Gerard Henderson and a case of the guilts worse than a dose of salts or the Trots giving everyone the trots ...

Patriotism being the last refuge of scoundrels, the scoundrels will be out in force at this time of year.

And yes we know that's possibly maltreatment of Samuel Johnson's thoughts on the subject, here, but if nothing else Johnson had a damned good premonition of the role of commentariat commentators generating unhappiness in the land:

A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation. This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend publick happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace. Few errours and few faults of government, can justify an appeal to the rabble; who ought not to judge of what they cannot understand, and whose opinions are not propagated by reason, but caught by contagion.

Speaking as one of the rabble, that naturally brings us to Gerard Henderson, who is determined to be cheerful - unlike the wretched Germaine Greer - in his address to the nation Time to celebrate, and few will be feeling guilty about it.

It seems that ever the thespian, while celebrating her new status as a stamp icon, along with Eva Cox, Elizabeth Evatt and Anne Summers - (and please no feminist jokes about being licked enough already, you'll only be showing your rather tragic age and bias in a world of self-adhesive stamps) - Greer made a reference to "the guilt that hangs over this country", which naturally rattled the cage of the prattling Polonius.

The concept of guilt is a phenomenon felt by many members of the Australian intelligentsia. But there is unlikely to be much evidence of guilt when the increasingly popular Australia Day celebrations take place tomorrow. Guilt for the deeds, or rather misdeeds, of others is essentially a condition embraced by intellectuals.

Essentially a condition embraced by intellectuals?

Lordy, at last I understand the Catholic church is full of intellectuals.

On occasion, Henderson shows a tendency towards the blissful state of Catholicism (who can forget his poignant, caring Don't mock the frock - Benedict speaks from the heart), but clearly he understands very little about the church.

Catholic guilt is a famous theme, given an outing in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited:

Living in sin, with sin, by sin, for sin, every hour, every day, year in, year out. Waking up with sin in the morning, seeing the curtains drawn on sin, bathing it, dressing it, clipping diamonds to it, feeding it, showing it round, giving it a good time, putting it to sleep at night with a tablet of Dial if it's fretful. Always the same, like an idiot child carefully nursed, guarded from the world. 'Poor Julia,' they say, 'she can't go out. She's got to take care of her little sin. A pity it ever lived,' they say, 'but it's so strong. Children like that always are. Julia's so good to her little, mad sin.

Ah the good old days of Catholic guilt. Now I know some will babble on about Jewish guilt, and try to trump this with as quote from Portnoy's Complaint, but that's nothing, nothing I tells ya.

Take this little outburst in the 30 Rock episode called The Fighting Irish:

Jack Donaghy: That's not how it works, Tracy. Even though there is the whole confession thing, that's no free pass, because there is a crushing guilt that comes with being a Catholic. Whether things are good or bad or you're simply... eating tacos in the park, there is always the crushing guilt.
Tracy Jordan: I don't think I want that. I'm out.
[Jack turns to leave]
Jack Donaghy: [to himself] Somehow, I feel oddly guilty about that.
[Jack crosses himself]

(no, I don't watch the show, I found it here in this short discussion of Catholic guilt).

There's plenty more on Catholic guilt on the full to overflowing intertubes, often associated with the notion of original sin, and even the Urban Dictionary thinks the term worthy of a short note (Catholic guilt). Oh okay and then there's Portnoy's Complaint, a particularly virulent disease of the mind:

Portnoy's Complaint n. A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues a genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. "The Puzzled Penis," Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, Vol XXIV p.909). It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.

Some even suggest that guilt might be a good thing, since one of the marks of a psychopath is a lack of guilt.

Psychopaths lack any true sense of guilt or remorse for harm they may have caused to others. Instead, they rationalize their behavior, blame someone else, or deny it outright. This is seen by psychologists as part of a lack of moral reasoning (in comparison with the majority of humans), an inability to evaluate situations in a moral framework, and an inability to develop emotional bonds with other people. (here at the wiki on guilt).

Oh dear, no we're not suggesting Gerard Henderson is a psychopath. We're not even raising the question, and if someone does, we'll certainly feel no guilt ...

