by Denis A. Conroy for the Saker Blog

It took a virus to remind us that we oscillate within the gamut of a micro-macro dynamic, and more significantly, that we can no longer afford the desultory polarizations that separate us from the dual reality that underscores our existence; the balance that exists between give and take that is essential for the emotional and mental well-being of all humans.

In the Capitalist West, the nexus of relationships that ply neo-conservative business-school polarization do so in the hope of repeating the exploitive advantages of the good-old-days of colonial opportunism by continuing to use a model of commerce that relies on gunboat diplomacy to achieve its crude ends. In fact, the hegemon is crude to the core and firepower is its modus operandi. Sadly, this model that America adheres to is polished ‘turd’ material as it uses its huge array of bases and navel-power to maintain dominance. Even more sadly, the American public is divided into two separate polarizations that regularly come together to achieve a common end…American dominance!

But what America…or American Foreign Policy…fails to understand is, that by assuming that it has the right to present its macro-colonial-globalisation-model as a viable system in todays’ world, shows how unaware it is of the fact that communities across the globe do inevitably resist the anti-dualist-imperialist-hogwash emanating from with its ever expanding egomaniacal girth.

The truth is, we are all local now with the arrival of Covit-19. We wake each day in possession of our original duality which allows us to perceive the existence of micro and macro states according to our biases. If we approach the duality from a subjective view position, we end up opening a window to the objective viewpoint and vice-versa.

The subjective-objective biases that manoeuvre us toward wholeness of one kind or another require localized vectors to manufacture models that can be trusted. Initially it was the case that indigenous communities bore the brunt of colonial savagery; today it’s the neoconservative savagery of the corporatized business sector that shrinks the panoply of cultural resources that ought to be available for all our people. Without doubt, it is the savagery of corporate capitalism that keeps ordinary men and women out of the planning process…and by definition…their very future.

People who once experienced the wholeness of the local were considered dispensable and were inevitable crushed by the vacuous narratives of the mercantile spoiler, the religious zealot and institutionally-minded people who loved hierarchical discourse and of course, an Anglo mind-set overburdened with class consciousness which brought the scourge of racism to many pristine paradises. The people who experienced wholeness were mainly the indigenous people of the world.

But times are a-changing…America has performed too many coup de grace in the Middle East and elsewhere for the world not to recognise it for what it really is…the corporate world’s umbilical cord which can encircle a functioning state, slither around its neck and choke it and render it dystopian before passing on to desecrate other countries that refuse to kowtow to its bullying ways…Libya, Iraq, etc. etc. etc.

But coming back to Australia and on the question of polarisation, we find that down here we are basically stuck between a rock and a hard place, or, if you will, the devil and the deep blue sea, or, if you will again, the fear of America’s deep (state) reach versus Britain’s cloying class-system. We cannot think off-the- page, so therefore we deny ourselves the ability to think creatively, we have become afraid and our arts reveal this insipidity. We also defer to our allies who are equally stupid. They tell us that Julian Assange is an egotist, a crook, a man of little substance and we unquestioningly swallow this pap. We have academics by the bucketful who might know of Socrates famous dictum uttered at his trial, “The unexamined life is not worth living”, but so many of them are in another form of ‘lockdown’ because they are afraid of losing their job.

That Julian Assange, an ‘examiner’ of significant substance presently sits in a latter-day colonial prison suggests that the carceral system that held Oscar Wilde one hundred years ago for equally dubious reasons has changed little. It is still run by grubby people in uniforms who feel that the grubby doings of the establishment should be kept under wraps. But it all comes back to us and we need to ask, just how odious is our indifference to one of our own who was engaged in so honourable an enterprise…the quest for journalistic transparency.

Somehow or other, Australia has managed to remain a vestigial part of the British Empire. Perhaps the 63 years and 7 months reign of Queen Victoria, plus the 68 year of the current Monarch, Queen Elizabeth 2nd. have conspired to fashion Australia as a somewhat quaint sort of polaroid camera that works best when focused on the matriarchal aspect of Britishness. Anglophilia has been kept alive by the popular media in Australia in ways most mysterious. The 10 Pound Sterling ‘Poms’ who flooded into Australia after the 2nd world war were already addicted to drooling over the colourful attire of their ‘betters’ and the popular press in Australia was quick to buy into this market and profit mightily. Over time, the Royals…a fertile lot indeed…seemed to become a sort of visual Viagra to Australian mothers, as the Royal babies kept on coming.

