The Age of Miracles

Submitted by Lindsay
Melbourne Australia!

How long, I wondered, could this thing last?
But the age of miracles hadn’t passed.
- Ira Gershwin, ‘A foggy day’

(9/2019) We in Australia have just elected a new Prime Minister who has remarkably similar properties to your president. He believes in miracles, literally, as he used the M word in his acceptance speech. And he’s not a pedant – he simply said, "I believe in Miracles." And he’s not a liar, because he knew it would take one to win.

So his Pentecostal faith once more brought him to his knees, then to his feet, arms raised, as he allowed the TV cameras to zoom onto him speaking in tongues. His Hillsong church burst into song, the followers knew they were truly justified, literally and spiritually, that they could now preach the gospel of superiority to the unbelievers, and all would be right in the heaven of the Australian parliament.

This is definitely a first anywhere in the world, something we all looked at with a degree of astonishment – was this guy real? Well, it turn out that so far, he is. He is a true believer, but what this means in the long term we just have to wait and see. Australians are a skeptical bunch, but we have been strangely quiet on this subject, as we’re wary of rubbishing sincerity.

President Trump probably doesn’t call his win a miracle, because he knows he was entirely responsible for it. In fact he has no use for them, (yet), egoists having faith in themselves alone, but he does talk in tongues – he calls them tweets – but fails to interpret them because they fall into a new category of logic – they are both true and untrue, depending of the nuance needed. Apart from that, they are as unalike as it is possible to get. Morrison is quiet, a man of the people eating pies and hot dogs, with no alcohol ever; he’s considered, no off-the-cuff pronouncements, a courteous listener who so far has not shouted, sworn or disparaged anyone.

He would be horrified if anyone suggested sexual misdeeds, business chicanery, or cheating his employees. He runs his caucus in ways unheard of - ministers are advised not to go on camera or speak off-the-cuff except for a policy update. Gone is the braggadocio, the rubbishing of the opposition, or the rhetoric of former years. Parliament is almost quiet, much to the chagrin of the press gallery.

The oddest thing of all is that from the very first appearance in the election campaign until now, no mention of policy has been made. Yes, tax cuts to big business were essential, the books had to be balanced etc., none of it new or controversial. The opposition, meanwhile, went overboard with policies running out of its ears, leaving them wide open to attack and misunderstanding. He stuck to slogans: Jobs and growth, no new taxes, Australia first and so on. He took every opportunity to bag the Labor party, to visibly brush off criticism as if it was beneath his notice. Against every prediction, it worked. That’s how the miracle was crafted.

There is, however, several areas that the two leaders have in common. They are ultra-conservative, are anti-climate change, pro big business, anti refugee, and for the privatization of government businesses. They appear to have got on well at the G20, and may do so at the G7 to which Morrison is going as an observer, having been invited by Macron. This honour affirms Australia’s standing as an important mid-level democracy, and will allow the most powerful nations to see this man of faith close up.

President Trump has reiterated his high regard for Australia, and we have felt it necessary to honour this again by sending a warship to the Gulf to help protect oil tankers, but it is how Morrison deals with the president’s lunacy that really matters, both to us and the rest of the world.

No one has ever experienced anything like his total lack of morality, or his unbelievable foreign policy. The trade war that he embarked on, and is now ramping up, will bring commerce to its knees if it goes on. It’s obvious that he is out of his depth in this area. No, depth is not the word – he has inverted reality, and is trying to fix a delicate situation with a sledgehammer. He accuses China of currency manipulation and unfair trade practices. They are simply doing what America has done itself in the past and which they knew no one could challenge, them being the guy with the biggest stick.

Now the other guy has an even bigger stick and is not going to fold. The world is now so interconnected that a war on the freedom of trade will produce no winners, and America will suffer the most. His blinkered pronouncements are the last thing needs. Anyone with a vision of the whole will see that ignoring the consequences of idiocy like this will be the end of the world as we know it.

Of course, he may know this already, and just doesn’t care. He may know that within fifty years climate change will destroy most of us, that the Brazilian fires with do for oxygen levels what greenhouse gases are doing for sea levels.

Maybe he feels that this is not quick enough, so he better get moving and start the train wreck by killing trade. That’s possible, of course, but of this I am certain – someone will have removed him from office before then.

He may after all believe in miracles, that his actions will cauterize the self-inflicted wounds, that China will say, ‘sorry, Sir’ and climb back in its box, but it ain’t going to happen.

The real miracle will be getting the world back onto the road of prosperity again. Come on, all you faithful pray-believing people, get cracking. Morrison is.

You’re needed as never before.