ANTI-CHRISTMAS - PART 1
Christmas is always a difficult time of year for people like
me. Easter and birthdays too. They are a constant reminder of the brutalities
and horrors we have endured. The absence of what others have. Not gifts and
lavish meals, but normal families. Brothers, sisters, cousins, parents, uncles,
aunts and grandparents who want to spend time with one another, share stories
of the things they’ve done over the years instead of backstabbing, sniping and
other vindictive acts.
Worse, it is no different to any other day. The same nasty,
spiteful, too often brutal behaviour undermining the ‘magic’ of Christmas a
child is supposed to experience. Memories of spending time with my grandparents
infected with the absence of a self-centred, sociopathic father, the cruelty of
my mother and, in years that followed, the hateful behaviour of my step-father
and my mother’s second son. Memories of cherished gifts given by my
grandparents only to be broken by those hateful people, or vanish without
trace, never to be seen again.
Despite managing to escape over twenty years ago, and never
speaking to those people again, the misery they imprinted within me is
inescapable. So it is for too many others. Last year, there were 600,000 people
who were unable to celebrate Christmas. They had no money for gifts or fancy
dinners. The rising cost of housing, utilities, food and other necessities,
combined with negative wage growth and rising unemployment, had increased the
poverty gap. This situation was shocking. It was disgraceful. This year the
numbers have risen to 1.6 million.
And that’s just Australia. This shame is repeated across the
world, even in so-called First World Western countries that boast of the
benefits of Democracy and Capitalism as their sycophantic and unhinged zealots
point at other forms of government and economic management and make
accusations. In the US, Trump, who claims he will help the poor, has passed new
Tax laws designed to make himself and other rich people even wealthier and the
poor destitute, and his sycophants are screaming abuse at anybody that points
out the horror of this reality.
No, Christmas, Easter and birthdays are dark places where
depression sets in, a constant struggle to distract yourself and focus on how
others enjoy the moments, and how you can help to create happy memories for
them. The desire to respond, as usual, by withdrawing and isolating yourself
from events is forever present, like a camera is there and you need to be
anywhere but in front of it so nobody remembers you.
The empty, opportunistic rhetoric of RUOK has no presence on
days like those, only on the day set aside for politicians and celebrities to
act like they care, to be seen to ‘care’ for others. But it is a question worth
asking as we are encouraged to give to those who have nothing on the day marked
as the birth of Jesus Christ. As we remember the less fortunate, just for one
day, to make ourselves feel better. Why only this day? Why only physical
‘gifts’?
Why do we ignore the suffering of those ostracised by
predators and the authorities that refuse to help the victims, even force them
to remain silent? Almost thirty years ago, my then-girlfriend invited me to
join her family for Christmas. Her dad had passed away that year. Cancer. I’d
seen it coming, before he was diagnosed. Even predicted the time of his death.
A ‘gift’ of sorts that has allowed me to predict a great many things, but
mostly unplesant, unhappy events.
The Christmas dinner also saw her mother’s sister arrive with
her husband. He was German and very wealthy. He ran a successful business and
lived off the profits generated by the labours of his employees. In her
father’s absence, it was assumed my ex’s brother would sit in the seat their
father normally occupied, at the head of the table, but their uncle immediately
claimed it. He spent the entire meal insulting me because I had been unable to
get a full-time job. I’d been limited to what hours and little money I could,
doing whatever was available.
It was my first Christmas away from my grandparents. My
mother and her second son had seen to that. The final steps in a covert war
they’d waged against me. Over a decade of scheming to defame me, drive a wedge
between my relatives and me, force me to leave, and cut me out of Wills. There
comes a point when a child reaches the age of eighteen and they cannot continue
to suffer the lifetime of physical and psychological abuse. They just want it
to end and lack the courage to commit suicide or kill the bastards inflicting
that living hell.
So, there I was, wondering why this pompous, odious piece of
shit was bullying me over dinner, on Christmas, when I was supposed to be a
guest. If I’d wanted that, I’d have returned to where my grandparents lived on
borrowed time. As dinner was served, I was asked if I wanted Turkey or chicken.
I had said “just chicken, thankyou, I’m don’t really like turkey.” My step-father
had kept them and forced me to look after the things. I didn’t like them. My
ex’s uncle had gone out into the kitchen, a sneer on his face, and when my
plate arrived, there was turkey on it.
I’d only eaten a single bite, trying to be polite and not wanting
to cause a fuss. “Did you like the ‘chicken’?” her uncle had said. “Sorry,” I’d
replied, “I’m just not that hungry.” I actually was. My limited income meant I
was grossly underweight. I was always hungry. “Well,” he responded, grinning at
everyone, “you just ate turkey. Looks like you’re a liar, too!” Like it was a
joke. I didn’t look at him. A liar. It wasn’t true, but I embraced it anyway.
Pretended, for a moment, I came from a better place. “Where I come from,” I said,
“people don’t try to insult guests over a meal.”