It was from this background…Australia as captive audience in need of hierarchal approval that the Murdoch Press would arise and take control of the tools that kept the wheel of cultural subservience turning. Later, the more astute among us would become aware of the smell that accompanied their ‘journalistic endeavours’ and realize that the Murdoch crew have not had a nappy change in decades.

And coming to Australia they did with regular monotony in shiny limousines to affirm that they were still loved…and by the welcome they received, they were! The Queen, in the company of a consort would for instance hear the words King’s Cross (depending on where they were driving to) or King’s Domain or Royal Botanic Gardens or Royal Melbourne Golf Course or The Regent Theatre, or whatever naming existed to replace what already had been named by the indigenous people of Australia. If the background noise was not too great, one might just hear her Majesty mutter “it is all ours now, all ours”, without pausing for even a fleeting moment to reflect on the fact that her mob’s umbilical cord did strangle, and still does, the true indigenous character of Australia.

So, on and on it goes, Royals jumping into our polaroid world, fresh out of elite frock shops to show us what they can do with our tax dollars…and Murdoch is ever there and ever willing to proselytise the virtues of the status qua and the royal babies.

But maybe it is no longer a case of on-and-on-it-goes anymore due to Covid-19. The Royal tours may have to become virtual. Or, an alternative solution might be to put a comedian or a stand-up comic in a limo or a bus and have them replicate a Royal Tour. They could re-enact the order of Australia thing for our much -loved Monarch. Her polarised perspective on property titles having made us appreciate the wonders of the British hierarchal system.

So, it would be preferable to find somebody from a middle-class background in Moonee Ponds for instance with a talent for royal-kitschy makeovers. Otherwise, a working-class boy with a background in Coburg who possessed the oratorical skills to tap into the evocative underbelly of the local zeitgeist would do. Somebody who also possessed an innate appreciation for matriarchism would be most suited.

Having said that, it does not exclude the fact that Covid-19 might have the power to effect mutations in other ways…neuro-biological transposing comes to mind… on how we see reality and our own existence in it. It could even contain the seeds of a Renaissance in art that might set us apart from our faux predilections and our craving for easy polarized existential fixes that might be achieved instantaneously. But the problem in being down-under people is being down under in population numbers. As a result, we manufacture little for our limited domestic market. In our arts as in our foreign policy we stop at the point where we present ourselves to the world as settler-occupiers, proud of what we see above ground and doubly reassured by what we know is below the ground. We have accepted the fixity that comes with living always on the same material page because we have created an artform out of deja vu called Australian inertia.

But there is no sense of a future tense in the Australian imagination. We know we can pay our bills for now, but we don’t’ have a meaningful voice in a macro sense. Our relationship with our empirical past is ever more uncertain. We observe Britain as having acquired a more diminutive stature in world affairs and realize that it has fallen off the chessboard. For those, like this writer, with intimate knowledge of Britain’s dreadful colonial past, there will be no lamenting its decline. Similarly, there may well be others like the Palestinians who have had their country taken from them with the help of that conniving and arrogant little Arthur Balfour who was party to a most onerous deal ever… away Britannica and its snake oil thieves!!

Over in America on the other sleight-hand, a born-again Donald Trump might even tweet that he is onto the Yin and Yang thing now and understands the value of the local thing and is now looking for new people to staff the White House inner sanctum. He will have found a way of making money out of the Covid-19 thing because that is what the locals there are best at…making deals and making money!

A week before the first Tuesday in November he will announce that he has assembled a team of virologists and say that they have discovered a miraculous vaccine for Covid-19. Five days before election day he will appear on the national networks and announce that the people should start partying at once because The President has found the way to get America back in business. As people believe what they want to believe, he will win in a landslide a week later. When the virus is seen to be as strong as ever post-election-day and the vaccine is seen to be a bummer, he will say he was lied to…amen! A symbiotic alliance between partying, work and regulation will thenceforth prevail in the land of the living and the dying. Hollywood will manage the credits and another piece of America software will exist to bolster the image of the hegemon and enthral the masses. Meanwhile, our newest great ally will ship copious amounts of the bum vaccine to its faithful ally down below.

Denis A. Conroy
Freelance writer
Australia