I still remember the night of September last year when our current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull took over from his predecessor.
I couldn’t quite believe it. I was stunned that the party I had voted for had decided to turn in one of the few conservatives in its ranks for a better dressed, better spoken and better looking clone of the narcissistic, spendthrift maniac Kevin Rudd.
The opinion pieces didn’t seem quite real. How could such universal acclaim from both the Left at Fairfax, the Guardian and the ABC and the nominal Right at News Corp be attaching itself to the man whose career had proven such a litany of failure, from the Republican referendum to his utterly wrong-headed support of the ALP in their search for a better way to tax Carbon Dioxide?
How could the journalists at so many supposedly reputable organisations be heaping laurels at the feet of a man so obviously devoid of substance?
I watched my leftist acquaintances gloat at the downfall of Abbott, their social media threads filled with onions and laughter. I wondered what decent right-of-centre politician could have voted to elect such a pathetic cipher, such an empty shell of nothingness to our nation’s leadership?
What was the right for, if not to oppose the left?
If winning elections meant everything and putting a leftist in charge of the only right-of-centre party in our two-party system was an acceptable tactic, then why should the right bother existing at all?
Did the entire right side of politics only continue as a means for party staffers and hacks to maintain their employment regardless of the cost to the country? Regardless of the surrenders to the traitorous, Australia hating, flag-burning left?
Did those opposing the semi-criminal gang that is the modern ALP have no principles of their own beyond the maintenance of their own power and privilege? Did they have no love for the nation that our ancestors carved out of the unforgiving rock of this harsh and barren land at all?
Did they not even care?
At the turn of the New Year I was filled with foreboding and sorrow. The world seemed on a dark and tumultuous path with little solace at all for those of us standing athwart screaming stop.
Then the Current Year broke, and the new day dawned.
In Britain in June, the traditionally Labor-voting working classes of the north and the Conservative-voting middle-class south joined together to vote for Brexit, in defiance of all expert predictions.
The English-speaking world shook with the sound of falling leftist tears.
Anarchists and Communists joined together with their less extremist leftist brethren to riot on the streets of London, demanding that the vote be held again.
The self-appointed, black-masked, privileged vanguard of the working class demanded with fire, violence and broken glass that the nation vote again until the stupid proles voted correctly.
The irony was so thick you could eat it with a spoon.
Here in Australia the long-awaited rebellion of the sneered at suburbanites and downtrodden country folk came to pass in July. The snobbish scumbag who assumed the lodge as though inheriting a throne was very nearly toppled by the rising fury of the forgotten Australians.
The people who love their nation and do not wish to see it fade into the gentle night of history quietly trudged to the polling stations and sent a message to the worms who now control both of our major political parties.
They didn’t riot in the streets; they didn’t smash in any windows or burn anyone else’s car out of adolescent selfishness. Yet they let their displeasure be known in the most civilised way they knew how, by voting for anyone but the two corrupt parties full of swollen leeches that dominate our politics.
They stood their ground and screamed, not with Molotov cocktails or traffic blocking tantrums but by electing a slew of outsiders including Pauline Hanson, the woman most of the scuttling Canberra parasites had been taught to fear since their undergraduate days.
It was a revolution of the meek, of the forgotten, of the truly disenfranchised.
Naturally, the elites had a fit.
But their pain was not over.
The best was yet to come.
On November eight Donald Trump made every leftist head in the world explode.
The left had laughed at Trump, laughed at his supporters and made fun of his every pronouncement.
On the late night comedy shows, sneering sarcastic comics had only to mention Trump’s name to elicit roaring guffaws from their audiences. All present bathing in each others approval, all enjoying bleating in time like the sheep they are.
I even knew a few leftists here in Australia who had organised victory parties for Hillary that night.
By the time the sun set on that momentous day I can only imagine what the mood at those parties must have been like.
I sat back on social media and saw the certainties of the most annoying people I know dissolve into a mess of nothingness, rage and tears.
It was beautiful. They never saw it coming.
And more is on the horizon.
Here in Australia the neglected tribes outside of the redoubts of the leafy inner suburbs of our capital cities begin to grow restless.
The drums are echoing through the hills, the clans are assembling.
Newly emboldened conservatives like Cory Bernardi and George Christensen grow louder. One Nation looks to take the balance of power in Queensland and the squawks of the chattering classes grow ever more panicked.
They scream about “fake news” and how the stupid, unlettered, Bogan, redneck white trash need to be educated as to what is good for them.
But we aren’t listening any more.
We may never listen again.
The people are no longer content to let those who consider themselves our betters to destroy our birthright uncontested.
2016 was a good year for the outcast, for the forgotten and downtrodden, for those who contribute and get very little in return, for those who watch while the pudgy figures of our self appointed elites gorge themselves on the wealth of the country our ancestors created.
2016 was indeed a very good year.
But I get the very real feeling that 2017 will be even better.
Photo by Gage Skidmore