Waiting for the Antipodean Trump, by Michael Galak, who came to Australia with his family as refugees from the Soviet Union in 1978.
The brightest flash in the Trump ascendancy is that the next president, judging by his words, will neither suffer nor be cowed by the PC police. The ripple effect from this simple defiance should be immense. Trump’s tendency to call a spade a spade may well be replicated all over the world. Will its influence help to see the end of Section 18C law in Australia? Who knows, but it will affect the atmosphere in which these kinds of legal follies are conceived, sustained and implemented.
The main lesson of an American election for the world, including Australia, is this: the silent majority can still find its voice. This majority has been gagged by PC culture and the Left’s creeping, ever-expanding crimps on freedom of speech, plus the elites’ preoccupation with irrelevancies and useless niceties. I dare to hope there is an antipodean Trump waiting to reflect Australian voters’ concerns. When he or she takes the microphone and is heard, our local left will have something to fret about.
The left are more furious than they have been in living memory. They thought they were going to win.
As a long-term student of the American system, I can’t remember such fury after any other election which did not go the left’s way. Why such a strong feeling this time? I am mildly concerned that the combination of the left’s frustration and presumed moral superiority might prompt episodes of armed violence … an impression enhanced by an internet meme doing the rounds as I type — a Facebook post allegedly authored by Hollywood scriptwriter Paul Schrader. It may be a hoax — I hope it is — but the currency of its instantly widespread circulation and endorsements is deeply unsettling. Here is the post that thousands of disgruntled leftists are “liking” (emphasis added):
I have spent the last five days meditating on Trump’s election. Upon consideration, I believe this is a call to violence. I felt the call to violence in the 60’s and I feel it now again. This attack on liberty and tolerance will not be solved by appeasement. Obama tried that for eight years. We should finance those who support violence resistance. We should be willing to take arms. Like Old John Brown, I am willing to battle with my children. Alt-right nut jobs swagger violence. It’s time to actualize that violence, Like by Civil War Michigan predecessors I choose to stand with the black, the brown and the oppressed.
Schrader, who wrote the script for Raging Bull and several other modern classics, lives near the bucolic town of Lake Carmel in upstate New York. How would he fancy a bit of “swagger violence”, whatever that means, being visited upon his front door and the man who opens it? Probably wouldn’t fancy it at all, but that’s the Left all over — prescribe for others what you won’t countenance for yourself. So far no shots have been fired and the only “violence” is of the fanciful hoax variety, as mad anti-Trumpers fabricate incidents of alleged redneck intolerance.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
