An Open Letter (Spencer Magazine) by Constance Fyodor, student leader at Spencer University
Dear Politician
I have what may appear as an idealistic and thus a pathetic request. In fact it is particularly pathetic because these days, any touch of idealism is crushed in favour of regular conformity and bland normality. Here it is: before we exercise our democratic rights at the next election, can you guarantee that you are telling us the truth; that what we read in the newspapers and hear on media channels is indeed the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Because without the whole truth, without an end to this confectionary-peddling diet of lies, it’s rather difficult to determine and influence the course of our own political, social and cultural landscapes. Quite simply, we don’t know where we stand.
How do you indeed expect us to make our own grown up decisions and respond maturely and sensibly and purposefully if you keep selling us sugar coated confectionary bundled up as rich, dark authentic chocolate. You are the quintessential salesman hocking your overpriced wares for those who are wealthy or foolish enough to buy them.
If babies are fitted out with the family version of what a person should be, you are fitting us all out with the government version of the family. Or as Bruce Dawe would say in Enter without so much knocking through your friendly paternal policies we are becoming the “well-equipped smoothly-run household” which includes “one economy-sized Mum, one Anthony Squires-Coolstream-summerweight Dad” and a magnificent-thumbs-up-bragging Tony encouraging the kids “straight off the Junior Department rack” to come along for the ride.
And I am over it. I am over the fact that “men in suits” are, firstly, selling us cover up stories in order to deceive us, and, while they have us grasping for the crumbs and the sweets, they quickly go for the jugular, dictating the way that we should think, the way we should feel, the way we should act. The media and advertising machines also collude with your agendas and complete the democratic madness and freedom that constantly evades.
I am referring here to the issue of the asylum seekers which you have blown quite literally out of the water. Whilst freezing information on the current asylum seekers situation, you’ve taken the next step of claiming an illusion that your policies are working and that you have stemmed the tide of asylum seekers. I would say this is just the “modern art of mass deceit” that almost every politician is canvassing.
The language you use furthermore reinforces your illusory and deceitful picture and distorts /determines our realities. Take Operation Sovereign Borders: such war-like terminology recalls a military campaign, suggesting that Australia is threatened by hostile forces and ought to be on high alert. Is it one of your many “call to arms”? Are you expecting us to sleep with our rifles cocked underneath our mattresses?
How can we ever hope to determine our realities if we do not have access to information?
You deliberately conceal information that is vital to a thorough understanding of the issue and release data that is deliberately deceptive, that pretends to paint the government as someone who has triumphantly “stopped the boats” and “stopping the drowning”, but you don’t tell us how many people are now returned to just as bad a fate. So Orwellian!
Also you are hypocritically repositioning our political landscape, and our collective self-conscious as one that is not “fair and “free”, but brutally unjust and unfair.
Also while you are at it, another way you determine our realities is by setting us up as the dark hostile beast in a world that is currently swamped by millions of refugees – some of whom have become so because of the wars our honourable politicians have waged in the Middle East.
It’s a bit like the Children Overboard scandal all over again; back then the government was deliberately deceptive with the publication of photographs of refugees throwing children and boats sinking and children bopping in waters.
So let me propose a counter operation. Let’s call it Operation Focus on Yourself. It’s our very own call to arms, Mr Politician, which is to stop still immediately. Let everyone of us put our hands over our ears for a few minutes, shut our eyes, and peep deep within. After five deep breaths and give Hail Tonies, everyone will look towards the stars, follow the birds disappearing into the trees, and make a wish. With our shirt off, feeling the first warm breeze of summer… Where have we come from and where are we going?
As William Blake says, “little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?”
DEAR POLITICIAN
And another version:
I have a pathetic request. Before we exercise our democratic rights at the next election can you guarantee that democracy is alive and kicking? Can you guarantee that you are not shoving some warped and mad version of democracy down our collective throats?
It has come to my attention recently that your coterie of blue-tied leaders are indeed undermining democracy and are guilty as charged of telling us how to think, and how to judge. It is quite clearly totalitarianism by stealth and so secretive is your mission that most of us do not even recognise the loss of freedom.
In other words, you are force-feeding us a diet of lies and confectionary with a great deal of pomp and ceremony.
As Age columnist Tony Wright recently wrote, “politicians who are artists when it comes to mixing shades of grey, know the power of words, particularly the littlest ones that pack the biggest wallop”.
In your case, we would do well to refer to Desmond Tutu, who explains, “language does not describe reality; it creates the reality it describes”. Just take the latest “occupied” debacle which you thought was a clever sleight of hand. You thought you could so easily pop East Jerusalem out its 2000 year historical context just by removing one word, “occupied” and replacing it with “disputed”. Your point was that the former term was freighted with “pejorative” implications. But the point remains, East Jerusalem was occupied by Israel in 1967. The International court of Justice in 2004 declared not only that the west Bank was occupied but that this was illegal. No other Western Government one has had the audacity to reshape the life of billions of Muslims and Jews through the removal of one word.
Then there’s your range of slogans that have us all scurrying for our burrows. It is a mad economy you say. We need to realise that “the age of entitlement is over”, that “we all have to do the heavy lifting”, that the house is on fire. Whilst you reshape our economic and political realities, you ensure that those on the bottom of the pile stay there and will never be able to kick their legs again. We are also encouraged to fear any alternative.
Likewise, we are reminded of course of that the recent wars which the government so valiantly and simplistically encouraged as a tool to spread democracy would be quick clean and easy against a tyrant that was used to spearing “babies on bayonets”.
