarily that they are racists,
ica, the tremors have reverberated around the world and the aftershocks will go on for a long time, even – perhaps especially – in Australia. Malcolm Turnbull, who a couple of weeks ago described Trump’s comments as loathsome, has reassured us that he has had a really chummy chat with the president elect and ANZUS is intact, so everything is all right. But it isn’t. Europe may well be convulsed: apart from ending the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which may take some time, Trump will cast his bloodshot eyes over the NATO pact, the keystone policy of the Western Alliance. And as he moves further east he will abrogate Barack Obama’s painstaking agreement with Iran and align with Vladimir Putin to bomb the shit out of ISIS, and anyone who opposes the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and, for that matter, any-
thing else that moves. And then it comes to China: he has already declared a trade war, and has talked about ramping up American action in the South China Sea. Given that Putin is apparently his new best friend, it is even possible that the two could combine their might to bring China down a peg or two. The consequences would be immeasurable, but not unimaginable, and Australia would be right in the middle. And worst of all is the threat to make nations like Japan and South Korea to either pay for American protection, or, if they don’t, strike out on their own. And if they choose the latter, he will help them acquire nuclear weapons to do so. It is a truism that all politicians break election promises, but the problem is that Trump has always denied that he is a politician. Some of his ideas will obviously not be feasible: they are unworkable, or illegal, or both. But many can be implemented by executive fiat, and others will be massaged through the acquiescence of a compliant Congress. Eventually sanity will prevail. Either the establishment will strike back, or more probably the voters who believed that Trump would indeed be the Messiah who would deliver them from their chains and bring in a new world order in which America ruled the world and that they would share the spoils will realise they have been conned; their world will be changed, but not for the better. So what do they do now? What does anyone do now? We simply don’t know – we were never prepared for this. God help America – God help Australia – God help the world.
“I never want to have to cross the street to avoid you.” David Runciman
The Byron Shire Echo Established 1986
Nicholas Shand 1948–1996 Founding Editor
General Manager Simon Haslam Editor Hans Lovejoy Photographer Jeff Dawson Advertising Manager Angela Cornell Production Manager Ziggi Browning ‘The job of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’ – Finley Peter Dunne 1867–1936 © 2016 Echo Publications Pty Ltd – ABN 86 004 000 239 Mullumbimby: Village Way, Stuart St. Ph 02 6684 1777 Fax 02 6684 1719 Printer: Fairfax Media Brisbane Reg. by Aust. Post Pub. No. NBF9237
10 November 16, 2016 The Byron Shire Echo
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