Below is an excerpt of my very first published article, thanks to the legends over at the OC87 Recovery Diaries. It’s a bit confronting, but hopefully also useful for anyone who’s experienced something similar. You can read the full story by clicking the ‘read more’ link at the bottom.
Yep, I’m depressed. And it isn’t the first time.
We all know the story—everything is chugging along nicely and all it takes is one simple change or one unfavourable event for life to come crashing down on top of you yet again.
Depressed—devoid of hope, devalued to the world, disgraced to yourself that you “let it happen” again.
But, you know what? This is recovery. You don’t see it in the first moments, I certainly didn’t, and I’m trained to notice this kind of stuff.
It’s been a long journey—and whose hasn’t been? At nineteen I finally sought help and described to a doctor what had been going on for me for the past four years. Of course it was depression. I knew it, but I didn’t want to admit it.
Don’t forget if you need an affordable sound engineer, or you’re caught in a pinch without one, I can provide you with a budget option for up to 5 acts per night over 5 hours for a flat fee of just $115!
I will also be able to provide disinfectant wipes for microphones and leads due to COVID-19 protocols.
Please note: drum mics and extra equipment hire is not currently available.
I will soon post some specials on recording once I have setup a new studio location!
Relive my 25 Day Song Challenge by subscribing to my YouTube channel!
I’ll be re-publishing the 25 Day song challenge – day by day – that was recorded across June and July this year in support of Mental Health awareness and suicide prevention during this very weird time. The original challenge was featured on both my Facebook and Instagram pages in real time.
So if lockdown’s got you down, give yourself a few minutes each day to immerse yourself in the #25songchallenge.
Released at 2:30pm AEST on weekdays 9AM & 5PM AEST on weekends
How our scrolling habits and sources of information are changing amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
In our new reality post-COVID-19, it’s easy to get lost in the torrents of information being spewed out from the news and media platforms daily. Figures, graphs, charts, new lingo like “flatten the curve,” and “social distancing;” but one thing that hasn’t yet been spoken about in any great depth is people’s reactions with their devices.
I – for one – have certainly noticed a heavy increase in my social media use and news scrolling, and I figured that surely, I wasn’t alone.
The reason for spending so much time on social media may be obvious to some, as we begin our lives in isolation, it only makes sense that we turn to the most convenient option available to keep in contact with loved ones. Yet, I am one person who is still out at work in the public, and I too see my social media scrolling hit an all-time high.
For me, I presume it is the worry for friends and loved ones, the fear of misinformation penetrating the communities that I am involved with, and certainly a way to release my over-arching worry.
Facts and education are the main reasons behind one Victorian’s recent habitual scrolling. AJ – a 51 year-old educator and business owner from Victoria’s Grampians region – had strong and immediate reactions to the first news of COVID-19 becoming a problem in Australia.
AJ has a non-functioning adrenal gland which puts her in the highly susceptible group of the population who are immuno-compromised, and therefore have a much higher risk of both contracting the infection, and inevitably dying from it.
“Considering my position, I had to find the hard facts,” she says, “and I feel it is my role as an educator to speak the truth at the time and educate others”
Having not really ever been a news follower, and living in an area with no television reception, AJ had to start her fact-finding mission somewhere, and it just so happened that her husband’s PC had the ABC News website as its homepage. “I had to ask him if he trusted ABC News as a source, because I know a lot of these mainstream media outlets are biased towards their own agenda. He said yes, which was good enough for me”
This has led to a daily scroll-and-refresh habit that was never part of her life prior to the virus hitting Australian shores. She says that her social media use has also seen a strong increase during this time.
A graphic depiction of the frustration resulting from people ignoring physical distancing guidelines.
There has, however, been a resistance to scrolling.
Cara (real name withheld) is a 34 year-old musician and disability support worker from Melbourne’s North-East. She claims she has weened off social media due to the concerning responses she was having to the constant blast of coronavirus news.
