VAPOUR TRAILS – PART FOUR
Why is it that this
kind of wilful stupidity and over-privileged sense of entitlement can be
allowed to cause so much discrimination, injustice, and economic, social and
psychological harm in our communities? Why do our so-called political
representatives fail to take positive action to correct these systemic
failures? The how and why questions can be answered by considering the
behaviour of those who claim to be our political representatives, and big
businesses like Unite and American Airlines.
We have come to
expect the very worst behaviour from politicians. Greed. Dishonesty. Hypocrisy.
Their fundamental inability to even understand the needs, frustrations and
injustices suffered by the less fortunate they claim to represent. The fact
that they are so insulated from reality by wealth, affluence, circumstance, and
any form of penalty to deter their worst personality traits or activities that
they could never understand even if they had any real desire to do so. There is
nothing we can do to censure them.
Even when a conflict
of interest or evidence of corruption is so blatantly obvious to the public, politicians
are able to evade the same requirements that apply to average citizens. They
use ‘internal investigation’ or government controlled inquests to clear
themselves and continue with their rotten behaviour, be it a vote on
maintaining the negative gearing that has brutalised and crippled the lives of millions
of average citizens even as politicians make fortunes from the housing market,
or their involvement in the cover-up of abuse and systemic failure within various
police and public service agencies.
It’s been going on
for generations and, like all abusers that are not exposed and held accountable
through appropriate deterrents, it has escalated. There’s a reason why the
systemic child abuse within the Churches was able to continue for decades on
end, why the police never investigated, why politicians never acted. It cannot
be explained away with blame attributed to the Churches alone: it took the
combined efforts of the Churches, police, child protection agencies and
politicians to cover-up all the rumours and reports.
There’s a reason why
political entitlements cost the tax-payers almost half-a-billion dollars a year,
why the politicians who rort the system express anger and resentment at the
public for expressing disgust rather than the offenders accepting they are at
fault. There’s a reason why house prices average around $650K while minimum wages
are less than $50K a year and unemployment benefits are just $35.5K a year,
two-thirds the official poverty rate. There’s a reason why most Australians can
barely afford rent and mortgages, why most will never own their own home because
they have no way of even saving a deposit let alone pay it off, and why politicians
have property worth around $370M between them.
Our politicians set
the standard, and that bar is pretty damn low. It would have to move up from
the sewer to even get to the gutter. That corruption and unwillingness to see
it end is how big business is able to get away with the worst moral and ethical
bankruptcy our society has ever seen: politicians maintaining a way of life
that benefits them at the expense of the disadvantaged. And yet, as a society
we were shocked by the excessive and sickening abuses of American and United
Airlines after the media ran the stories of just two incidents in an unknown
number of similar (and probably worse), but why?
We have allowed
governments to deregulate big business for decades. We have watched customer
service plummet to all-time lows in a directly proportional rate to the lack of
action to curtail and deter such vile behaviour. Predators, unchecked, will not
only continue, but escalate in their abuses. We saw an outcome that was
inevitable. A customer who had purchased a product-service assaulted,
brutalised, humiliated and left bloodied and injured to deny him what he’d
purchased, for the convenience of United Airlines staff. It was followed by a
staff member from American Airlines, not long after, assaulting a woman with a
baby, then threatening another customer who tried to defend her.
But the two
companies are hardly alone in this type of reprehensible behaviour.
Telecommunications and utilities services, as well as insurance companies, have
been mistreating customers for decades too. We seem willing to express outrage
when it happens to us, but what about the less fortunate. Centerlink and
so-called Employment Agencies have been circumventing Due Process and Human
Rights for decades too, and yet society seems reluctant to demand positive
change. Indeed, a sick element in our society seems to think it’s not only
acceptable, but that the victims deserve the abuse.
How many victims are
out there? Do you think we hear about all of them? Why is it we never hear from
the rest? How is it that predators like the one in the Generation Grey article can get that kind of free publicity to bait
their traps and mock their victims? How can they be so willingly concealed and
enabled, but their victims are isolated and silenced? How do politicians,
police and public servants can get away with what they do, saying one thing and
doing another as their words dissipate like so much hot-air?
How is it that we
tolerate a political system and media that warp and rot our children, reducing
them to broken victims and sociopathic, psychotic and violent predators? What
can we do to change this sick, vile entrenched culture of corruption that
causes so much harm that never ends? One person, especially a victim, cannot
make a difference on their own. Even together we will struggle. But inside most
of us is a child not so different to the ones we see brutalised, their little
lights snuffed out, forever, before they get that chance to shine.
