ONE CROWDED HOUR

Opposing viewpoints.
"What are we, Stasi Germany?" one of the Watchers on the Watch asked one long, turbulent night. 
The suburb was quiet. Old Alex was exhausted from the psychological storms, raging, if you will, just out of sight. 
The horizon, an event horizon, was a sheet of frightening turbulence that ringed the encampment. 
They were all frightened, as well they should be.
Yet Normalcy Bias was well in place. 
Workers, marked by their fluorescent yellow and orange flack jackets, gathered at the Watering Hole each evening for a smoke, a beer, a relax, a gossip about work or bosses or others less sustained than themselves. They had all known each other for years. Their wives charming. Their children loyal. Their troubles shared, views known. Here and there, a familiar ribald joke.
In the midst, the intensity of vision, it was something to behold. 
And then they were all cornered, rats, the machines with their flame throwers herding them into corners. 
Democracy was well dead. 
"True 'dat," Tony would say at the cafe Old Alex still frequented in the morning. 
In collapsing realms, ritual became more important than ever. 
Not hostile.
He had tried to repeat, to no effect: I am not the enemy. 
He was not a propagandist. He was a story teller. And stories, truth, led where they will, took their own course. 
Block them, manipulate them as much as you like. They would find their own course. In old parlance: the truth would out.

Narratives grew from sometimes random detail; and now a different narrative was gripping the country. Ultimate sources, many sources, formed to make a story many wished they did not have to tell.

The truth was coming out now, about a stumbling government in a deep state of collapse, but beyond that a country born of promise, betrayed. 
A now pale, puffy faced leader in a kind of virtual exile, his every day a torture, his fake smile more like rigor mortis every day, Turnbull went through the motions, but knew he had already lost. 
He tried to pretend: the machinery of government was still functioning. His government would triumph. The bleat of jobs and growth would come true. 
No it wouldn't.
So poorly advised.
His accompanying apparatchiks went through the motions, but were already rationalising their loss, shifting blame. 
It had been an honour to serve.
No it hadn't.
It was an old courtroom tactic. Never say die. You never know how the judge will rule. You still got paid whichever way. 
The client might be stuffed, but you weren't.
The judge had ruled already in this case. The contravention of the spirits, justice, decency, a failure to understand. A failure to take democracy, or democratic notions, literally. Instead to become the ruler of the ruled, without a shred of gratitude to the servants. 
But the people did not want to be ruled, not by this one. Not this preening pigot sitting on a fence, concealing his prejudices, concealing the truth. One Big Lie.
And so the country's political wings went to mush, wasteful administrative programs squandered the country's resources, and a privileged bureaucracy went unchecked. 
If only he had been a force for good.

Instead, history was now waiting to be retold. 

At a time of almost existential crisis, the country, or at least the media, was gripped in a puerile, ridiculously all encompassing debate about gay marriage, or marriage equality as it was known. Led by politicians and a callow media obsession, led by virtue signallers and social justice warriors. Useful fools.
For a time it had suited the government to have the media, and therefore the public square, obsessed with trivia which led nowhere.
And then their gambit backfired into farce; as with everything else they touched, a shambles. 
There might be bigger issues, but marriage was symbolic enough. The government had no intention of facing the truth, or telling the public the truth: declining standards of living, threatening security concerns, unjust, counterproductive wars, a looming Depression, failed social programs from one end of the country to the other.
So the aristocrats ransacked the country and sold off all they could, shored up their own wealth and and then fled behind the walls of their mansions and estates. 
The peasants might revolt; they had their barriers. 
But the high walls would not keep them for long.
Not this time.
The gods had other plans. 

THE BIGGER STORY: 

Last week it Australian authorities said they had ‘reliable reports’ that notorious Islamic State terrorist Khaled Sharrouf and his two sons were killed in Syria in an air strike.
Fairfax Media understands the federal government was briefed on Tuesday by intelligence agencies that there was a high level of confidence the jihadist and his sons, Abdullah and Zarqawi, were killed in an air strike in Syria.
It is understood the strike happened while Sharrouf was driving near the Islamic State defacto capital al-Raqqa on Friday, August 11.
The father of five from Sydney gained notoriety with his violent rampage across strife-torn Syria and Iraq, the macabre details of which have been splashed across social media.
Sharrouf went by the nom de guerre Zarqawi al Australi, and posted many pictures of beheadings to the web, including pictures of his own sons holding up severed heads and a basket full of severed heads.

Abu Zarqawi Australi @UZarqawifew more heads how lovely bludy amazing stuff abuhafs u keep on cutting those infidel throats but the last 1 is mine!5:37 AM - 24 Jul 2014

Sharrouf made local headlines after two Portland police officers responded in November 2013 to what appeared to be a routine complaint of illegal shooters in the Capertee Valley.
The complaint related to gunfire that had been going on for quite some time on private property on Crown Station Road in the valley.
The men did not cause problems for the police and two were charged with firearms offences.
Sharouff’s friend and fellow ISIS combatant Mohamad Elomar, who was killed in an air strike in Syria in 2015, was also among the party in Capertee.

Some 42 people, including 19 children and 12 women, were killed in the strikes on the city on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
Activist-run group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said 32 people were killed in airstrikes on one neighbourhood alone.
All three sources blamed the US-led coalition for the strikes, it has been reported.
US-backed Syrian opposition fighters have been trying to capture Raqqa, the de facto capital of Islamic State, since June 6.
The strikes came after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance launched a ground assault on the city.
More than half of the city is reportedly now held by the Kurdish-led group.
The number of civilians killed in coalition strikes since August 14 has now risen to 167, according to the BBC.
The coalition said in June that its 22,983 air strikes in Syria and Iraq since 2014 had unintentionally killed at least 624 civilians.