The Sickening Rot of the Australian Pundit

If a chance comes to bay for blood in a a useless war, Australian pundits will be right there, insisting upon its necessity. From pundit-who-cosplayed-as-PM Tony Abbott advocating for mandatory national service for the last few years, to bearded pseudo-intellectuals such as Caleb Bond insisting we need a war to stiffen up our “weak” men, there has been no shortage of Australian writers who gormlessly insist upon the need for our island to go to war with the biggest nation in the world, China.

Now, Australia has a population of just over 26 million, a standing army of 57 thousand in the Australian Defence Force, with 32 thousand reservists and some aging American weapons and machinery, as opposed to China’s army which currently has 2 million active personnel. You can see why this is utterly absurd to the degree of being a little foo-foo puppy dog nipping at the ankle of a blooded Tiger.  

“But Vedran”, I hear you shout, “Caleb and Tones-and-I weren’t calling for war with China, just for us to be better prepared!”. Sure. Caleb has been involved in plenty of fear mongering around the presence of Chinese spies or constantly reporting about the looming threat of China and how we need to be scared shitless of their existence, but his calls for a war to toughen up our youth wasn’t specifically about China!

But today my ire is set upon Chris Uhlmann, the man most representative of the anti-intellectual and decay that is the Australian pundit published an article which the publisher helpfully included the worst passage of – one where he compares our relationship to China as a rape scenario. Which realistically, is not really unexpected from a hack like Uhlmann.

Uhlmann has long shown anti-intellectual and idiotic inclinations, as is expected of a writer for the Australian and a contributor to Sky News Australia. They’re not exactly the home of authentic writers who do the work. More like they slap an article together, whack on some clickbait and appeal to right-populist sentiment. Hardly the work of genuine journalists.

And here is no different. A lazy and sloppily written story about how he came to work his way up in the world and how that led to a security job with a typical sociopathic prison guard who gave important life lessons about violence and fighting. It’s so painful and cliché, it almost brought me to tears.

However, this isn’t the worst sin to me.

One paragraph.

One paragraph of what?

One paragraph in this entire tortured, pathetic piece of writing (that I don’t even want to call an article) is all this article has to tie into this bloodthirsty hawk’s rank desire to go to war with China.  Three hyperlinks, all naturally to The Australian, and then quickly throwing out a bunch of allegations about drug-running syndicates, and foreign legions of useful idiots (which presumably, he would accuse this author of being).

But here’s the thing: I’m not the type to mindlessly kneejerk in defence of China for the sake of saying “America bad”. I frequently criticise both China’s foreign policy (arming the right-wing Fillipino government in their war against communists is not what a supposedly ‘communist’ country should do) and domestic policy.

But, be serious. For Australia, a giant land mass with a tiny population, to act like we could realistically go to war with China and it not be horribly traumatic, result in massive deaths of young Australians, and most likely result in permanently destabilising the country is absurd.

And that’s me saying that. I’m a font of absurdity.

So, ask yourself this, reader.

Does Chris actually see any value to throw Australia’s future into a full-scale backing of the slowly-destabilising empire that is the United States of America, or does he simply wish to engage in this fantasy that has arisen due to the constant hagiography around the legacy of the ANZAC’s? Has years of “patriotic” history that has told the people of this nation that Gallipoli was actually a victory, and that the spirit of the Aussie digger was born in adversity so thoroughly washed away the dirt of history that we have forgotten the betrayal and pain of Gallipoli?

The British sent Australian and New Zealanders to die under Turkish machinegun fire while the First Lord of Admiralty Winston Churchill viewed it as nothing more than a necessary sacrifice. He then proceeded to do it again, 26 years later in 1941, during his failed campaign to stop the Nazi invasion of Greece, and the equally disastrous campaign to hold Crete.

When individuals like Chris, who have not known the pains of poverty, of meaningful threat of harm, set out to send Australian workers out to war, they do so knowing it will never be them. Why would it be? They have the exceptionally important job – cheering on the cause, and then abandoning it once the fervour of great patriotism has subsided.

Patriotism is a poison that has been sold to this country as the cure.

Do not let it delude you into thinking that a war with China is the preferable outcome.

Because it won’t be Uhlmann’s blood spilling upon the earth when the bombs drop.

It’ll be ours.