THE TERRORISTS WITHIN

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” Oscar Wilde.

Incompetent government, from top to bottom, from year to year. 

Old Alex heard it all, from the ignorance of the populace to the connivance of government agents. 
"You have no idea how bad things are" morphed into a channel of horror, soon to be a river. 
Might as well pack it up. 

Strategic withdrawals were just for show. They would never leave. 
Just another security agency cock-up.
They were used to unlimited power. Data dumps. To concealing their efforts; papering over yet another travail. To getting away with murder, literally.
We would wait and see. 
He heard the Americans in the midst of everything. The agents kowtowed to them as if they were a superior species.
Everything was a farce. 
In the dreaming reaches of the southern villages compulsory local council elections were on for the Saturday and there was the usual clutter of Labor, Liberal and Independent spruikers outside government buildings.
"I voted early," one denizen declared. "I hate queuing up with a pack of assholes to vote for another pack of assholes."
The houses, the streets, everything in the lakeside suburb looked squashed by too-heavy air as they drove down to the polling booth.
"What's this for again?" Gaz asked as they pulled up outside the school, its front festooned with placards of local politicians nobody ever saw except at election time. "Is this the gay marriage thing?"
Old Alex explained it was the local council elections. Having already performed his civic duty, he sat in the ute waiting for Gazza to vote. 
"It's just disgraceful politics, completely disgraceful politics," Old Alex began upon Gaz's return, referring to just about every useless thing the federal government in particular was doing, launching crackdowns here, phony wars there, stirring nationwide discontent with an idiot postal plebiscite on gay marriage, wasting tens of billions of dollars of public monies on everything from the disastrously mismanaged National Broadband Network to Defence contracts nobody even pretended were value for money.
"I just drew a cock and balls with splurry coming out on one, and You're all a bunch of cock suckers" on the other," Gaz said, referring to his efforts on the local ballot papers. 
In the broader medium there were learned essays on the nature of disgust surrounding homosexuality.
Did the world really need academic essays, taxpayer funded of course, on the nature of disgust? 
Scuffles broke out in Brisbane.
The Muslim community remained largely quiet, the dirty little secret of the marriage equality left, that thanks to the multiculturalism they had so fervently chanted there were now tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in the country who sincerely believed they would be doing Allah's duty if they killed homosexuals. Crucified them. Tossed them from buildings. Saved them from themselves.
The Orlando preacher had been an honoured guest. 
It was a triumph of diversity. 
They got their diversity alright. 
Crackdown on dissent. Widely disillusioned populace. Resentment everywhere. Ethnic tensions rising, everywhere. No one had a good word to say. Not about the government. The soaring price of everything, cigarettes, petrol, electricity, all of them had jumped in price in the previous few days. 
Toss them from buildings. Crucify them. 
Nothing could be a greater anathema to the Muslims than gay marriage, nothing more specifically designed to convince them they had fallen amongst the infidels than the sight of two men or two women holding hands, kissing. That they were right to send their children to Muslim schools and the sooner Sharia law was instituted the better. 
The country was already becoming a tinderbox created by profound mismanagement. 
All it would take was one Muslim gang to bash one emboldened tranny, an entirely plausible scenario, and it would be on, the clashing creeds, a dissolving country.
Spit on them.  
He knew. He could hear the danger through the walls, in the fabric of things, a terrible maladjustment, stunted psycho-social-sexual development, a crying shame, a bashed body, a bloodied stranger staggering down a blind alley. 
It was an obscene failure of public policy. 
A dog barked tediously on a suburban shooting range. 
Drunken shouts. Degraded lords. Their own curriculums. Hate-filled morons. The truth would out. The national security agencies were in league with the fringe elements of neighbourhood policing, organising their hunting packs, their whispering campaigns, their denigration of anyone who disagreed with the government narrative. We're the best country in the world. We're luck to live here. 
Their attempt to control all artistic endeavour, to bend it to their will.
In a land where terror was an instrument of control, fear of strangers used to instill social conformity while at the same time the diversity brigade destroyed the traditional culture with a self-righteous gusto, as if they, too, had been caught up in an historic movement. The only one the gods would grant them. The greater good.

The schoolmaster of Darjeeling said
He saw you by the Tengboche monastery
You were playing in the snow
You were banging on the doors
You climbed up on the roof
Roof of the world
You were pulling up the rhododendrons
Loping down the mountain
They want to know you
They will hunt you down
Then they will kill you
Run away, run away
Run away. Kate Bush Wild Man.

 THE BIGGER STORY: 

Observers of the same-sex marriage debate will have noticed the voice of one particular community has been largely missing from the fray: Muslims.
With few exceptions, including a statement from the National Imams Council, almost all of the talk of religious freedom and opposition to the bill on the grounds of faith has come from Christian leaders, particularly from the Anglican and Catholic Churches.
But now one Muslim leader has offered an explanation.
Last night on ABC's The Drum, Ali Kadri, spokesman for the Islamic Council of Queensland and the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said his community was stuck with the choice of offending allies or siding with critics, and the result had been silence.
"Unfortunately, in the current climate, the right and conservative side has attacked Muslims as terrorists and extremists, and naturally the left side has been allies in defending us for a long period of time," he said.
"We are afraid if we come out with our opinion then the left may abandon us for going against their view and we can't be friendly with the conservatives because they have been bashing us for 15, 20 years every chance they get … and that includes some Christian sects as well."

THE debate over same-sex marriage turned ugly last night when a protest by “yes” campaigners erupted into violent scenes.
Protesters outside a Brisbane church claimed they were attacked with cars as they gathered to oppose a meeting they described as a “homophobic forum”.
Police attended the gathering at St Michael’s Dorrington Catholic Church at Ashgrove and at least one woman was treated by paramedics.
Jessica Payne, who was injured at the scene, said the crowd was aggressive and “extremely violent”.
“I suffered an injury because people drove their cars nearly at full speed into the yes campaigners here today,” she told Nine’s Today.
“It was extremely scary, extremely irresponsible, and police actually tried to help the people in the cars get through the crowd of protesters.”