The Real Douchebag: Why we shouldn't humour Bob Katter

He's been around for wayyy longer than many people realise, his head is too large for his body, his hat is essential to daily life, and it doesn't take a genius to work out that he must drink enough liquor every night to knock out an eight-metre saltwater crocodile.

He's also been part of the music scene on at least two non-consecutive occasions.

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But there the similarities between cosmopolitan music industry personality Molly Meldrum and socially-backward Federal MP Bob Katter end.

Now that he's managed to wedge himself a disproportionately influential slot in Federal Parliament, Bob Katter seems to be sniffing around on the periphery of just about everything.

Last week, for example, he decided to weigh in on the Queensland State Election by running a smear campaign against conservative candidate Campbell Newman, accusing him of the heinous crime of supporting gay marriage.

Hot topic right now, of course, mainly because the majority of Australians support it. But, much to the chagrin of the entire nation, the whole thing has resulted in Bob Katter being fucking everywhere again... and his seat isn't even up for grabs.

To be clear though, the Federal MP's new novelty political party does actually have candidates running in the Queensland election, so it wasn't totally out of line that he be involved; but Australia could surely have done without the nauseating effort Katter puts into avoiding the shit out of every single bloody interview question he's asked, and the affected indecipherable lunacy that accompanies it.

It's also frustrating because it seems such a no-brainer - and that Katter is simply being a pain in the arse. Again. But like far too many conservative politicians, it's more serious. He is an opportunistic religious hypocrite who has built a career out of the fears of others. He's not quite Pauline Hanson, but at least she was upfront about what she was doing and didn't keep dodging the fucking question.

Bob Katter's rise to national influence - from a belligerent backwater irrelevance to a sought-after Federal chess piece - has revealed his archaic social conservative agenda to the nation. And naturally it's totally out of touch with the nuances of urban life. That's a fact he will happily admit.

The rest of us could probably do without it, but apparently shit flows only one way, and Bob Katter keeps turning up for work regardless.

Son of another bloody politician who had the same name as him and also appears to have also been keen on Rome's Jesus, Bob "The Mad Hatter" Katter has spent his life-long political career operating in the middle of Queensland's Gulf Country. His electorate is nearly 600,000 km² big with ~0.15 voters per km².

Hanging out with his other constituents

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In other words: almost no other cunts live there, and those that do are hardly likely to be authorities on matters of social intercourse. It's a distant land that, even today, remains frontier country.

Katter and his party are having a sook because they reckon that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

The rest of the Western world have totally agreed to do that, and of that 'rest', the majority of us are all like 'hey dudes, we should let gay dudes and lesbians etc marry as well cause, if that's what they want to do, who gives a fuck anyway!?'

As has been pointed out a million times by the entire fucking Internet, marriage equality offers only opportunities for people - no disadvantages.

With the whole equality thing, NO ONE IS OPPRESSED AT ALL and nobody would take anything away from anybody else. Not rights, not money, not any of the things people care about.

Unless they're a bigot with too much pride and zero empathy.

On this issue, Bob Katter is being a total fucking bigot, seemingly just for the sake of it, and he is happy to publicly fall out with his own brother over it, but still have "family values" as a core policy and justification for his opinion. Right.

It is almost certain that the more Katter acts like a total wanker, the more votes his novelty party will get from the other socially-retarded bigots on the electoral roll in Queensland. Ultimately they pay his salary. The system works!

And indeed, history has proven the sheer number of redneck voters available and ready to go to the polls in that state to be nothing short of astounding. There is a booming market for baffling idiocy in Queensland.

Irony: Do you speak it?!

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It's all a bit of a drag, really, especially for those of us left-leaning legends who were initially piqued by some of Bob Katter's other policies in the wake of last year's election - in particular, his economic outlook almost seemed progressive. What the fuck?