He's just determined not to be (a) an intellectual working for the Sydney Institute blathering nonsense or (b) a Catholic subsumed with guilt.

The rest of Henderson's meandering, fatuous piece is a typical trip down memory lane, determined to prove that everything is the best in the best of all possible worlds, and the intelligentsia get it all wrong all the time (unlike the intelligentsia working for the Sydney Institute in their elite inner city abode).

Yep, there were no lives lost during the Cronulla riots - and Alan Jones was really just inciting a kind of school picnic for young excitable lads - and the guilt-obsessed intellectuals got their cries of armageddon wrong.

Yes, indeed, they completely missed the point. (And yes everything is tremendously jolly and hockey sticks in Afghanistan and Iraq at the moment).

Of course, a terrible danger stalks the land, a hideous threat which still might derail everything and ruin civilisation as we know it, but they're inner-city left-wing political activists with a sickening taste for coffee and caviare (remember you read it first in Radical roots seep through at the heart of Greens).

Back in eden, populated by the generous benign John Howard - oh how he loved the immigrants and their migrating ways - intermarriage between ethnic groups is high, and the intelligentsia is always misreading the times (unlike the infallible Henderson and the Pope, who always read the times), and then you knew this was coming didn't you ...

It was much the same with the dismissal by the governor-general Sir John Kerr of Gough Whitlam's Labor government, 35 years ago last year.

Oh sweet long suffering Jesus, why does the man pick at scabs like some tormented, demented child.

Well it's to re-live some kind of long forgotten turf war with academic Max Teichmann, who allegedly blathered on about the Nazis and pre-fascist conditions and dictatorship at the time of the coup, but the funny thing these days is the way it's the Liberals who denounce and decry and deny Malcolm Fraser as some kind of left wing deviant and heretic.

Whenever Fraser's name is mentioned, they look exceptionally guilty, and furtively creep into the darkness, anything to avoid talking about the mad leftie uncle that lurked in the attic for years, until he decided to leave the attic and strike out on his own. And the reason for his disenfranchisement? Why he berated the Liberals over their fear mongering about immigration, the same matter that Henderson perversely uses to celebrate the John Howard government.

Well Henderson surely shows a guilt-free capacity for nonsense.

But back to Henderson and his celebration of a few technical difficulties in the system, which also takes in that prime goose Sir Philip Game doing down Jack Lang (notice how it's always the Labor governments that get done over by the conservatives in a game involving 'temporary technical difficulties') before we get this declamatory last para:

All too many members of the intelligentsia want to project their disillusionment - or sense of guilt - on to the society at large. But the success of Australia's continuing democracy suggests that this is an empirical society in which there is little room for high theory and scant feelings of collective guilt.

Well I take that to mean that this is an empirical society in which there is little room for the Catholic church and the Jewish religion and the guilt-laden Islamic faith, and any other of the dozens of religions that peddle doubt, guilt and fear and loathing ... and little room for commentariat commentators and their fear-mongering distortions of the truth, complete with paranoia, and doom-laden finger pointing.

Which is of course delusional, since week after week, we have to listen to the likes of Gerard Henderson blathering on about his high theories of history, politics, climate change, the Greens, the Catholic church, the earth, guilt, the universe and everything, when all he really needs to do is send in '42' each week. So short, so succinct, and making so much more sense ...

Oh the sufferings of Australians who feel strangely compelled - rather like the Ancient Mariner - to read the opinion pages of the national rags.

It gives me an almost eerie feeling of collective guilt ... but hark, I hear a barbecue calling in the land of the lotus, and now washed of my sins, absolved, and with a wondrous sense that I'm living in eden, I must attend ...

Even so, I felt the need for a good read of that exercise in personal guilt, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (the rest you can find here):

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.

Sheesh, those damned intellectuals, ruining it for everyone.

As for reading Gerard Henderson, and rising the morrow morn a sadder and wiser person? Go on, tell me I'm dreaming ...

(Below: a cartoon about the absence of guilt and the exercise of power, and there's much more on the dismissal here. Please wear anti-static and anti-guilt clothing if attending).