The Apprentice
Why have a spine? Why have a vision? Why try to materially improve peoples lives when you can just ass-kiss instead?
“I fight Tories, that’s what I do,” Albanese once proudly declared. Now he beams beside a man who makes Tories look like woke soy-boys. A rapist who shouldn’t be within 500 metres of a school assembly, let alone the UN General Assembly.
A fascist funding genocide and sending innocent people to foreign gulags, while building concentration camps in American swamps. An authoritarian installing billionaire sycophants to run the world’s media and weaponising courts to silence dissent. A climate denier hell bent on climate collapse, and our Prime Minister grins like it’s an honour to stand beside him, as if everything is fine.
Why stand up? Why have a vision? Why try to materially improve people’s lives when you can ass-kiss oligarchs instead? Pragmatism baby.
This is centrism. Step 1: Kiss the ring of the far-right abroad. Step 2: Act surprised when neo-nazis bash people in the streets at home. It’s just good diplomacy, apparently. Appeasing a thug who sees loyalty as a one-way street, who stabs his closest allies in the back for sport. He’ll pocket our billions, of course. No, silly, not for submarines! Just for another photo-op (in the White House!) if Australia is really, really nice.
History won’t file these pics away as clever or cute. It will spit it back with phlegm. Anthony “Weak Dog” Albanese, remembered as the self-styled fighter who stopped fighting. A leader who had a choice: stand up, or take a selfie with a fascist. He chose to say cheese. And in that choice, he revealed himself not as the fighter he claimed to be, but as another coward bending the knee. Pathetic.
So Anthony Albanese, how does it feel to have become what you once despised? Was your leftie-larping just a ploy, a costume you wore in the wings of the world stage? You made it, mate. Enjoy this moment. The moment history will remember you couldn’t meet.
Being a diplomat is one thing. Tanking selfies as a fan girl is honestly disgusting. Latin American presidents had way more to fear and they at least stood up against him.
My philosophy, ever since Obama's term ended, has been that we should keep America at arm's length, regardless of who is president and what their political ideology is. Even though I was raised conservatively and held conservative views until the early 2020s, I still felt inspired and a sense of unity for the American people damn near every time I heard Obama speak.
With Trump's initial rise to power, we saw a Republican figurehead that was no longer interested in keeping America united, which vehemently increased when he entered his second term in late 2024. Biden wasn't much better; similar to Albanese in his Prime Ministership, he tinkered around the edges and led with a philosophy that was almost like a thinly-veiled threat of "we probably could do more, but at least we aren't the Republicans/Coalition".
I can understand the responsibilities of being a diplomat and having to develop/maintain relationships with leaders of other countries. The irony of it all is this: Albanese could not look any happier to be in the same room as the man whose politics he so often emphasizes as those the Australian people vehemently opposed in our election five months ago.