Scott Morrison would be finished without the corporate press
Scott Morrison would be finished without the corporate press
Scott Morrison has overseen a tragic shift in our national trajectory at the expense of the national interest.
This Prime Minister looks to change the social fabric at the request of a corporate duopoly, exacting a bi-polar effect on the nation’s discourse. Protected by a shield of words, and in the wake of multiple failures, the Prime Minister and the duopoly look to build a bridge to the election.
Journalists write strings of words into opaque objects, augmented by editorial processes, looking to turn the PM into a self-reflective man with a plan. Two crutches, thrown by the treasury and the Doherty Institute, helping him stumble over a bridge that is propped up by the support and influence of the entire press apparatus and the commercial interests they represent.
We split our minds over the tasks of our lives into the compartments of a lockdown. The population sits like bedrock, supporting the bridge of words that stretch for miles over our heads, bearing their weight on the fears of frightened people. The bridge is supported by the tailored analysis of journalists, acting as a conduit between the government and their corporate employers who shape the building blocks of the narrative. In the wake of retrospective failures, they use words like ‘hope’ to illustrate the Prime Minister’s march to the election; platitudes towards the national plan.
As Scott Morrison cherry picks the functioning components of a well debated national cabinet consensus, the press seeks to separate the combined achievement, awarding the exclusivity of the ‘national plan’ to the government, while denigrating the states as politically motivated obstacles. After a media inspired battle of attrition against national cohesion in a pandemic, the Prime Minister now drags the reluctant states to his very own ‘national plan’, protected by a suit of armour, with his two sweaty crutches, everything made from words, lumbering to the other side of the bridge. Journalists have had to disconnect from elements of reality to meet editorial directives, contravening the response to a public health crisis in order to find these increasingly rare words.
By allowing this disconnect, the commercial press are no longer of utility to the public, and sometimes a danger to the national interest. The whole entire structure now looks to stack on the final stage, the hardest part to build - convincing us that this leader, along with his coalition, is fit to lead the country through these profound and definitive challenges. Now there is the “safe plan” - and Australians adapt or die to deliver an election outcome.
This Prime Minister has been an “absent leader”, and we noticed him gone during the bush fires. Maybe he didn’t hold the hose then, but for the last 18 months he has been responsible for probably the “greatest policy failure since federation”. His weaknesses have been visible for the whole nation to see. In an attempt to defy the gravity of our public observation and the weight of scientific consensus, every single weapon of the digital domain is being used to revise our recent history. But all the combined failures to govern with integrity are adding up.
Without the words, and their form and function, Scott Morrison has a lot to answer for. Without the angles, and the puff, there are a litany of questions on a compounding number of questionable practices, not to mention the failure to guide the nation through a climate and health crisis that some in his coalition do not even believe exist. There isn’t much room for interpretation, and they don’t seem to get it.
Within the throng of failures ever amassing in our open world of mediocrity and disbelief, this government has attempted to deliver a hastily converted plan from the United States, the unstable compounds from a campaign designed to tear at the democratic dregs of our politically vulnerable nation. NewsCorp now retrofits its American product into its Australian media assets to the delight of our backwater corporate royalty, the pop-up new-born Pentecostal tin-pots and the libertarian philosophers at the IPA. Are we ready to face the next American political chapter being imposed on us, with all the Pentecostalism and the chaos, and the segregation of mind and purpose of a society in decay?
Australia is a country of two. Two supermarkets, two phone carriers, two talk-back radio stations, two newspapers (if you are lucky), two mining companies. Two major political parties. They once built two brands of car, in the diverse manufactories around the multicultural communities that built this society. Now we have two vaccines and two diverging views on reality, and the newspapers, television, radio and the duopoly seem to largely be supporting one of them. The lack of plurality in Australian economic, political and social infrastructure amplifies the power and wealth of these small-batch-titans of industry, themselves mediocre in their own form of malaise and depression. Those who are making record profits in a lockdown are the very ones putting us at odds. The duopoly defines the extensive and fortified networks of political donors and lobbyists and seeks to ensure the delivery of their objectives.
On full front-page ads in the paper, the duopoly print ‘interest-free’ furniture and McDonald’s, free advertising with JobKeeper pay-outs, consolidating the growing monolithic strangleholds they hold over our lives. In the heart of a pandemic, the parameters of neo-feudalism can now be witnessed as the titans claim the biggest share of our “social programs”. The big four banks, given a pass for their transgressions by an impotent and contrarian government, continue to represent the heart of inaction on urgent climate imperatives. The political class clamour and position to be the vehicle for the small-batch, looking past their obligations to us towards board level positions and government roles.
Their bridge is built with concentration and sheer willpower, amplified by the volumes of wealth and influence, but it is made by a few. This reveals them to be exposed. In these constructs of information, we have been made to feel alone, to bear the weight of all the words, sometimes to be forced to hear them. Our newspaper industry is the third most concentrated in the world, behind China and Egypt, and we can feel the bad faith in every word that spans above us. This is a fundamental concern. We must remove ourselves from the supports of these information structures and build a bridge of our own. As concerned citizens of a democracy, we must engage it, to ensure objective truth is honoured when making crucial national decisions that affect us more than them.
Supporting unions and community groups, becoming vociferous contributors and agitators, we can cultivate our electorates and realign them by becoming obstacles to the wayward political representatives that misrepresent them. Major party MPs now only look to play their music to small and irrational audiences. Misaligned servants of the people are not doing their jobs, there is a malignancy here. A deadly mass is deteriorating the national homeostasis, dragging the resting state of our country into the lost depths of their billion-dollar digital construction. This is a variant of concern, it is eating into our social fabric, and its monster we refuse to give a name.
It is here for all of us to see, we must equip ourselves with the tools of our democracy to defeat it.
Now the divide has been quantified, Australians should enable the entirety of their democracy to correct this asymmetrical push away from our essence. There comes a time in a crisis, where you accept things that you can't control and identify things that you can. When something is under attack it is best to identify the source, expose it and remove it. We cannot call this anything other than a slight on our social democracy, our community and public existence as a country. A malevolent force seeks to rip us from our social and our existential moorings, all to change the continuity of the nation under a cloud of measured chaos, in the wake of a pandemic.
The forces at play to maintain power will stop at nothing to do so. I watched both 4 corners special re Fox news becoming a major player to create a Coup de tat by manufacturing and amplifying lies and deceit to a gullible section of the electorate to then use them to create an uprising. I often ask myself what motivates these multi Millionaires, Billionaires & Corporations to continually lust for power and wealth. What is it in the hearts that they crave? Do they wish to destroy us? Do they wish to plunder the planet? Thanks for a great read. Australians are truly let down by the 4th estate which for the main as you say is a propaganda arm for State and Federal LNP. Cheers, Spiros