THE LAST REFUGE OF A SCOUNDREL

Trump shows the way

Not the US President but a ‘poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer’.

Donald Trump dodged military service by having ‘bone spurs’. I had different reasons.

Why join the military? Recruiters everywhere have the answer: because you want to serve the country you love.

It seduces the uncertain and soothes the idle. ‘Love’ is expanded to include the abstract. ‘Serve’ is a shibboleth rarely scrutinised.

Having names and slogans etched on war memorials doesn’t make them any more authentic; it’s still a con.

No one chooses their birthplace, their sex or their names. That’s the job of the parents. As the kids grow and start to think they may not like the government of their birth country, its policies or their parents’ choices.

I wanted my name changed to Ian because the bullies rhymed Duncan with drunken.

Being told they should love that country and even sacrifice their life is an insult to their freedom as a stand-alone individual.

Wars are the making of governments. People denied a say in the leadership and its policies should not be forced to serve in its interests. That has to be a voluntary decision allowing conscientious objection.

When I demanded that right a member of the conscription appeal panel asked: Didn’t, I love my country and want to serve?

As an angry teen determined to live his way, I fumbled the chance. Bluster is no alternative for reason. I did better with the expected question: Wouldn’t I defend my home, wife and family against an attacker\?

Of course, but don’t conflate the morality of an individual with the orders of a state driven by the politics of the moment.

As a more assured adult, I'd now quote the 18^th Century British Tory Samuel Johnson that ‘patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’, or playwright George Bernard Shaw:

‘Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born in it’.

An Australian politician I worked for used to say that when party members started praising 'love of country’ it was time to check the silver.

I sought exemption from the draft to exercise free will and because I bore no hate against people fighting the ‘Malayan Insurgency’ in the jungles of Borneo.

That was where I’d most likely be posted to serve the political policy of the government of the day. Apart from fearing death, I didn't want the harming of any other human to be on my conscience.

A relative voluntarily joined the RAAF as a teen, partly to escape a malfunctioning home and because he had few life plans. The military offered security, shelter, clothes, food and trade training for a seven-year contract.

He emerged with confidence, money, a specialised qualification much in demand and access to a low-interest housing loan. He only fired a gun at a range in an old NSW quarry. A good deal for ‘serving his country’. Others weren’t so lucky and got to do and see things that ruined their lives.

A Royal Commission found “at least 1677 deaths by suicide between 1997 and 2021 among serving, ex-serving and reservists” since 1985.

Now, Trump's neoliberalism claims that mutual care equals weakness and competition is the only natural order of the jungle where the strong thrive. In my time, we had the opposite—Robert Baden Powell.

The founder of the Boy Scouts was my hero even though his fame had come from being a Boer War general fighting South African Dutch colonialists.

I didn’t realise the Boers were early neoliberals, a philosophy that promoted inequality and race superiority. It later morphed into fascism and become an appealing movement for the brainless and easily led.

I was sceptical of the ‘march of Communism’ through Southeast Asia and applauded its anti-colonial campaign, finding much of the West’s propaganda overblown.

As a young teen, the Cold War was close; I cycled to work along backways past an air base where monster B-50 Superfortress bombers were parked metres from a wire fence, ready to launch nuclear Armageddon.

The panel of bureaucrats at my interrogation included an old guy wearing a wing collar; most showed indifference, but he was outwardly unimpressed, almost contemptuous.

Had he known I had a copy of Mao's 'Little Red Book' and found some of the ideas appealing, he'd have probably called the cops.

I said I had no ‘special affection’ for England, no ‘sense of identification’ with its royal rulers and feudal separation of classes; unsurprisingly, the bored panellists dismissed my appeal.

So I fled my homeland and have never returned. The goal was NZ.

After three months of driving a war-time jeep to Mumbai with my then-wife Ann, and then a month on the veranda of the Salvation Army hostel, we snared two separate berths in the keel of a liner, though not one heading to Auckland.

Despite my plummy Pommy voice (which helped me land a job at the ABC), Western Australia treated us as equals. For us, it was the Lucky Country Plus. I worked on farms, for two years as an actor, got a scholarship to uni, job offers from Sydney, and a career in journalism and citizenship.

Our choice.

One major flaw in our new land thrives still. Our first home was in Gnowangerup, tagged ‘Australia’s Little Rock’ after the Kansas city where racial segregation thrived.

About 350 Noongar people camped outside the town and got prejudicial treatment at the hospital and with the local doctor Alec Winrow, who also confirmed Ann’s pregnancy.

He saw her ahead of the black patients waiting hours before she arrived without an appointment. He was also a Pom.

A baby died and Winrow was charged with manslaughter, but the case was dropped by the Crown. The outrage was largely confined to Perth and its younger, more progressive population.

By then, we'd moved to the city and joined the hostility towards racism.

When Canberra brought in selective conscription for the Vietnam War we planned to move to NZ to avoid the draft for our sons Andrew and Peter, just as I'd fled the UK years earlier. Fortunately the law was dumped.

What hasn’t been discarded is xenophobia, an evil that’s only worsened since the failure of the 2023 Voice Referendum that’s given bigots a licence to exercise their racism.

Oz is better than Britain for fairness, though not as good as NZ where we shivered for a decade. The original culture is awesome, most people admirable and successive governments overall fair.

I asked to be an Aussie and was accepted. I’ll serve my country by praising its decencies, criticising its failures and agitating for improvements. I’m proud when it’s humane and furious when it's flawed.

Love isn’t in the pledge. I’ll love people, not a nation.

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