Those damn people

The pesky masses have done it again.

From the point of view of the media and intellectual elite, the convoy to Canberra is the last straw. Julia Gillard and her ministerial colleagues looked out at the trucks surrounding Parliament House and concluded that the people are beyond redemption.

Don’t be fooled by the dismissive comments of the likes of Craig Emerson and Anthony Albanese, who described the protest as, ‘a convoy of no consequence’. They know that the electorate has turned against them.

A mandate for the carbon dioxide tax? Don’t be silly. The masses don’t know what is good for them. The level of carbon indulgences is best decided through the messianic insights of the inner city elite. 

As Lenin would have asked, what is to be done? Gillard, the Greens and the witless Oakeshott and Windsor have decided. They will impose the carbon dioxide tax on the people. Overwhelming opposition will simply be proof that the people have failed the Government and failed Australia.

This brings to mind that famous poem by Bertolt Brecht, which may be described as a totalitarian lament. After the uprising in East Germany against Communist rule in June 1953, he wrote as follows:

The Solution

 After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writer’s Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts.   Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?