“I’m hardly looking at my phone any more. I’d been trying to spend less time on it anyway, but I just found [that] reading a million people posting about this virus made me feel pretty shit”
This poses the next invisible casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely to be a spike in mental-ill health. The reactions that people are having to the news and the virus in general is usually quite full of anxiety and fear, if not for themselves, for their loved ones that may be susceptible to infection, and the fate of the world as a whole.
It may just be that a social media detox is exactly what the world needs right now, and there are certainly a number of people leading the way in that regard.
“I’m still keeping enough of an eye [on COVID-19 news] that I know what’s happening, but not reaching for my phone all the time like I often do out of habit.”
AJ applauds this measure as she delves deeper into the misinformation being spread across these channels, “I’m specifically seeing a lot of negative responses from people on my friends list to a lot of either what I post or what is posted by news outlets,” she says “This forces me to go and investigate some of their previous posts, and anything else they may be contributing about coronavirus, and the non-truth that is being put out there is astonishing.”
“I think it’s really bringing out everybody’s true colours.”
Paul, 45, is a father of 3 who up until recently was employed in customer service within the insurance sector. Whereas he left his job voluntarily before the pandemic had hit, he empathises with others who now find themselves in this situation.
“I have been scrolling and refreshing my mailbox at least 10 times daily,” he says in relation to job applications and newsletters which arrive through his email. It extends to social media use as well: “Once I would have been content checking these platforms maybe five times daily each, however now it is up to 15 times, in order to give me the sense of being updated”
It is my belief that the current crisis highlights how much we unfortunately rely on the wrong media to attain our information. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica saga, the spotlight has well and truly been on social media outlets to try and curb the amount of ‘fake news’ content, biased influence and ‘data skimming’ of people’s personal information, but COVID-19 has shot that in the foot in two ways:
The vast and ultimately unending articles being published with unsubstantiated claims, incorrect figures, concentrating on the wrong factors or even giving the population a premature sense of hope, and;
The keyboard warriors spinning whatever information they find interesting, without checking sources or facts against respected publications.
Not to mention that Facebook’s algorithms (for one of the many social media platforms) have remained largely unchanged.
“I’m worried that it took so long for us to start taking note of community transmissions,” says AJ, “I want to draw people’s attention to this as being the key number. Not the infection rate or the fatality rate, but community transmissions. This means that we don’t know where the virus has spread from, and no idea where it goes”
An electronic representation of the COVID-19 virus.
All in all, whatever your reasons for scrolling more often, it is quite apparent that social media is going to have a heavy influence on our lives over the coming months, if we indeed choose that path. Maybe it is time we all took a leaf out of Cara’s book and took a more conscious approach to where we get our information, and also to alleviate our minds from both panic and overload.
I’ve certainly been bickering and arguing with people over quite a few topics related to the virus, including the government’s apparent lack of a plan (prior to the rolled out measures over the past few weeks), schools remaining open and people not adhering to physical distancing and isolation requirements in our major cities – particularly those who are still at work in the public. This may be useful to get off my chest, but it does nothing at the overall level but heighten my frustration and destabalise my current mental state, as well as ‘poke the bear’ for others to retaliate.
One of the silver linings in this whole episode may be that a good chunk of the population begins to re-think the way it uses and relies on social media, however on the downside we know that the spread of farce and misinformation will no doubt expand and deepen as we sink further into the COVID-19 crisis.
Where do you sit in the COVID-19 social media landscape? Have your habits changed? Get in contact – joshfornermusic@gmail.com or leave a comment.
For further information or reading, and up-to-date COVID-19 transmission statistics, I recommend you visit the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services dedicated COVID-19 website, or the equivalent in your state or territory.
Today, following a scathing report by ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) journalists on the 4 Corners program aired on Monday, February 17th, Headmaster Stephen Russell – of Melbourne’s prestigious boys’ school St. Kevin’s College – resigned. He resigned full of disgrace following a blatant cover-up of a complaint involving a staff member grooming a young student.