It seems that the democracy you peddle requires the “freedom” to be constantly fearful. We are all drilled in the business of fear so that we become more compliant. It is much easier to the control the realities of millions of whimpering mice.
As you would be aware, we went to war in Iraq riding on a rollercoaster of fear. You intuitively whip up the conditions of mass hysteria and fear in order to create the emotional climate that predisposes citizens to support the war with a dubious purpose. Evidently if our emotions frequently control our responses to events and experiences, then your ability to control these emotions at a subliminal level is a masterstroke.
The media and advertising machines also collude with your agendas and complete the democratic madness and freedom that constantly evades. We are told how to look; we are told what is attractive and we are encourage to comply or suffer the consequences: the loss of esteem and the erosion of our confidence. We burrow deeper and deeper not realizing that we betraying our deepest selves.
Ironically, we don’t realise how indeed the media normalizes all that is mad in the world and the more we hanker for acceptance and approval the more we conform to this special type of madness.
So to those who believe they craft their own realities, we must look in the collective mirror and realise just how much alike we have become, shaped by the puppeteers pulling the strings by stealth.
There is only one response for those who wish to pull their own strings. Resist with all our might, or as Shakespeare would say, “unto thine own self be true”. It is incumbent upon each of us to carve our own space, even to talk with the birds that come home to roost or talk to the flowers as they shine through the weeds. Bark with your pet.
And quite frankly, until you can tells us some real truths, and penetrate some of the personal mysteries of life, we will never be in a position of exercising our freedom and truly determining our own realities.
So please show me your garden; tell me where you go for walks; what poetry do you read? What flowers grace your vase? Tell me about your beloved pet.
AN OPEN LETTER TO MICHAEL LEUNIG
“KILL THE BASTARDS”…. BY Former Sargeant Peter Conrad.
You may not remember who I am. However, that does not matter. I have written this letter to you after coming home from my tour of duty as a soldier in the Iraq war. A few months before I was deployed, you published articles and cartoons that branded this government and soldiers like myself as terrorists. I was deeply offended as were many of my colleagues. We thought you were as bad as the traitors we were fighting.
However, I owe you an apology.
I now realise that we were both fighting for a better and more just world, but in totally different ways and as a consequence of our different perceptions of reality. And I must admit now I think you were much more sophisticated and mature.
As soldiers, we tried to bring about change through violence and aggression; you, through peace, beauty and the power of the pen. How different our realities were I only realised on the battlefield. I championed war because it gave me the courage to rid the world of evil. (Or so I thought I was.) As my father before me who died by the duty of war, and was glorified through ANZAC.
War fervour, as it did then, and now, seems to have a contagious way of catching up on us. Ever since the bombing of the twin towers, the world has been hell-bent on revenge.
I admire your steadfast consistency. You never approved of war. You were the one lone warrior among a team of warmongers. I, as well as many others have often wondered why this is so. Mocked and shunned by the society, I scorned your ideas of peace and forgiveness.
However, at the start of the bombings I was suddenly confronted by the horror of war. We were slaughtering men like animals, pouring out blood like water. With every death of a comrade and foe alike, my heart bled for the horror and corruption of innocence.
During war times, , I kept dreaming of my hometown, the kangaroos and the lush smell of the blue gums, as slowly the lust for war faded.
However, re-reading your articles, I now realise just how critical you were of the citizens and gatekeepers of public behaviour, thought and morality.
As you pointed out, too often the government and gatekeepers of social media control the keys to our realities. Like my dad and his dad before him, I too had repeated the mistakes of history and too often, the human race again blunders into the errors of the past. Having gone through war, I now know it is a lesson that is taught to those involved. However, due to our government and society we again raise and retake this lesson. Failing to keep an open mind to other’s realities, we ignore experience and values others so often try to teach us. It seems the government takes hold of some huge vacuum and fills it with a collective conscience and a collective memory – even so selectively.
It is only after having fought and lost on two fronts that I now understand the ambiguous loop that you so cynically depict and reject. As you consistently point out, Governments feed the people and the people feed governments. In other words, who controls my reality? Was it myself, the government or someone else? Or the daughter I was killing and who would haunt me forever more.
Before I went to war, I was one of those who would have been screaming against people like Terry Hicks and brandishing placard, “ kill the bastard”, like everyone else. I was one of those who revelled in the hit and run words that harshly censured this run-away terrorist. However, gradually I have come to realise what you mean by the archetypal “black angel”. As you consistently point out, “it is a two-way umbilical psychic relationship’ but one that we with placards cannot understand. We thought that we were fighting terrorists and fighting evil. We thought that we were protecting peace. But now I realise that we were simply reflecting and justifying the government’s wishes because it was in their interest that we carried the placards. As you state, the government are also “hit and run hate merchants in the streets” who have “ kill the bastard” on all their rockets and tanks. But we often in our blindness don’t realise. So in many ways the government reflects the people’s wish and the people’s wish reflects the governments so that it becomes impossible to ascertain who is influencing who in this mutual process that provides sustenance for governors and the governed.
The government taught me to fight for my country. However during war I learnt how to fight for myself. In a matter of life and death, there was no time, nor space left to think about glory or honour and justice. All that mattered was survival. The government introduced me to the passion of fighting for my country. The government introduced me to their reality. It wasn’t mine. It was theirs.
The ultimate price of warfare revealed that debt I must now replay. I am paying for my arrogance, for my delusions, for my lamb-like servitude that is my shame. How we blundered into a web of hatred, death and lies is beyond me.
Now, as I learn to enjoy myself in my country house, I stand watching the lorikeets fly towards the sun setting on the horizon as the laugh of the kookaburra echoes out mocking those who fail to find their own realities.