Mr Crusader Rabbit Shows His True Colours

WELL, as if we didn’t expect this reaction from the paid conservative apologists in the Murdoch press.

The most reactionary Liberal leader in living memory manifests his core belief that individuals are no more than cannon fodder, that Diggers’ deaths are just part of their job description, and then he disgusts every decent person with a dismissive obscenity – except Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, who would not know decency if it bit them on their bought-and-paid-for arses.

“Shit happens” Mr Rabbit shrugged when discussing the latest Australian casualty in America’s imperialist occupation of Afghanistan. Read The Age account of Abbott's indifference. That paper gets it right, as usual.

Shit happens indeed!

A Digger’s death is “shit”, apparently, to be scraped off Abbott’s conscience like dog dirt on a shoe. It is a shocking, deeply disturbing moment in the Mad Monk’s gaffe-prone gallop across the stage of Australian politics.

Unforgiveable. Inexcusable. Appalling. Cringe-worthy. Disgusting.

They are the personal traits and characteristics that define the Liberal leader, a musclebound extrovert who delights in disporting his six-pack and bulging groin in those infamous Speedos. He is an actor, egomaniac and poseur, a man who goes bush to “help” Indigenous communities, but only if the TV cameras are trailing along to record his every noble act – and an act it is.  Now he has made those deficiencies of character the defining “qualities” of the party he leads. If his Coalition spear carriers do not come forward, speak up and demand that Abbott step down, the Liberals will forever be condemned as the heartless bastards we have always suspected them to be.

How could a man, an aspiring national leader, describe a dead Australian soldier as “shit”? It boggles the mind, but the explanation really isn’t that hard to find. All we have to do is look at Abbott’s dominant Catholic philosophy and the historical precedents his faith provides for dismissing human life as less than worthless in this existence. The value of human life comes only after death, in the Abbott view.

It is a perspective that is a time honoured tenet of Catholicism and it puts our crusader Rabbit firmly in the tradition of his spiritual guide, the Inquisitor Arnaud of Poblet, who was unleashed by the Pope against the peaceful Cathar “heretics” of Southern France.

"Kill them all. For the Lord knows them that are His," was Arnaud’s advice to a general who was wondering how to tell Cathars from Catholics in a town about to be put to the sword. Today we translate this doctrinal wisdom as “Kill them all and let God sort it out”, which is exactly what the Pope’s butchers did.

Now Abbott has donned the bloody armour of the anti-humanist papal legions of old. It is a good fit and he slips it on as easily as his Speedos.

As Bolt and Blair whip up their red-neck rabble (they have no shame; their followers have no brains), remember the truth about Abbott – the timeless truth about his disregard for human life (except in the womb) that his faith has woven into his political DNA.

FOOTNOTE: The link with the Cathars resonates through the centuries. The Cathars believed in equality of the sexes, non-violence, community property and every person’s right to commune directly with the God. Is it any wonder that Abbott finds their murderers’ sword fits so neatly into his callous, blood-stained hand?