Stephen Russell today resigned from his position as Headmaster of St. Kevin’s College, following a 4 Corners investigation into institutional child sexual abuse at the school. Photo: St. Kevin’s College
His resignation may be called for, it may be a positive result for all the past students, families and other staff involved in similar circumstances. It may be that Russell’s resignation is even the right thing to do – but what it isn’t (or wasn’t); is timely, and; nor is it a cause for celebration.
These incidents date back nearly seven years to 2013, when now registered sex offender – Peter Kehoe – groomed year 9 student Paris Street whilst acting as an athletics coach on school grounds.
So why is it only now that the hammer should fall?
ABC’s 4 Corners program aired an investigation recently which delved into the scandal involving Kehoe, which not only reveals his sexual misconduct towards young students, but also a gross mismanagement by the St. Kevin’s senior staff, who proceeded to then write ‘positive’ character and employment references for the accused, long after the incidents had been first brought to the school’s attention.
Headmaster Stephen Russell and long-time Dean of Sport, Luke Travers “wrote a glowing employment reference for Kehoe after Paris’s mother Caroline had expressly told Mr Travers about her son’s complaint”. (source: abc.net.au)
How this could come about is not only morally objectionable, but 100% reprehensible and completely, utterly wrong.
Let’s think about the role schools play in our society – the education of the young. No less private education, of which St. Kevin’s falls into, the prestige and promise that is tagged along with attending such institutions of high repute. To lead by example and mould our youth into striving for success through adulthood. Moreover, to protect them and cultivate them.
The perception that the college’s response portrays is that of betrayal, of failing to protect their students (our young) and, certainly in this case, sending Paris Street into a lifelong struggle with his own mental health – all to preserve the proud reputation of the school, which now ironically becomes heavily more tarnished than it would have had the complaint been dealt with appropriately.
Street’s recount of his dark years subjected to Mr. Kehoe’s behaviour on the 4 Corners program were highly emotive and utterly moving, often referring to his struggles since the incidents, describing the ordeal as “exhausting and debilitating”.
The fact of the matter is, that this resignation of Mr. Russell, and that of the Dean of Sport, should have happened long ago. There are so many layers of ethical responsibility to this saga that need to be identified, beginning at the top with Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA) – who have been seen to be publicly supporting Mr. Russell throughout the years following Street’s initial complaint and legal proceedings, right down to Kehoe himself who in a position of authority, performed the most heinous of abuses.
This issue is of course, not something new to us all, following the recent Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which mostly concentrated on the Catholic Church and other institutions that lie within. The fact that St. Kevin’s has failed to act on such a response whilst the Royal Commission was taking place adds an extra element of doubt and mistrust within the school’s administration halls.
Mr. Street filed a suit against St. Kevin’s College which was settled out of court in August 2019, however financial damages cannot repair the mental scars which he must now wear forever.
Paris Street settled a case out of court against St. Kevin’s College in August 2019, following periods of hospitalisation for depression and being at risk of suicide following his experience with Mr. Kehoe. Photo: ABC/Four Corners
It is now known that two other staff members of the school are under investigation by EREA for similar complaints, so it begs the question: how many more kids have suffered under the watchful eyes of Stephen Russell and his team? How many incidents have been swept under the rug? How many ‘glowing’ endorsements have former staff who have engaged in underage sexual abuse have been given?
One thing we can celebrate is Paris Street’s bravery in coming forward with such a detailed, and at times horrifying account, of his time at St. Kevin’s College under the coaching guise of Peter Kehoe.
What we can’t celebrate is the resignation of a man who sat on this for 6+ years; who endorsed the man responsible (and eventually, convicted for these acts) and at every turn and every opportunity was so determined to keep the whole thing quiet and away from the public eye.
What we can’t celebrate is that the institutions within which these acts occur, continue to cover-up, lie, dismiss, scoff at allegations and ultimately race to protect their ‘image’ and their ‘reputations,’ only for them to emerge later, from the murkiest of waters imaginable, and an irreparable scorn burdened to their emblems, for the remote possibility in that initial moment of admitting fault – of admitting guilt – seemed to be the greatest and most emphatic burden of them all.
Josh Forner has no affiliation with St. Kevin’s College, EREA, the ABC or any other organisation involved in this editorial.