Initially there were suggestions that it might be amusing, even handy, to have a boorish good-ol'-uncle from the Gulf Country in the headlines, diggin' out old socialist economic ideas that nobody had the balls to talk about lest Rupert Murdoch's vicious reactionary machinery launched a relentless McCarthiest assault in their general direction. (It wouldn't be the first time!)

It is, for example, increasingly becoming apparent that the Australian community would have done better to hold onto particular sovereign assets, rather than relinquishing them all willy-nilly in a full-pelt rush to compete on global markets.

Katter's old school. He is all for standing up to privatisation, he wants a moratorium on coal seam gas (but hates the 'greenies' of course), and he's a fan of collective bargaining. He seemed to be a baffling mix of economic justice [protectionism actually] and social disruption. With a big fucking hat.

Sadly though, the novelty of Bob Katter: Flamboyant Über Hick evaporated pretty quickly once the cold reality of the man's old school settler colonist outlook became clear. It's all the wrong kinds of Jesus - and it's easy to forget that the early Australian Labor Party, with whom both Katter and his old man had links - could certainly devolve into a pack of racist cunts when they wanted to.

It's a little-known fact that the whole 'bourgeois' thing was actually an international conspiracy orchestrated from Peking by a small group of interstellar reptiles, cunningly disguised as 19th Century Chinese smack fiends
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With this in mind, it's entirely possible to suggest that Bob Katter's seemingly 'progressive' return to community-based economic policy is in fact not a 'return' at all. He has all the hallmarks of a massively conservative Stubborn Fuck mentality whose ideas haven't changed since the 1940s.

Perhaps the banks, while they were swindling the rest of the world with neoliberalism, just didn't really bother going all the way out to Cloncurry to argue with people who hung out all day in 50°C heat with nothing but their cattle, their guns and their seemingly infinite hectares of infertile soil.

Or... maybe they figured they could just go out there a couple of decades later and start extracting natural gas from right underneath the farmers' noses, on their own lands, without even having to ask their freakin' permission.

But look, if we're being honest with ourselves, the economy, in whatever form, is nothing without quality of life - and that is what Katter is vigorously striving to deny others through his relentless opposition to marriage equality.

And, of course, Bob is more than happy to bandy around his electorate's truly epic suicide problems as his pet local sob-story whenever it suits him.

The Internet has done my work for me
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So yeah, despite all his rhetoric about the importance of marriage and family stability, he seems oblivious to the idea that happiness and security in relationships is in fact a... oh, dare I say it - 'pro-life' stance.

By which I mean, 'pro-' the actual meanings of life. Like being happy and fulfilled and all that.

Take that shit away and the desire to live decreases. It's a fucking no-brainer. These 19th Century social mores that Katter is spruiking are inherently intolerant, therefore they decrease the value of life all round.

And, really, who gives a fuck about the economy, or anything else, if you're not gonna be happy either way?

ANYWAY folks reward yourself with this:

PS: just in case you missed it at the beginning.... BOB KATTER EGGED THE FUCKING BEATLES. And he brags about it. What a douche.

"Be excellent to each other": 'Progress' as Actual Progress, rather than just being the word developers use whenever they want to wreck your shit

Progress is only actually progress if the resulting situation is better than the original was.

For example, the Citibank building in Perth is not progress when compared to the vastly superior Moir Chambers that once stood in its place. LOOK AT THAT SHIT. Fuck Citibank.

Citibank:
today your architecture
tomorrow the world

UPDATE: 29 October 2011 - Correction: Citibank actually took over the building after the new one was built. The new building was originally known as the 'New T & G Building.' Irrespective of this, the building is an architectural clusterfuck - an inferior shoebox - and regardless, Citibank can go get fucked for all of the many dubious things that they have done over the years. Both the building and the new owners suck arse.

Similarly, your monocultural pine plantation was a backwards move because the original wilderness was simply better, providing a thriving ecosystem that benefitted not just humanity but also the millions of life forms themselves.

What's that, multinational timber mill guy, you think you're better than them?

