Hell On A Budget

The 2014 Australian Federal Budget has quite rightly been met with howls of despair:

People with mental illnesses will kill themselves. Old people will be fast tracked to the scrap heap. So they’re deaded too. I don’t even know what’s going to happen to the young unemployed but it looks like a fate worse than death. Limbo? Purgatory? What is it with Christian politicians and punishing sinners, I mean, the poor? 

Anyone whose life sucks now is going to experience industrial scale suckage. The tractor beam of suck lowering it’s hate orifice over the nation right now is going to vacuum up joy and shit it back as depression. Well done, normal people, you were reasonable, you didn’t go down to their level and they quickly took over. That’s showing them! 

At least this is only going to affect people we usually cross the road to avoid. I don’t know about you guys, but my ability to pretend I can’t see a disabled person is like ninja assassin invisibility. I’m a thing of beauty as I will my peripheral blindness to join up in the middle, forming a protective anus of good manners.

I don’t know another way to deal with people who haven’t found a way to matter. I mean, it’d be easier to carry these people if their boring problems didn’t make them pretty much wink out of existence just when I’m feeling generous enough to focus on them. Geez, get a fun problem guys! It’s like they’re not even trying. Poor people are such cliches. “Oh look at me, I’m in the poverty trap! The nature of my predicament is such that I can’t plan more than a day into the future! I obviously need help!” Yawn!

As for the elderly, what an admission of failure they really, really are, aren’t they? You got old? I’m going to assume the weakness on display here is indicative of a lack of character. 

The less said about single “parents”, the better.

People with problems are just draining to be around, we should house them in groups so we don’t have to look at them. You want a poverty trap? We’ll build you one.

Joe Hockey’s cock is a cigar and we’re smoking it. Forgive the imagery, but this Budget made me poo my pants and I think I might continue from there and regress all the way to birth. Then again, in a lot of ways this budget doesn’t affect me at all. I’m not one of the vulnerable people being targeted. My group is the demo that keeps it’s head down, works hard, knows what’s going on but is too smart and critical to actually do anything about it. My people value criticism above action, we’re great at commentary and shit at action. 

The most vulnerable rely on our mercy. Mercy takes courage. We don’t have any. Self-righteous? Definitely. Playing at being outraged is way more instant fun than the long term ups and downs of toughing out a good, long fight. Yep, ups and downs, can’t have those.

Mentally ill young people will be assessed as being able to lift heavy things and therefore job ready, ignoring that being around people, talking with people and dealing with their and your shit when you’re mental is not a great idea. 

Vulnerable people don’t matter. I don’t know who worked that out, but it’s the truth so let’s not argue the point. If you can’t survive on your own two feet while we kick out your crutches, tip you out of your wheelchair, set fire to your hospital bed, what is the point of you? Lift your game sunshine! 

“Why do bad things happen to good people?” This absolute chocolate coated nougat of a turd is asked by people who believe bad things happen as punishment for displeasing the Gods. The Gods now are The Market And Free Speech, one to guide us to prosperity, one to whip us into a hatred of outsiders that we rub into our skin in an orgy of mass loneliness, because you can’t have rational consumers without total alienation from any of that hippy shit like reality, the world or the reality of the world that sustains us despite our remarkably poor behaviour.

What will the future look like? Squalor. Enclaves. More and more cops. Activists rounded up and held in silence and solitude. Vast shopping malls filled with zombies on anti-depressants. The young are in for it. Their parents are looking at a lifetime supporting their adult children. Everyone’s looking at that family and wondering who’s gonna kill who first.

The pressure is going to be tremendous. The only way forward is Organising. People are going to have to find something specific and get involved. The real world is arriving, guys, it’s coming to Australia. But so many won’t be affected, which is actually a bad thing. Look at the USA, the filthy poverty there is epic and most of them barely register.

A guy is on the street, he’s in a wheelchair, you pretend you can’t see him, not because you’re a bad person, you can’t deal with that right now, that’s all. 

The street is now full of men in wheelchairs, your ability is tested but you reach for the stars and yes, you can do it, you just walked through a minefield of your own problems and ignored all of them. You are the problem as long as you keep rationalising away what’s happening and as long as you stay in your safe space of being smart and critical. We’re in too much trouble for you to be waiting for situations that meet your high standards.

Ok, I’ll look at your cat pictures now.