After a bit of a hiatus, we are back on track with a brand new website hosted on WordPress and a huge range of new services provided.
I haven’t been overly busy on the creative front over the past couple of years, however some things have certainly charged forward.
My own music has taken a bit of a back seat whilst I use any possible free time to record album number 2, ‘A Crooked Point of View,’ which is currently in progress with the assistance of the versatile and talented Karl Huttenmeister at Roach Class Studios in Preston. In the mean time, I’ve also been manning the dials for Charlie Connor as we sink our teeth into his as yet untitled lo-fi album project.
Furthermore, I’ve taken a huge step with my writing by submitting pieces for publishing and being accepted into the International Association of Professional Writers and Editors, based in New York.
I’m excited for the journey ahead, and glad to have you on board!
After a relocation from Brisbane, and a long time honing his singer/songwriter skills through the open mic scene of Melbourne, we spoke to Greg Steps about inspiration, influence and lemon trees in the lead up to the launch of his upcoming EP, ‘The Overland’, accompanied by his band – The Not for Prophets – which is taking place on Friday, February 24th at the esteemed Wesley Anne band room.
Before making the big move from Brisbane to Melbourne, Greg Steps had featured in a number of somewhat noisier, heavier band-type situations without ever really trying to go at it alone. Until the day that he did, and realised that Brisbane was no place for a solo singer/songwriter to develop.
“Brisbane doesn’t have – or at least to my knowledge – doesn’t have much of a folk scene,” reminisces Steps beneath the lemon tree at his Coburg residence, “Whereas down in Melbourne, with open mics and stuff like that, and plenty of like-minded individuals… so it just seemed like a good idea at the time”
Having been in Melbourne for what’s coming up to four years now, you would be quite likely to walk into any of the abundance of open mic nights at any given time and find Greg Steps on the list to play – belting his heart out with his slightly country twang and the storytelling nous of a folk star in the making.
Greg has not only used this scene to build connections in the new place he calls home, but also to reinforce his already clear line of talent, and present a form of his music that he had not always been 100% comfortable with. “Open mic is kind of a dirty word… especially amongst ‘real musicians’…” says Greg, “But for artists like myself, it’s been really important for my development and pretty much everyone I know in Melbourne is purely through the open mic circuit”
To really appreciate the Greg Steps experience, you need to see the live show. There are a number of singer/songwriters in this town whom you can tell just how much the story they are sharing with the audience means to them, and Steps is no exception, with raw emotion not only shown in what you see from his physicality in front of you, but with the way in which he relaxes deeper into every song, calmly blows away at his impressive collection of harmonicas and speaks of each tune with a memory.
Stylistically, it is difficult to pinpoint Greg’s crossroads. It’s some sort of a coming together of alt-country, folk and a dash of that ‘Australiana’ thing – a Jackson Browne meets Neil Young meets Paul Kelly kind of quality.
“It’s quite bizarre how it came about, because I don’t listen to that much folk music, and country; country is a genre I know nothing about… maybe connections through people like Neil Young, with a bit of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, even though they are not strictly country,” he emanates; “It was more songwriting that I was drawn to, and folk and country, I think, is just an excellent format for writing songs” “It’s like the bare bones of the song,” Greg continues, recounting his adornment for the rawness and openness of the singer/songwriter format; “[The songs are] completely stripped back, and there’s little distraction and I really am drawn to that…”
“When you have a band, there’s a lot of options that can distract how bad a song can be… [but] there’s no tricks to folk and country music. If the songs’s not good, it’s not good! It’s blatantly obvious.”
‘Early Hours of Morning’ was a video release from Greg Steps in 2016 which told a somewhat solitary and dark tale and proved to be a very worthy visual accompaniment to the song itself. This was Greg’s first foray into the world of music videos, and the hardest part of the process, he says, isn’t probably what many people would think.
“Acting was really hard. I never realised that walking, and trying to make it look like you’re walking normally – I’ve never been so self-conscious about walking in my life – they just said ‘walk normally,’ I’ve never walked normally in my life – then I had to think about it…”
“You look like you’re walking and you know you’re being filmed!”
