Rise My Silent Brothers Rise

When I was three, my Uncle David, who to me was so large and funny he was like a living superhero, pulled me onto his lap one day and let me steer his delivery van through the streets of our small town in Wales, and as I giggled, I pissed my pants all over his legs.Show more

That 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 away under the category called:

A MAN.

A while later, when I was around ten, my family was picnicking near a waterfall in South Australia.

The waterfall had a natural slide and the young men 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 to be lost forever, but death never got a chance, because as soon as the child fell several fathers leapt from their picnic blankets and ran across the rocks to grab him.

This memory I stored under the category called: Men.

Any of these fathers could have also slipped and been hurt, or worse, an injury that could have put their
own family in distress. But did they think about that? No. In that moment all of them were instinctively motivated to save that child that wasn’t theirs, and they all ran in to a subcategory called: The Protectors.

I have loads of these categories and subcategories, but only one man has his own, my Father.

My father is a philosopher and a poet, yet you would never know it because my father was born to a generation of silent men who taught him to keep all his poetry in his head.

Every day he walks up the hill near his home in WA and alone, sits on the summit and watches the city of Perth wake.

He is, to me, a foundation that I could never live up to, a mountain I could never climb, and an ocean I could never swim across, nor reach its floor.

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

We live in a time when our questions are many and unanswered, and our souls are constantly flabbergasted.

It’s like some weird reality show slipped out of our TV’s and invaded reality.

Yesterday I was watching a man complaining that although his baby had latched on to his nipple, it wasn’t as yet, producing milk.

Then there’s Putin threatening nuclear war, the ever rising price of food, financial collapse, economic ruin, climate change and of course. . .

Vaccines work, and it’s for your health. Come and get your booster.

But I’ve been wondering if the reason the covid cloud found it so easy to smother us, was because the powers that be had already dis-empowered our men.

When I was growing up, women’s toilets were off limits. Or, as we used to call it, when in grade one we played kiss chasey, barleese. Now I often have women complaining to me that they no longer have a toilet to themselves.

To me, you ask most men, and most men would agree to call the Women's
toilets for what they are, sacred grounds for women’s business.

You’re out somewhere with a few friends and the girls go to the pub you know you have time to get another beer. Or two.

When I was growing up, many pubs had men only sections, but in my time, these spaces were outlawed by women.

Now, I’m okay with female only places, for I feel women should have their own places where they can go and do whatever, but at the same time I know that the mental health of the men of this country would benefit if they too had places that only men could go. Time to unwind, time to be laughed at or laugh at another man while never judging or being judged.

A place to be with your brothers who will heal you as you heal them, without any “woke psychologist” ever comprehending how that is possible. I don’t get it, They don’t talk, they just whinge, talk big, and joke.

But that’s
not true. The language of men is subtle and learned. It’s spoken in a form of barely
imperceptible nods, in their ability to use swear words to convey affection, and loyalty, and in their ability to conceal more trauma and shame than any one soul should ever bear, in nothing other than silence.

This is some of my learned mythology of men, but now thanks to the reactions of my brothers in these last few years, I now question all of it.

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

At first I managed to process this by seeing these men as soldiers who saw Covid as the enemy. Their own houses, that they were locked into, were their trenches.

They were once again men fighting to defend their families and their community.

I too was briefly caught up in this battle, until very quickly certain things started to not make sense. And as one thing didn’t make sense, suddenly nothing
made any sense. Suddenly I was locked up and watching as our liberties were removed without a murmer of resistance, and it was now that I called my Father, who lives in Perth, and I asked him what he thought of the unfolding events, and he said, with a tone deep in thought, “I think they intend to cull us.”

Me too I said, Me too . . . And we connected, then a short while later he went and got himself and my mother jabbed. Three times they cancelled their appointments, but on the fourth time they did it.

Since then I’ve heard him holding onto these two conflicting views in his head, congratulating me one moment on holding out, then urging me to get jabbed in the next breath for he didn’t want to see me in hospital on a respirator.

I didn’t realise then how lonely I was becoming, because around me men were doing things I’d never thought I’d see, driven by fear, they started ostracising family and friends. Me.

Mates who’d fought in union campaigns with, men who I took it for granted were natural born renegades, not only decided to comply, but they attacked and or cut out of their lives anyone who didn’t.

And no day highlighted the severity of this separation, more than the day Koshe informed you how to go about segregating at Christmas.

To date, Christmas was a day where family members, even those who spent a year out of touch, or fighting, would come together for a few hours, like an awkward prayer to the power of love.

