Rise, my silent brothers, Rise.

Cafe Locked Out

When I was three, my Uncle David, who was a living superhero to me, pulled me onto his lap and let me steer his delivery van through the streets of our small town in Wales. And as I giggled, I pissed my pants while he laughed. This is my clearest, earliest memory—and I'm amazed I can still find it. Fortunately, even though I was only a little boy, I’d cleverly filed it under the category called ‘A man.’

The Late, and brave and beautiful, John Murphy

A while later, when I was about ten, my family was picnicking near a waterfall in South Australia. The waterfall had a natural slide, and teenage boys were sliding down it. Then, as we all watched, an excited toddler staggered out onto the rocks and slipped. Chances are, he would have slid right over the edge and we would have lost him. But death never got a chance to retrieve him, because as soon as he fell, several fathers leapt from their picnic blankets and ran over the rocks to grab him.

This memory I stored under the category called ‘men.’

Any of these fathers could also have slipped and been hurt—or worse. And that injury, or their own death, could have put their families in deep distress. But did they think about that? No. They were so motivated to save a child who wasn’t theirs that they all ran into the same category in my memory called ‘the protectors.’

I have loads of these categories and subcategories, but the only man who has his own category is my father. My father is a philosopher and a poet. Yet you would never know it, because he was born into a generation of silent men who were taught to keep all their poetry in their heads.

Me, Richard D Wolstencroft, David Thrussell

Every day, he walks up a hill near his home in W.A., and once he reaches the summit, he sits on a log I call the ‘Altar of Red Church Hill,’ from where he watches Perth wake up. I wrote a poem once, in which I hoped that one day the Fremantle Doctor—a famous wind—would blow all his poetry out of his head and transport it across the country into mine.

He is to me a foundation I can never live up to, a mountain I can never climb, an ocean I can never swim across nor reach the floor of.

Now, he is spending the last days of his life caring for my mother as she deteriorates first. And he does so with the humility, humour, and dependability of a stone—a stone that has a heart full of love.

Before Covid, I was talking to my dad about society's current view of men, and he said, “Now I’m the enemy.”

We live in a time where our questions are many and unanswered, and our souls are constantly flabbergasted. It’s like some weird reality show slipped out of our TVs and conquered us.

Yesterday, I was watching a man complain that although his baby had latched onto his nipple, he wasn't yet producing milk.

But I’ve been wondering if the reason the Covid fog found it so easy to smother us was because the powers that be had already disempowered our men.

When I was growing up, women’s toilets were off-limits, or as we used to call it in grade one when we were all playing Kiss Chasey—Barlesse.

Now, I often have women complaining to me that they no longer have a toilet in the city for themselves. To me, if you ask most men, they would agree to call the ladies’ toilets for what they are: sacred ground for women’s business. When you’re out with a few friends and the girls go to the loo, you know you have time to get another beer or two.

To men, the toilet is just a tool. You go, do your business, and get out—and you do all of this in silence.

When I was growing up, many pubs had men-only sections, but these spaces are gone now, challenged into oblivion by women. But I’m okay with female-only places. I feel women should have their own space, where they can go and do whatever. Yet at the same time, I believe that the mental health of men would benefit from having places where only men could go.

A place and time to unwind, to laugh with—or be laughed at by—your brothers, who you can heal as they heal you, without any woke psychologist ever comprehending how they’re achieving this.

“I don’t get it. They don’t even have deep conversations. They just whinge, brag, and joke, all while taking the piss out of each other.”

But that is not true. The language of men is subtle and learned. It’s spoken in barely imperceptible nods and in cuss words used to convey affection. For they are all aware they have the ability to conceal more trauma than one soul should ever be allowed to bear—under nothing other than silence.

This is some of my learned mythology of men.

But now, thanks to the actions of my brothers in these last few years, I am questioning it.

Never in my time have I experienced such a level of compliance. I have seen and heard men who previously questioned everything, now telling me that sometimes you just don’t question—you just do what you’re told.

At first, I managed to process this by seeing these men as soldiers, who saw Covid as the enemy. The mask was their shield. Their own houses, where they were locked in, their foxholes—from where they fought to defend their families and community by being obedient.

And I get it. I was briefly caught up in this battle plan too, until very quickly, certain things stopped making sense.

And as one thing stopped making sense, suddenly—like tumbling dominoes—everything began to fail. Suddenly, I was locked up and watching as all our liberties were removed without a murmur of resistance.

It was then I called my father and asked what he thought of the unfolding events. He said, with a tone deep in thought:
“I think they are intending to cull us.”
Me too, I said. Me too. And we were connected.

Then, a short while later, he went and got himself—and my mother—jabbed. Twice.

Thrice, they cancelled their first appointments. But on the fourth, they did it. Since then, I’ve heard him holding onto two conflicting views in his head—congratulating me one moment for holding out, then urging me in the next breath to get jabbed, because he doesn’t want to see me in hospital on a respirator.

I didn’t realise then how lonely I was becoming, as around me men began doing things I never thought I’d see them do. Driven by fear, they started ostracising family and friends. Mates, who I’d fought in union campaigns with—who I took for granted were natural-born renegades—not only decided to comply, but attacked or cut me out of their lives because I wouldn’t.

And no day highlighted the severity of this ostracisation as much as the first Covid Christmas.