Reflecting back on the production and release of ‘The Overland’, Greg admits that the impending release has been a “long time in the making,” with songs written and being performed over a number of years and an unpaid band “doing it out of the goodness of their heart”, Greg outwardly possesses a gratitude for the kindness and support they have shown to believe in his songs and be an integral part of this project.
Greg Steps & The Not for Prophets release & launch the EP ‘The Overland’ on Friday, February 24th at The Wesley Anne – 250 High St, Northcote. Support from Anna Cordell and Oliver Downes. Tickets $10 at the door with CDs available on the night.
Australian actor Katherine Langford has taken on a challenging, yet necessary role, in playing Hannah Baker in the Netflix hit show ’13 Reasons Why,’ a character who has already committed suicide citing constant bullying and harassment from her High School colleagues, and releasing 13 ‘tapes’ to the perpetrators to explain her actions as her parting thoughts.
I will preface the remainder of this article by saying, I have not made it all the way through the series. It is heavy. There is subject matter in the episodes that takes me a few days to process, but I am eager to finish it off, not merely to find out what happens in the end, but for the over-arching message that this series is sending out.
Suicide and mentally ill-health have been a taboo topic for far too long – particularly in Australia – we’ve got a “toughen up” reputation and it seems we like to keep it that way.
There are reasons for not reporting or bringing attention to suicide as a whole, and these reasons are valid, don’t get me wrong, but they are also part of the problem.
The fact that we don’t talk about either of these things, particularly as teens, means that we fail to understand exactly what they are, how to cope with and deal with such feelings, and importantly how having these thoughts doesn’t mean that you need to – or are intending to – take action.
The Black Dog Institute and Mission Australia collaborated to produce the latest ‘Five Year Mental Health Report’ in Australia and it found that almost a quarter of Australian teens are suffering from the symptoms of a mental illness. Thats one in four, in classrooms and hallways all around the country. This has risen from 19% in their previous report released five years prior.
Mental Illness’ prevalence continues to soar among the general population in Western cultures. Whereas there are many individual triggers that may vary peoples’ onset of symptoms, many could be identified as societal pressure and peer pressure.
So why don’t we start talking about it? Why don’t we lift the supposed ‘ban’ that seems to exist over suicide, over the absolute epidemic we are facing?
13 Reasons Why is a step in the right direction for the acceptance of mentally ill-health in the grand scheme of things, and a step in the right direction to aid the discussions we need to have, but seem to not be having at all.
Back to the young, 21 year-old Katherine Langford who is at the centre of it all during her portrayal. Imagine how difficult a decision taking this role must be for someone of her age, confronted – no doubt – by things she would have witnessed (actively or passively) at her own time in High School; chastised on one side for the role but praised on the other; the flood of fan mail, messages, tweets and interactions she must have faced. Not all of it good.
With a role like this, comes something very harrowing. There will no doubt have been people suffering from a bout of differing symptoms that would have seen Hannah Baker as an idol, that would have fogged the glass between entertainment and reality, and I am absolutely certain that young Katherine Langford has had to be privy to some disturbing content over recent times.
People will have reached out, people will have praised her but most dangerously, people will have probably told her that her portrayal gave them the courage to leave this world.
Playing Hannah Baker is the bravest and most significant part of this series, because not only is it opening the world up to a long dismissed and forgotten about area of society, but it comes with its own set of stressors and challenges of which we can only imagine the outcomes and the pain that it may have caused.
Things could have been done a little better – if anything I’d like to have seen a content warning or conselling numbers displayed at the beginning of each episode (NOT the end, because the habit of Netflix users is to skip the credits), that being said, I for one believe that the positives of bringing these issues to the fore far outweigh what negatives may lie within.
We need to progress as a society. We need to remain inclusive and we certainly need to understand – more than ever – how our actions could potentially affect others. Possibly fatally, as in Hannah’s case.
Look out for each other.