The survivors, if
that is what we can call them, for who they were and could have been are
murdered, are forced to struggle with PTSD, depression and worse as they
attempt to piece together the wreckage of their lives. Their abusers defamed
them with impunity, to discredit anything they might say, and threaten them
with legal action for “defamation” if they refuse to remain silent. The legal
system circumvents justice. It refuses to investigate crimes. It makes every
effort to protect the presumption of innocence of a predator but not that of a
victim. It does not require predators to wear a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign, and they are
not put down to protect the public if they attack someone. It colludes and
participates in this unrelenting evil. But what are we going to do?
Well, so long as we
are forced to remain silent, threatened under rotten laws with prosecution for
daring to speak the truth and ask for the help we are encouraged to seek, we
are also forced to collaborate in every crime a predator and their support
network commits. We are forced by the agencies that are supposed to help us,
supposed to investigate and prosecute predators. We are forced by the media who
refuse to share our accounts. We are forced by a system that isolates and
silences victims while concealing and enabling predators, crime, systemic
failure and injustice.
In years to come,
will Charlotte be another little light snuffed out, forced to remain silent as
the police and public service cover-up the rot, the corruption that forced the
victims of the predator in that Generation
Grey article to remain silent for decades? The abusers will die without ever knowing justice, having
stolen the lives and futures of their victims, but their crimes will continue
to inflict harm as so many of those victims flitter, disenfranchised, through
time, fringe dwellers never part of normal society and too often lashing out,
repeating what happened to them because their personalities have been so
callously, catastrophically warped.
But again, when the
agencies that are supposed to help refuse and only add to the problem, what can
we do when we are told to remain silent by predators and the authorities that
are supposed to help us? When we see something and are instructed by the
authorities, too often those inflicting the injustice, to “stay out of it”? Too
many politicians, police, public servants, and lawyers tasked with
investigating and prosecuting domestic violence, child protection, and
workplace bullying issues, and protecting the victims from further harm, are as
unproductive and disgusting as the notion of Malcom Turnbull, Tony Abbott,
Peter Dutton and Christopher Pine fornicating with Joe Hockey: a bunch of
idiots that are fucking useless (ie, Joe).
Those who are silent may be said to condone, but those who force others to remain silent are complicit. We should have the right to demand real change. Demand real action. Demand all the complaints actually be investigated. Demand victims are protected. Demand all those at fault be prosecuted. Demand justice. The only way to affect positive change is to force authorities to adopt it, because until they are forced to do so, they will continue to behave badly and, usually, escalate.
But we don’t have
these rights. We don’t even have the right to remain silent. We are expected to
do so. We are obligated to assist in an unremitting, merciless evil under the
intimidation, terror and penalty of persecution at the hands of predators and
the authorities that conceal and enable them.
Master Yoda once said “Do, or do not. There is no try.” A hard father figure to please, but one who has contributed to raising me far better than my own and far too many others in positions of authority. Yoda and Kermit the Frog have been my constant Jiminy Cricket, perched upon my shoulders along with the burdens placed there by my abusers and the authorities that refuse to help and who inflict the same kind of hardship and misery. Kermit and Yoda have been there from childhood, when life gets darkest because nobody else walks with me to help share my burden.
To give in, to suffer the brutalities of scum, or allow others to suffer the same, is to not only do nothing, but to be complicit in that vile behaviour. Nothing I have ever tried to do to help others seems to have made a difference. At all. I can't even help myself. But I must try. We all must try. That's why I write this blog. Tell the 'stories' others won't, or others try to conceal. Hoping, one day, that someone who can make a difference reads something I've written, gets angry, and uses their ability to force positive change for those denied a voice. Who knows, maybe it's you, or someone with whom you share what I've written.
May the Fourth be with you... Because all we have at the moment from the Dark Side is too many so-called police, public servants, lawyers, and politicians joining the ranks of every other freelance idiot inflicting the farth.
To give in, to suffer the brutalities of scum, or allow others to suffer the same, is to not only do nothing, but to be complicit in that vile behaviour. Nothing I have ever tried to do to help others seems to have made a difference. At all. I can't even help myself. But I must try. We all must try. That's why I write this blog. Tell the 'stories' others won't, or others try to conceal. Hoping, one day, that someone who can make a difference reads something I've written, gets angry, and uses their ability to force positive change for those denied a voice. Who knows, maybe it's you, or someone with whom you share what I've written.
May the Fourth be with you... Because all we have at the moment from the Dark Side is too many so-called police, public servants, lawyers, and politicians joining the ranks of every other freelance idiot inflicting the farth.
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