Leo Shanahan, punching on, and in the land of the kool aid the Lotos drinker is king ...

(Above: a vision splendid and a splendid vision for the future).

Inspired by the 'exclusive poll' produced by Fairfax, Not ready for a republic? Well,we are amused, so columnists could produce poll driven columns proposing poll driven policies, Leo Shanahan obliges, and in a punch drunk way delivers up Admitting that you may be a monarchist is tough for The Punch, Australia's most rambling and incoherent conversation.

It seems that young Leo has become a faint hearted monarchist, having once been a fair weather republican:

Abbott’s arguments for maintaining a monarchy in Australia haven’t changed over the years. They are best summed up as “if ain’t broke don’t’ fix it.” At one point Abbott said to me: “I’m a Manly fan, becoming a republic makes as much sense as switching the team I go for.”

Gee, will someone tell professional footballers it's about time to stick with their teams, play with them until they die, and never mind the money when it's simple minded glory that's needed to keep the fans happy. But if barracking for Manly is the sign of a monarchist, why is my partner rushing over to the door with a sign over it saying Manly hating republicans, enter here?

Luckily, young Leo was once of the same mind:

Besides wanting to point out that Manly are team for tossers, it struck me that Abbott’s argument for not becoming a republic also summed up this man’s brand of conservatism. I disappeared into the night, smug in the assessment that my support for a republic was evidence of a more open mind.

That was then, when Leo was young and passionate and virile. Now it seems he's drunk the kool aid and is content to lie in Elysian fields sipping of the nectar of the monarchist gods, alienated, existential, but in a kind of numbed out bliss which is somehow cool, and also avoids him being linked to rugger buggers and readers of Fairfax:

Modern Australian republicanism always comes off as a group of people bored for a cause rather than a cause that people have any natural desire to flock to. You get the feeling that plans for an Australian republic are hatched on Saturdays by people watching Sydney club rugby and looking up from the pages of the Good Weekend, desperate to lay some claim to being disenfranchised.

Here’s the main point about a republic: I can’t bring myself to care about it. As someone who was taught to basically despise the English royals I find this apathy all the more confusing, but evidently I’m not alone.

Not alone?

Why young Leo has felt the force, and is at one with David Flint.

Bringing the full range of his intellectual powers to bear, Leo conveniently skips over the talking tampon and his consort, in the hope that a balding William will once again re-assert the beguiling charm of the monarchy:

Julia Gillard has also run with the line that we should maintain the monarchy until Queen Elizabeth is dead. But this is an odd kind of logic for a republican because it seems to accept that the current Queen and the system she represents are too popular to mess with. Who’s to say that if William and Queen Kate get on the throne afterward they’d be any less popular?

Such is the power of the lotus that Leo is happy to doze:

What kind of republican spirit for change does this nation possess if we accept that we’ll just put off the change until this Queen is gone? Australia’s tectonic plates are currently moving towards Indonesia at a faster rate than our timetable for full emancipation from England.

Emancipation? Why do we need emancipation, wrapped as we are in the heavenly bliss of the talking tampon's incisive mind as he saves the world from modern architecture? Soon his splendid vision will be ours to contemplate. It must reassure Leo no end:

The problem for Australian republicans is not necessarily the legitimacy of their argument (although given our current non-government status I find the idea of the royals being there strangely reassuring) it’s the lazy strength Abbott’s old argument: What’s the problem with the status quo?

Strangely reassuring that the royals are suddenly starring in the movie Being There?

Indeed most strange, but what a splendid thought that young in mind if not body Lizzie might charge out the antipodes and save us all if the fiendish independents make life too hard and threaten to overthrow democracy with their anarchist ways. How strangely reassuring to know they're lurking there ready to offer a helping hand and display British pluck. It worked so well at Singapore during the war ... back when they had crispy bacon ...

It’s this argument that appears to be wearing people down, and leaves me having to admit that, for all intents and purposes, I may be a monarchist.

Or perhaps, for all intents and purposes, a slack arse, couldn't give a fuck, stoner sitting on the couch of life rustling up a column - do you want poll driven fries with that - and worshipping the Dude as he goes about the business of having his rug peed on.

As usual, it's the comments section of The Punch that brings out the full on loons. There's a couple of resident rat bags - someone called Eric is always first out of the box with a loon conservative comment - but my favourite came from someone running the moniker Richard The Lionheart:

Can anyone name a declared Republic that didn’t end up with a civil war?

Can someone bring back Oliver Cromwell and chop the silly bugger's head off? It's almost enough to make me ask, can anyone name a declared monarchy that didn't end up with a civil war ... but there are a few examples. Why there's the Austro Hungarian empire and Spain and Russia and France and ....

And now make sure you visit this tidy collection of great quotes by that incredibly astute royal, Phil the Greek, here:

"Do you still throw spears at each other?"
- To an Aboriginal man on Australia's Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park

And now as ennui takes hold, the last of a Tennyson poem, as we dream of slaves, with the first two verses here:

The charmed sunset linger’d low adown
In the red West: thro’ mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem’d the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, “We will return no more”;
And all at once they sang, “Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”

(Below: exhausted by the dreaming, I feel the need for something green, something that will help save the planet, as indeed Australia might need saving from the greens, except the future monarchist is also green. Alack a day, where will it all end? Perhaps some 'erbal tea?)