If you are uncomfortable with the content in this article or are experiencing any symptoms of a mental illness, please contact (Australia only):
LIFELINE – 13 11 14 BEYOND BLUE – 1300 224 636 SUICIDE CALL BACK SERVICE – 1300 659 467
Following the success of Australia-wide tours alongside one of Australia’s biggest singer/songwriter names, Byron Bay native – now Melbourne-based – pop/folk songwriter, Domini Forster, gears up for the release of her very first full-length album in early 2017. Armed with a live show that highlights a melancholic sweetness; the great divide between positive and negative emotion, and; Forster’s multi-instrumental skills (with the main focus on guitar and ukulele), the last piece of the puzzle is now almost firmly secured. We caught up with Domini for a chat on all things musical in her past, and into her future, before she appears at Melting Pot’s Songwriters in the Round event at Cromwell Studios on Friday, December 9th.
Music has featured in Domini Forster’s life from a very early age. Being brought up through the Steiner School system in Byron Bay had her introduced to instruments and classroom music training through her formative school years, including a number of years where playing a stringed instrument was a compulsory part of her schooling – yet it wasn’t until Domini’s early teens where the passion exuded itself and transformed into the realm of a songwriter.
“I can’t put a finger on an exact moment, but I always loved singing, and performing and just being involved,” Domini says;
“At some point a boy taught me a few chords on guitar,” she recounts; “The first song I wrote was actually a song about breaking up with him!”
Forster candidly describes her writing style as her main cathartic process, and a way in which she deals with many of her emotions and thoughts. This is unsurprising when you take into account that many songwriters’ processes follow a similar path, however listening to some of Domini’s content and the way in which it is delivered, you’d be forgiven for thinking there was more at play.
She reaches an almost uncomfortable depth at times, clearly showcasing her full appreciation of the wide range of emotion which she intuiting. To come to terms with realising that something so deep and complex sounding having the most simplest of explanations or genesis, is sometimes the best possible result, and also provides a more direct connection with the artist as a whole.
I think this is a big part of what makes Domini Forster such a special artist, she is easily connectable. There are no smoke screens or hidden meanings, in a very much ‘what you see is what you get’ package. “It’s a cathartic thing for me, and it just felt so satisfying, so there was never a question for me that I would ever stop doing that…”
Domini also reflects on her involvement with Melting Pot’s events over the years, particularly Songwriters in the Round as a reminder of her home area in Byron Bay: “I grew up in a pretty community-centred place and have gone to a lot of house concerts in my time and that style of music, it just feels like the core of where music started for humans, that ‘round the campfire;’ sharing stories in song form… I love playing to people who want to listen.”
Her move to the big smoke culminated with releasing a small EP, ‘Little Dreamer,’ in 2013, a snippet of original material which is still available digitally through soundcloud.com/domini-forster. Having had sprawling success throughout the past couple of years whilst on tour with Lior, Forster has fully capitalised on this exposure to a new and wide-ranging audience.
After discovering Domini at a songwriting competition in which he was the guest artist, Lior approached her to extend some on-stage opportunities which quickly transformed into a range of small regional tours with the multiple ARIA-nominated artist.
The swag of tours accepted Forster’s music so well that she was then given the support slot for Lior’s national tour to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his debut album, ‘Autumn Flow,’
“It was such an incredible record, and so many people have such a connection to it, so it was absolutely amazing,’ Domini reminisces.
She continues work on her debut album, ‘Raven,’ due to be released in March 2017. ‘Raven’ was recorded with the masterful Nick Huggins at his home studio in Point Lonsdale, and will prove to be Domini Forster’s biggest collection of original songs to date. Domini reflected on the making of ‘Raven’ as a difficult yet highly rewarding process;
“If any musician tells you that making an album is fun and easy… they’re bullshitting,” she explains; “But it was an amazing process, and I stressed about it, and put my heart and blood and sweat and tears into it…” something that you’ll no doubt be able to hear and experience upon its release next year.
