SHEETS OF SLEET, AN INVISIBLE HORIZON

A collapsing government in high dudgeon. A dispirited population, but that was already known. An indifferent colonial aristocracy, but that too was known. In this tiny space. Something extraordinary. Hovering over suburbs. Memory played too large a part. Old houses. Gripped occasions. Long cold stone corridors. A whisper of the past and the future. Of watching squirrels hop through ancient mango trees.  And then: here. They were back, the hummingbirds, hovering high, wings burring in invisible air, their long proboscis reaching down into the mushy brains of enemies, destroying them. The curses had worked in ways impossible to predict. Beware. Be very careful indeed. They were fooling with things they did not understand; and the arrogance of humans knew no bounds. 

The borders of reason had nothing to do with it. Magical thinking, magical worlds. The mundane flesh knew nothing. He could lash out as easily as they could die. It wouldn't happen overnight, but it would happen. Discredited, the fools who had followed him had all been sacked, removed, passed over for promotion, in one case pushed upstairs, where that idiot's bumbling condescension and smart ass tricks was turning another office into a nasty place to work. Here, entrapped in the burbs, they had tried all sorts of tricks. Captain Janeway. Jean Luc Picard: "A starship captain's life is filled with solemn duty." All their cheap Star Trek tricks. All their cheap tricks full stop. They would never understand. They were not meant to understand. 

But he could rail against the stupidity of man and dive down as many rabbit holes as infinity could offer, nothing would relieve him of solemn duty.

These animals embraced their belief systems.

Tawhid (Arabic: توحيد‎‎ tawḥīd, meaning "oneness [of God]"; also romanized as tawheed, touheed or tevhid) is the indivisible oneness concept of monotheism in Islam. Tawhid is the religion's most fundamental concept and holds that God is One (Al-ʾAḥad) and Single (Al-Wāḥid).

What evolutionary purpose did it serve? 

Unknown. 

Once the theory had been that the belief in one god unified humans, made the society more cohesive, therefore less riven, therefore more productive. Which was why, for a time, Western civilisation had triumphed.

But with the Gods of War ignited across the world, with the death of tens of thousands in the ancient city of Nineveh still fresh in the collective unconscious, with their destructive malevolence written in flame and smoke in the invisible sky, when all was mirrored down onto a presiding Earth, when the fate of nations and the fortunes of men were mere playthings for the heavens, when, in this far off colony of consciousness the rulers had betrayed the people and looted the countryside, well then, it turned on a dime, or an instance.

Yes, there were plots afoot. Of course there were. But bemused, confused by the endless security theatre for which a collapsing government reached with fine desperation, the manipulation of entire populations, they didn't pass Standard Course 101. Fresh out of college, or university, besmirched with the supposedly radical theories of the sixties, seventies, even the thirties, dusted by the bullshit of their professors, they had entirely misunderstood the nature of those they wished to manipulate. Their notions, their communication and media degrees, their pathetic lapses of concentration, it was all leading, in a sense, to the collapse of the current government.

Led by fools. Populated by fools. Useful fools. None of them could reign in the preening ego of their boss. Malcolm Turnbull flailed out against the world which had failed to be ruled, as much as he wished to rule. Intellectual arrogance. A bullying persona. It might have worked in the corporate world. Even in the courts. But it didn't work as a political reality. 

The voters, who clearly Malcolm Turnbull thought of as his subjects, simply would not comply. 

All the latest theory of the apparatchiks turned to mush in the face of practicality. The government was falling in the polls. Collapsing credibility. Desperate action. 

It would not take long.

All the announceables were rubble on the path to defeat. The Innovation Nation. The new Snowy Mountain scheme. Jobs and Growth. Green jobs. Our standing in the world. Terror terror terror. The mantra. We are the most successful multicultural nation on earth. We have the best security services in the world. 

A drizzling, stale, dying administration hung across the nation; smothering, dysfunctional, contemptuous, despised. 

Reality, oh blessed truth, was the wettest of wet blankets, killing their forlornest of hopes they could talk their way out of this one as well. That they could ignore the polls. Ignore the people. Dream their social justice warrior dreams. 

Would the Prime Minister last the week? 

Well the populace was more than happy to say: Bye Bye. The sooner the better. 

They didn't care how bad the Opposition was anymore. 

The dead were coming back to haunt the most arrogant and out of touch Prime Minister in Australian history. 

And so they should. 

Unimaginable. Perhaps. Except it was thus so. 


THE BIGGER STORY:

Politicians and experts have warned that Isis will wage more war on British soil after suffering humilating defeats in Iraq and Syria.
They fear the terror group will lash out across the world – including the UK – when their Syrian base in Raqqa falls to ­coalition forces following defeat in Mosul in Iraq.
UK Security Minister Ben ­Wallace said the terror threat to Britain is rising as Isis ­continue to lose territory.
He said: “I think the threat is still increasing, partly driven by the fact Isis is collapsing in Syria and people are either unable to get out there to fight for Isis and so they look to do something at home, or because people have come back and have tried to inspire people with their stories and tales of the caliphate.

COMMENTATORS have given the Turnbull Government a brutal warning in the wake of a disastrous Newspoll that shows just how unpopular the Coalition is.
Sydney radio shock jock Alan Jones said the two-party preferred vote published by The Australian, which saw the Coalition trailing Labor 54 — 46, was a sign the Liberal Party needed to dump Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
“How much longer will it take before Turnbull and Brandis and those two windbags Scott Morrison and Mathias Cormann ... realise this election is very winnable, but you have to change leaders and change policy,” he said.
Former Labor senator and commentator Graham Richardson said the result was “devastating”.
“That’s 20 seats,” he told the Nine Network.
“It is a smashing massacre. This is no easy thing for them to ever get around, and all they have got in front of them is turmoil.”
The shock poll comes as the citizenship saga plaguing parliament has engulfed the government, with questions of the validity of at least three coalition members as well as key crossbencher Nick Xenophon.
A High Court decision over Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce’s recently discovered dual citizenship could threaten the government’s majority.
The disastrous poll numbers follow an internal Coalition row over same-sex marriage that saw the government push ahead with a postal plebiscite that many members didn’t want, and the PM’s move to challenge energy retailers on power prices.