Last year, in houses decorated with illuminated Christmas trees crowned by the star of Bethlehem . . Fear Defeated God.

A few months later, on Anzac day, the forces of fear defeated God again as on the streets of Perth I watched, Kim Beazly rest his hand on our betrayed heart, and smile as the first segregated Anzac parade in our history marched past. A view saved by an old digger who ripped off his mask and stormed off, flipping Kim the bird as he did.

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 we glossed over all the blood of those who had fought and died for freedom with three words repeated a
condescendingly, “Just get jabbed.”

But another remarkable Christmas day happened in World War One 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 ant lives. But if you shake that jar, the red and black ants will attack each other, believing the other side is attacking them. The analogy carries over to all our demographics, blacks and whites, Muslims and Christians, vaccinated and unvaccinated,
The solution for us all, is to pause, and try to ascertain who is actually shaking our jar.

That Christmas day, on frozen mud of no man’s land, coated with the broken dreams and blood of their brothers, these men must have realised that they weren’t each other’s enemy. That the real enemy was people they’d never meet, rich and powerful men who would never visit these trenches.

And as these soldiers kicked the ball over the mud, they must have known too that not only was their noble sacrifice a communal betrayal, but that they had all the guns.

If they wanted, to they could have agreed to stop fighting each other there and then, turned their weapons on their generals and gone home.

In Russia this happened, though that all went to shit, and I believe the french soldiers also rose up. But not ours.

Instead they got back into their trenches and started fighting 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 locked out and calling the pandemic for what it was, vanished for a few weeks. When I finally got hold of him, he had gone and got the jab.

He was almost sixty and his health was great and he didn’t need his job, for his house was paid off.

And all he could say, which was the last time we spoke was, “I’ve always had bosses,
eventually you have to do what they say.

Since then I have found out his real boss was his sister, who threatened to excommunicate him from his only family, which was her and her two kids, unless he complied.

My son told me, after studying marketing, that if ever they want to convince Australian men to do something they don’t want to do, the marketing word they use to manipulate them is now becoming our favourite word. Community.

Everywhere I have been, bar here, I have been asked one question. Where are the men?

Our men have been duped. Given a false enemy to fight, covid 19, a uniform to done, the mask, and a weapon to fight with, the vaccine. They were what most men crave, a purpose to their lives, “Save your community.”

But I believe it runs deeper than this.

Years before Covid I was talking to my dad and we got talking about society’s current view of men and he stopped and said, “Now I’m the enemy.”

Our men have been fighting another war for decades. A war aimed directly at them, and they have fought this war silently and with their hands tied behind their backs.

If you used the term toxic to describe any other demographic there'd be an uproar. But masculinity?

We’ve had mothers stating how they are proudly training their boys not to be rapists.

Our young men have been forced to stand up in front of all the girls in their school and apologise not only for being men, but for the sins of us, their fathers. Also known as the wars real enemy, mature white males.

They are even attempting to remove the title “Man” from our language. In universities you can lose points for using the word in your essays.

This war has been relentless and effective. It’s victims, our outrageous male suicide rate, coupled with the men who drink or drug themselves to death, as most of the survivors, their brothers, just stay silent.

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

There is a lull in this covid bullshit now.

This is our time to emerge from the trench and play soccer and ponder as we do, as to who is actually shaking our jar.

Is it really the unvaccinated?

All through history there are calm moments before the storms. Moments, where you, my brothers, can choose not to be a number lost in their history,
but a member of a movement who came together and redefined and then became your country’s new history.

Covid was an act of marketing genius that blew away all the mythology of our country.

Currently Australia has no identity and all our souls are up for grabs

And we have a choice, we can continue to be compliant and let who ever is shaking our jar, lead us deeper into totalitarianism, where we will all become a shameful stain in the history of this land.

Or, we can accept the responsibility our communal destiny, and not only take back our beloved country and our God given freedoms, but gift the next generation a future they will want.

I believe there is a god, what form he takes, or even if he has a gender, I don’t know, but what I do know, is that you were not born to be slaves, you were born to be you,

the tested hero that one day our sons and the sons of our sons will celebrate.

History is not written, it’s a decision, and right now that decision is crucial.

That’s why I implore, not just for the future, or for the present, but for yourselves, Shrug off this long marketing war on men, and join us and your brave women, as together we fight our way back to where we can once again sing our national anthem without its words being, as they are now, a lie.

And if we manage to achieve this, the reward for us all, even if everyone forgets us, is that we will know, that despite the odds, we rose and became what we are meant to be,

MEN.

Michael Gray Griffith

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