Listen, douchebag, your products suck and your mill is manned by robots and computers... so quit trying to manipulate your workers, whom you rip off with your stingy wages, into violently defending your share price.

Fuck your share price. If your company doesn't exist for the public good then it sucks and should be closed down.

The entire share market is based on fiat capital which doesn't really exist. Fiat capital is based on debt, and nothing else.

Therefore not only is it not REAL, the current economic structure is INFERIOR to the gold standard we had before, and was set up only to benefit aristocrats.

The capitalist fiat notion of 'economy' sucks and is not progressive.

It was originally all just based on British aristocrats enclosing The Commons and taking what was everyone's and making it their own.

Classism is pretty much the bullshit that fuels non-progressive politics. It's the aristocrats trying to maintain power. If they can't do it through force they do it through lies, such as organised religion.

What a crock of shit.

Now, before you start, I'm not valorising the working class. They are generally less educated and violent, and easily manipulated, and don't have the start-up capital to affect real change that the versatile middle classes do.

Plus most of them are now the pawns of aristocrats through their mindless brand loyalty; and the inherant anger that has them listening to mean-spirited wankers like Alan Jones and voting for neo-conservative creeps like Tony Abbott.

Fuck all neo-cons. Allowing homos to marry, for example, and other forms of legal social equity are advantageous to society because they spread love, not fear.

No true progress comes from fear.

War sucks for this reason and is just an excuse for non-progressive, non-accountable corporations to increase their share price in an economy that doesn't exist. It's the most transparent thing ever. Fuck you, Dick Cheney.

The government's role should be to keep such corporations (and real estate developers) in line, and also to act as a community chest enabling every citizen of the planet to be fed, clothed, educated, at least have a roof over their head and have access to water and cheap utilities and to be able to go to the hospital when they're sick either for free, or for cheap, or at the very least without upfront payment.

For this reason, paying tax is actually cool so long as the money is going to the correct places and not pumped into bullshit like the police force.

For god's sake, how many more times do we need to see the police used for the sole purpose of protecting the aforementioned Aristocrats of Big Capital before people learn to critically analyse the situation.

The people with the guns are not your friends.

They are trained to hate you, and assume you are a criminal, to further the power of politicians and big business who, let's face it, are in bed together nine times out of ten, trying to make the world more shit--as I asserted above.

To prevent this, and to ensure the aforementioned positive uses of government, we should all be mindful to engage in a popular, pluralist democracy based on education, rationalism, empathy, responsibility and peace.

You are not an individual floating in space alone. Your lifespan is brief but your influence can be significant. Use it wisely. And, for god's sake, don't be some Prince's pawn.

In closing, feel free to disregard the above. If all else fails, have a sick time with cunts. Even if they're aristocrats. Friendship is mutually beneficial and a totally progressive situation.

This Disgusting Pig Must Go

As news comes in hard and fast this morning about Barnett's thugs dragging protesters into cars at James Price Point, it's worth reflecting what we've gotten ourselves into.

I'd apologise to Fat Mike but he's an arrogant cunt and so am I.

• Kimberley Land Grab where our state police are being used to protect Woodside's interests
• Unadulterated corruption and collusion between the state and mining companies.
• The introduction and subsequent cross-pollination of genetically-modified canola into the state's food supply.
• The concurrent sale of our public food assets to Monsanto, of all people.
• Collusion with real estate developers to turn land, which was bequeathed to the state under the condition that it never be developed, into a private canal estate in the middle of Rockingham.
• Consistant attempts on behalf of Police Minister Rob Johnson to remove the presumption of innocence from a wide range of laws: this includes his failed Stop & Search legislation, temporary CHOGM laws as well as a range of traffic and other legislation.
• Failure to ensure that our hospitals and prisons are owned by the community, not sold to profiteering cowboys.
• Consistant disrespect of our state's traditional owners and an utter disregard for everybody else. A perpetuation of imperial mores that belong in the 19th Century.

It's time to fucking go, Colin. Enjoy your cushy retirement job as a "consultant" to Woodside.