Before then, Christmas was a day where family members, even those who spent the entire year out of touch, would come together for a few hours—like an awkward prayer to the power of love.

But that year, in houses decorated with illuminated Christmas trees and crowned by the Star of Bethlehem, Love—or if you prefer, God—was defeated by fear.

A few months later, on Anzac Day, the forces of fear defeated God again, as fear—proudly wearing all the medals of our fathers and grandfathers—rested its hand on our betrayed hearts. Those soldiers, and the families of soldiers, who refused to comply were not allowed to attend the Dawn Service.

And although many women were a part of this too, the tragedy to me was that the men not only allowed this to pass, but insulted the ultimate sacrifice of those who had fought and died for our freedom with three words, spoken repeatedly and condescendingly: “Just get jabbed.”

But another remarkable Christmas Day happened during World War I, when along the line, men from both sides emerged from the trenches and played soccer.

If you put 100 red ants and 100 black ants in a jar, they will just get on with their lives. But if you shake that jar, the red and black ants will attack each other, believing the other side is attacking them.

This analogy carries over to all our demographics—black and white, Muslim and Christian, vaccinated and un-jabbed.

The solution is to pause and try, as a team, to ascertain who is shaking the jar.

And on that Christmas Day, on the frozen mud of no man’s land—coated with the broken dreams and blood of their brothers—those men must have realised that they weren’t each other’s enemy. That they weren’t the ones shaking the jar. That somewhere, people they’d never met—the rich and powerful who would never visit these trenches—were the ones shaking it.

And as they watched each other kick the ball, they must have realised too that their noble sacrifice was actually a communal betrayal. They must have also understood that they had all the guns. If they wanted, they could have agreed to stop fighting each other there and then, and after, turn their weapons on the generals. They could have all returned to their loved ones.

On the Russian front, this happened—yet it still all went to shit.
I believe French soldiers also rose up. But not our boys. Like the Germans, they got back into the trenches and started fighting and killing and dying all over again.

Why?

A good friend, who initially was on our side to the point of coming onto early episodes of Cafe Lock Out, where he called the pandemic for what it was, suddenly vanished.

When I finally got hold of him, he had gotten jabbed. He was almost 60, in great health, and didn’t need a job—his house was paid off. And all he could say—the last time he spoke to me—was:
“Well, I’ve always had bosses. Eventually, you have to do what they say.”

Since then, I found out his real boss—his sister—threatened to excommunicate him from his only family (her and her two kids, whom he adored), unless he complied.

Everywhere I’ve travelled in the last few years, I’ve been asked one question: “Where are the men?”

Our men have been duped—given a false enemy to fight (Covid-19), a uniform to don (the mask), and a weapon to fight with (the vaccine). They were given what most men crave: a purpose. Save our community.

But I believe the lie runs deeper than this.

For men have been fighting another world war for decades—a war aimed directly at them. And they’ve fought this war silently, with their hands tied behind their backs.

If you used the word ‘toxic’ to describe any other demographic, there would be an uproar. But masculinity? Knock yourself out.

We’ve had mothers saying how they’re retraining their little boys not to become rapists.

We’ve forced our young men to stand up in front of all the girls in school and apologise—not just for being boys, but for the sins of their fathers.

This war is the real enemy. Mature white males have even attempted to remove the word ‘man’ from our language and universities. In some universities, you can lose points for using the word ‘man’ in your essays.

And this war has been relentless and effective. Its victims are measured by our outrageous male suicide rate, and the men who drink or drug themselves to death. The survivors? Most just stay silent.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu argues that the most successful type of war is one where your opponent doesn’t even know he’s in a war.

Right here, right now—it’s our time to enter no man’s land and play soccer, as we ponder who is actually shaking our jar.

All through history, these moments have happened. What they are is a rare point in time where you, my brothers, can choose not to be a nameless statistic, but a member of a movement that came together and redefined history.

Covid was an act of marketing genius that blew away all the mythology of this country. Currently, we have no identity. All our souls are up for grabs, as the next war—the one that promises to reclassify most of us as redundant—is already here.

But you have a choice. You can continue to be compliant and let whoever is shaking our jar shake us deeper into totalitarianism, where we all become a shameful stain in the history of this land.

Or you can accept the responsibility of our communal destiny, and help us take back our beloved country and all our God-given freedoms.

And your reward for achieving this future is that once again, you will be able to call yourselves men.

I believe there is a God. What form He takes, or if He has an agenda—what it is—I don’t know.

But what I do know is that you were not born to be a slave.

You were born to be the tested hero that one day the sons of our sons will celebrate.

For history is not pre-written. It is a series of decisions.

And right now, my Brothers, that decision is ours—and it is crucial.
This is why I implore you—not just for the future, or for the present, but for yourselves—shrug off this long, marketed anti-male campaign, and join your brave women, and together we can fight our way back to a place where we can once again stand proud as we sing our national anthem with gusto.

For its words—thanks to you, and your decision to act—will no longer be a lie.

And more importantly, since we all know that boys have always learned how to be men by observing older men, you will once again become what our communal sons need: mentors, destinations, or—like my Uncle David, the delivery driver once was to me when I was a small boy—a hero I could see, a hero who was a Man.

Michael Gray Griffith

Dedicated to a one great man, John Murphy RIP