Freedom

Cafe Locked Out

If you are studying Trump, hoping that he will save us, then you’re hope is the wish of a slave, praying that their new master will be kinder than the current one.

Think back to the moment when Dan Andrews stated something like, “We will have to restrict your freedoms until this crisis has passed.”
Online, I remember watching so many of us gratefully accepting this deal.
But what they didn’t realize, out of fear of the virus, was that what he said wasn’t an offer to help us—it was a declaration of war.
For unless we, as a community, had discussed this at length, then our freedoms weren’t his to restrict. They were ours: both a gift and a burden that we, without a fight, handed over.

Initially, Dan took our Freedom of Choice and punished anyone who dared to defy him. But simultaneously, that army hidden behind him had already begun attacking, through censorship, our Freedom of Speech.
Recently, our own Government concealed their final affront on this liberty under the smokescreen of protecting us from Hate Speech.

This is why, inside of us, despite the poster of the world stating that everything has gone back to normal, there is a cancerous splinter—a lingering bad taste in our souls.
This is why no one celebrates the anniversary of “Freedom Day.”
Remember that?

That one day when your masters declared that those who could prove they had fully complied could leave their house and go to out again.
I remember watching you cheer us, who were still locked up, from the tables, lifting your drinks like victors, when instead you were collaborators. Enslavers.

Now we are here. A community that has strayed so far from the story of who they believed they were, that they are now lost.
In the story of our country, we are no longer the “she’ll-be-right” larrikins; those sun-bronzed heroes born of greater heroes. Instead, we are the obese, and willfully ignorant enslaver of the coming generations.
The ones who, heads bowed, are consuming TikTok dancers , as our masters install our children’s digital prison around us.

We are the generation who, instead of leaping into the cold current to pull our drowning brothers and sisters from the waves, turned our backs to the water. Then, when forced to acknowledge their despair, we condescendingly informed them, “It wasn’t the vax.”
Now, stoically, we continue to look away, long after we’ve heard their voices fall quiet.

Why?
Seriously, why?
Is money all that matters to you?
Is status all that matters to you?
Is just surviving, no matter the ideological cost, all that matters?

Or is it because, thanks to all the stuff you have acquired, you believe you are the rich? For everyone knows that the rich can’t lose their freedoms. Freedom is the prize of being rich. A prize that has seen asylum seekers risking their lives trying to try and reach our Golden Shores.

Our Golden Shores, where inland we find you now, in a supermarket, studying—with a baffled expression—the latest prices, while knowing too, that beneath your feet lies so much mineral wealth that there is no actual need for you, your kids, or your kids’ kids to pay any taxes, ever.

A wealth that corporations are taking, now, leaving you and your offspring with the bill you will never be able to service.

Not only, out of fear, have you opened the door to the wolves, but you are hiding this truth from everyone under the only barricade an apprentice slave has left to protect the integrity of their soul: Silence.

A silence that will also, for a time, hide your shame. Quietly, in that space no one can reach, you are watching Trump, Elon, RFK Jr., and all the rest, hoping they will come here and liberate you.

But they can’t liberate you, for you were never enslaved.
You see, our culture’s crown jewels—our invaluable Freedoms—were never stolen. You gave them away.
You even pressured the reluctant, us, to give up ours too.
Trump can’t liberate you; he can only, maybe, replace our corrupt current rulers with his benevolence.
That is not freedom, that is the philosophy of slaves. Not citizens, but victims to the moods of the powerful.

Democracy is were the people rule, and the government serves. We no longer have this.

Which is why we need, for the sake of our own identity and pride, to restore all and enshrine into our own constitution, our freedoms.

This federal election will be the touchstone.
We all know Liberal and Labor are the two cheeks of the same arse, (Robyn, Courage is the Cur) unable to fix themselves because they are all deeply invested in the system.
A system that is heralding in the robots that will replace you and a cashless society that will be used to control you.
It’s here.
It’s happening.
And somewhere inside you, you know it.

Ironically, our only hope now lies in your soul, for it possesses one real and incredible quality: the ability to self-heal. The first step to this cure is to stand up, and the second is to embrace change—to be the change.
And once engaged, you will see the hope, for you will be the hope. For inside you, your soul will fill with all the fuel it needs to repair not only itself but your country, and your country’s future for the next generation.
An ancient fuel that, throughout history, slaves have acquired through choice.
And that chosen fuel is redemption.

Michael Gray Griffith

24/02/25