The mood at the table had become very subdued. I excused
myself and left. But the truth is, my relatives did that all the time. Treat
people badly. Bully them. Turn away when they need help to make it stop. Enable
the bullies. Even my grandfather, who I’d always admired, thought was the
greatest man in the world. As a society, we do that all the time. And not just
over meals, and not just guests. As a society, we happily condemn innocents to
endless suffering because that kind of behaviour has become normalised. We
don’t want to deal with unplesant things, so we bully the victims into silence,
or enable those that will do it for us.
Every day, victims are isolated and silenced by predators.
Some of those predators are the authorities that are supposed to help victims. Their
vidictive behaviour conceals and enables predators, crime, systemic failure and
injustice. They will claim their not bad people. They just have to follow the
rules. Even if they go out of their way to find that excuse not to help rather
than a way they can help. Ask those predators and they’ll claim they are the
real victims.
So the police, public servants, and politicians use laws,
policies and procedures to circumvent justice by responding to victims with
indifference, apathy, negligence, incompetence, insinserity, insensitivity,
mockery, insults, unfounded and defamatory accusations, and intimidation. And
the general community responds in the same manner. Read any news feed that has
a social media response option, and you’ll find evidence of the idiocy that
plagues our society.
Celebrities caught out for innappropriate sexual behaviour
and sexual assaults. Government departments, banks, and big business committing
Human Rights violations on the unemployed, their staff, refugees, the elderly,
women and children. Read the comments and there you’ll find them, about
one-in-four are predators accusing the victims of all being liars out to get
money, while claiming everyone participating in the ‘trial by media’ is guilty
of moral corruption. Ironic.
Think about it. The presumption of innocence afforded to the
accused, regardless of the number of victims and evidence, while the victims
are condemned based on no evidence of their guilt for ‘dishonesty’ whatsoever. And
everyone else is accused of trial by media for being outraged at the vile
behaviour of the offenders. Why are the victims also not afforded the
presumption of innocence? And the notion that the accused’s guilt and innocence
will be proven in court? What kind of sick and twisted fantasy is that?!
The Legal System has nothing to do with justice. The Legal
System is just another big business where legal outcomes are reduced to
commodities that the most disadvantaged cannot even access let alone afford. A
victim must jump all manner of hurdles, providing ‘evidence’ and ‘proof’ of
their ‘allegations’ until they ultimately fail due to a lack of funds and
whatever evidence they do have being suppressed or dismissed as ‘inadmisable’.
And when the accused is actually guilty, they sue their victim for ‘defamation’…
and then continue to commit those offences.
But how is this all possible? Why do we live under a rampant,
entrenched culture of corruption? Look no further than our political system.
Our so-called political representatives make the laws and appoint senior staff
in the departments of the public service. They have ties to big business that
are either a conflict of interest or motivated by ‘campaign contributions’.
They allow the use of ‘internal investigation’ and ‘self-regulation’ to
continue, perverted conflicts of interest that allow those at fault to
investigate themselves and then cover-up evil.
Have a look at the recent calls for a Royal Commission into
Corruption in the Banks. The LNP opposed it. For years. Reports of filures,
injustice and corruption in the banks began to gain momentum in 2004. Over a decades
later, the continued offences, crime, suffering and injustice finally comes to
a head. The farce that was a Marriage Equality debate only distracted the
public for a few months, though long enough to avoid real accountability for the
$75M compensation awarded to refugees who were brutalised by the Australian
Government for four years, and the citizenship debarcle where ruling politicians
in breach of Federal Law still claimed wages and refused to step down.
Now, finally, they have agreed to start one. They never
hesitated to drag ALP political leaders through the muck in their Royal
Commission into Union Corruption, chaired by an LNP stooge who concluded with
pre-determined findings that were not supported by the evidence. Now they will
start one into banks. Now that the banks have cleaned house, destroyed evidence
and given the LNP the okay to go ahead. Now the banks, er, LNP… will set the
Terms of Reference and place a stooge in charge to make sure business continues
as usual, without change.
How does this start? It starts in the schools. Again, under
the laws, policies and procedures set in place by political representatives.
Children don’t just learn from the intended outcomes of lessons, but from all
of the things they experience. When a school adopts a ‘no repercussions’ and
‘no physical contact under any circumstances’ approach to discipline, we have a
serious problem where children are learning they can get away with anything.
When all a teacher can do is say ‘no’, ‘don’t’ and ‘stop’ as
a child vandalises property, brutalises another child, attacks a teacher, or
starts screaming foul-mouthed obsenities, defamatory claims and threats to harm
or even rape and murder another child or teacher, we have a problem. When
adults must stand back and watch as those acts are committed, and cannot
physically intervene to protect the victim, we have a problem. When the
offending child is not discouraged in a real and appropriate way, we have a
problem. When parents are modelling the anti-social behaviour and nothing is
done to stop them, we have a problem.
Yes, some children are being abused at home and lash out at
school in response, some have an intellectual learning disability, some have
parents who are drug addicts, and some have ADD (Adult Discipline Disorder),
but these should not be accepted as excuses. It doesn’t matter if the parents
want their child in the mainstream system instead of specialist care, are
unwilling to accept their child’s faults, are gutless thugs that enable their
child’s faults, or any other excuse.
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