A DOCTOR, TWO JOURNALISTS, A FORGOTTEN WRITER, AND ME

Some guy was playing country songs outside while I was in the room with the Doctor, the Journalist, my friend Peter, and another Journalist. The doctor was once a politician, the first journalist was talking about the origins of a virus and I felt she was trying to avoid a war between Australia and China. The second journalist was the chief political correspondent for a local paper and I felt he was actually trying to start a war with China, even if he didn’t know it.

“Would someone shut that guy outside up! That damned guitar!”

There was guy outside playing guitar. The guy didn’t stop. On he went plucking away and singing about his ups and downs.

The Doctor talked about some guy named H. L. Mencken and why he wished he’d read him earlier in his career. I’ll have to look him up I said, and I did, on my phone: “American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English”. Why can my phone do this?, I thought, weren’t these invented to call people? Was I calling H.L. Mencken? If I did he didn’t respond with spoken words, just ones he’d written down. I guess the function is still the same in this instance, maybe every instance. Oh dear, I’m a cyborg and I realised it.

“I read your article, Doctor” I said.

“Oh, which one?”

“Two, the one about politics being a game when you thought it was a business at one point in your life, and another titled Shame and Politics”.

I continued, “I think your writing is excellent, and I agree with you, but I think you write at such an advanced level the working classes, and even the welfare classes might not read it – I think we need to get the message out to the people in a way they can understand”.

Peter politely spoke “Rupert Murdoch is trying to start a war with China because of a personal gripe he has with a former wife, or lover, who was Chinese”

The second journalist chimed in “I work for Rupert Murdoch”

“Yeah he owns all the papers, or most of them, you should work for your yourself; I bought your book named POISON”

He looked chuffed with himself at a book sale.

“The last two articles I’ve read by you were titled Warships to show might against China, someone else helped with that one, and the other one was…”

The singer outside started singing a slow song and everybody calmed down.

“You were the best thing I can recall, you and me we had it all…”

The country singer had finished and he got up and walked off.

“… now, the second article was titled Most back strong stance on China” I said.

“Yeah, I wrote about how 62% per cent of Australian’s say the Nation should ‘stick to their values’ despite the risk of retaliation from a major trading partner”

“Yeah, in the first paragraph, on the FRONT PAGE”

“Yep”

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

“Why?”

“Because it was on the first page on the paper on 20 June 2021”

“Your gripe isn’t with me, it’s with the Editor; I just write the articles”

“But you’re the chief political correspondent. I tried to write to the editor but they ignored me. In fact, they reported me the last time I tried to write to them.”

He said nothing.

The first journalist spoke “we don’t know where the virus came from and because of this tension between the two countries they won’t release any data to us so we can figure out where it actually came from and try to solve the problem”

The Doctor and Peter looked on with surprised looks on their faces.

I chimed in “The Doctor’s article talks about compassion in politics, have you read it?”

The Doctor interjected “Yes it does, I wrote some really important things in there about compassion and why it’s needed in our country”

“Yeah! and just before it in that paper you wrote in, good Doctor, there was a big black page that read CORRUPTION THRIVES IN THE DARK”

“I suppose it does” said Peter.

“I’m just trying to prevent a war, it never helps anybody, the only way for China to do it is to either occupy the entire country with people or send over some bombs, and then do it. It’s turning people against each other. We’re a MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY and you’re spruiking them on to do it by writing about this in the papers. You’re creating fear! And fear leads to resentment, and resentment leads to anger, and anger leads to WAR” I said.

Everybody looked at each other.