The future journey for Domini Forster is yet to be mapped out, but if one were to interpret the direction, the feeling amongst her peers and immediate community is certainly that the only direction will be up. Domini Forster appears with accompaniment from multi-instrumentalist and singer Phoebe Sanger this Friday night, December 9th at Melting Pot’s Songwriters in the Round – to be held at Cromwell Studios: 136A Cromwell St, Collingwood.
In the early hours of the morning – American time – on the 9th of November, 2016, society failed.
Society failed and entrusted the most powerful economy in the world to a man whose entire campaign was fixated on the idea of fear.
Fear of people who are ‘different’ to the lowest common denominator. Fear of people who do vow to change society’s views and stretch our entrenched fabric. Yet that is the exact thing he has brainwashed his followers in to believing he will do, whilst he closes the opportunities for everyone else.
My deepest fear with Trump isn’t what he might say – although that is a problem in itself; it isn’t who he will segregate – although that is a problem in itself; it isn’t about who will get left behind, who will be worse-off, which country he will antagonise – although all of these things are problems in themselves.
No, my biggest fear, is how his supporters will react when he can’t do the things he has told them he is going to do.
There are many extreme policies in a proposed Donald Trump presidency, the most famous ones we know – building the wall between Mexico and the USA; ousting all Muslims and banning them from entering the USA; removing trade arrangements with China – and many of these policies were proven to be unpopular within his own party. So we wonder precisely just how much control he will have, given the division that exists within his own standing members.
And the followers, they aren’t a group of people that I want to see get angry. The litany of uneducated, free-wheeling bigots that Trump spoke to with aplomb is outstanding. He has forced people out of political hibernation, who had never voted before and probably planned to never vote in their lives, because of the measured and diplomatic speak and tone of politicians.
Up steps Candidate Trump with his blatant racism, misogyny, and disregard for decency. A loose cannon ready to fire no matter where he’s aiming. BOOM! Black America; BOOM! LGBTIQ; BOOM! Latinos; BOOM! Women.
The other fear that strikes me is with America itself. The fact that they couldn’t bear the idea of a female president.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t endorse Hillary Clinton as a candidate in the first place, but it is who we had, and it is who was expected to lead the charge and come out victorious for the good of humanity on Wednesday.
America couldn’t handle it.
They think they have voted for progress – they have voted for regress. A return to the height of fascism for the so called ‘Greatest Place on Earth,’ I tell you what, it was a much greater place on Tuesday evening.
The political thought bubble in the United States of America is flabbergasting to an outsider. It is a land that believes universal healthcare is the only step you need to take to be labelled as a communist nation, yet the right to owning a gun and being able to fire it at will is something that is sacrosanct and should never be removed from the rights of the people.
I would like to say that I am surprised, but quite frankly I am not. Having spent some of my formative years living in this country, and having close family still living there today, I am privy to exactly what the psyche of much of the population is, and how little they actually know how to think for themselves.
My fear is that America has voted for Progress and for a state of ‘Revolution,’ yet both progressiveness and revolution are dirty words on the right side of politics, and I’m sure the Republican Party would not stand for these types of labels.
Donald Trump’s only interest in this election, in this position, in gaining the title of President, is entitlement for the entitled. The poor middle and upper-class white man is finally seeing things shift to an equilibrium (I said shift – there’s a bloody long way before it gets anywhere near there!) after centuries of domination and having the world at his feet, and he feels he is entitled to his entitlement.
Trump will govern for Trump. He is a billionaire businessman with his own interests at heart. He’s certainly not Richard Branson, whom if elected I would have no doubt would do a sterling job as he displays the qualities of compassion, empathy and resolve with his fellow man. Donald Trump identifies with a certain type of person, but he certainly doesn’t feel for them, he doesn’t care for them, and he certainly isn’t going to defend them if it comes between him or the people.
It is clearly disparaging to me, and to many other decent folk, that such a horrible man could become so powerful. A man with no morality, the stability of a see-saw and the rationale of a fascist.
America has elected the face of capitalism to try and take it to capitalism.
Can anyone else see how this isn’t going to work?
Society has failed. Failed to be a society. Failed to care about the lives of others and succeeded in confirming that being selfish is a human trait that no extent of evolution will ever absolve.
