My American cousins, I live in Queensland, Australia and we used to be ruled by a bloke who, pretty much, wrote the template for Donny's small ‘p’ presidency.
He was Premier (your version of a State Governor) Johannes ‘Joh’ Bjelke-Petersen (pronounced, ‘Buh-Jell-Kee’).
Joh, aka: the Hillbilly Dictator, ruled Queensland with a clenched fist for nearly two decades, 1968 to 1987. Not because he was super popular, but because he flagrantly used the ‘Gerrymander’ voting system, created by an American politician, which we rebranded, ‘The Bjelke-mander’.
Basically, a way of bare-faced cheating to win elections by redrawing electoral boundaries to give your supporters a bigger share of the vote.
So, instead of one person, one vote (like it used to be, and is now), National Party electorates were gifted one person = several votes.
My memory is foggy, but I recall Joh only needed something like 37% (or less) of the total state vote to win government, leaving the opposition a huge, almost insurmountable, mountain to climb to get over the line.
Which meant the choice of the majority was wiped out by the minority.
Note: if you’re so bloody unpopular you have to resort to these sorts of dodgy voting shenanigans to win elections, then you, sir, are a lowdown, sapsucking, sidewinding, conniving, cheat with a hide thicker than one of Donny’s diapers.
Joh justified his actions because he truly believed only he could protect the state from union thuggery, yellow hordes, opportunistic murderers, dangerous intellectuals, reds under the bed, shady southerners and anyone using words like ‘elitist’ or ‘profiteering’.
Power consolidated, he quickly turned his party into a personality cult where loyalty to the leader mattered more than anything else; or else!
Um, America, does this sound familiar?
Joh was seen as a ‘strongman’, literally a driver of a bulldozer and a political bulldozer. He loved nothing more than sitting on his big yellow toy destroying bushland on his farm, or letting his government destroy the states’ natural wonders, forests, parks and reefs (for fun and profit).
He drew strong support from religious groups who meekly turned a blind eye to his private army (the Qld Police Force) gleefully bullying, harassing or jailing undesirables, i.e.: opposition politicians, anyone of colour, the poor, gay, truth tellers, journalists, students (the young), unionists, hippy’s, the intelligent, anyone looking happy etc.
During his reign, civil liberties were strangled, democracy kicked in the face, integrity and open government scoffed at, and Queensland remained locked in the Conservative Wet Dream of the 1950’s.
Ah, the 1950’s
The mythical decade right-wingers’ crave to return to, where anyone not male, old or rich, knew their place; basically, in the distant background, obediently staying quiet.
As the old joke went at the time, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve landed in Queensland and while we’re taxiing to the terminal, please turn your watches back twenty years.”
If Joh suspected the peasants were toying with open revolt, he had no qualms about declaring a State of Emergency and bludgeoning into bloody submission anyone daring to speak up, or out, or attending a street march for change.
Should some hapless Qld citizen be found with (or police had planted) a single gram of marijuana on their person, or an unedited, out of state, copy of Playboy (which showed pubic hair!) they faced crippling fines and/or many years in jail.
For someone so welded to law and order, from day one there was a foul stench of corruption around Joh (again, does this sound familiar?!), and more conflicts of interest than cane toads on a wet road, which he either ignored or called ‘rubbish from the lying, socialist press’ and treated as proof he was on the far righteous path.
Plus, Joh may have been teetotal, but most of his ministers were legendary drinkers.
Joh lowered taxes for the wealthy and developers quickly learned to get around any pesky planning, environmental and zoning laws by dropping shopping bags stuffed with cash under Joh’s desk.
“He’s modernising Queensland!” his supporters would declare pointing at hideous skyscrapers popping up all over Brisbane city and the Gold Coast glitter strip. Sadly, many of them were built on sites that once housed much loved buildings, ballrooms or halls.
(Seriously, it’s like conservatives only have one play book, vale’ the White House East Wing)
During this time, Joh, somehow, wrangled a knighthood for ‘Services to Democracy’ which, left all of us open-mouthed with shock and so stunned the Federal Government of the day, they immediately legislated to discontinue knighthoods in Australia.
He got his wife, Flo, on the payroll as a Federal senator, but his son, John, (like Don Jr and Eric) didn’t have Maw n Pa’s sheer front for the game and he, quite happily, staggered backwards into obscurity.
Like DT, the more Joh was ridiculed as a blustering, blithering idiot by the press (and, boy, he gave them truckloads of material to work with!), the more his rural, rusted on, base loved him.
Fortunately the rest of Oz wasn’t lining up to buy his homespun, self-righteous, crap.
Because in 1987, backed by his dodgy millionaire business buddies from the Gold Coast (our Florida) Joh put together a bid to become Prime Minister (basically the Oz version of President).
Which very much alarmed the rest of the country who clearly knew what a political sociopath looked like.
He had 20% of Australian voters backing ‘Joh for PM’ and would have built on that number if it hadn’t been the infamous Four Corners special which lifted the heavily battered lid on a steaming, sordid mess of Queensland police corruption which led right to the top.
An inquiry was held which uncovered an astonishing amount of corruption at nearly every level of Joh’s government.
Eventually, a lot of his trusted generals were named, prosecuted and some were jailed. Joh himself would later be prosecuted, but escaped jail by sheer skullduggery (has anyone seen Luke Shaw lately?)
Like Trumps’ presidency, we Queenslanders honestly thought Joh’s rule, like XXXX beer, Bundaberg Rum and cane toads was going to outlast religion.
Then one day, it was all over.
In 1987 his reign fell off a cliff, but not because of all the rorts, grifting, cruelty and bald-faced lying.
Joh was deposed not long after his plans to build the worlds’ tallest building in the centre of Brisbane went awry.
To silence dissenters and protestors (surprisingly, some from his own party!), he tried to save his own political skin by demanding his handpicked Attorney General sack his entire cabinet.
Instead, the AG asked Joh’s ministers to obediently, and honorably, resign to appease the old mob boss.
And the arse kissing cronies looked up from their troughs on the Joh Gravy Train and snorted:
Then, in a moment of breathtaking disloyalty, voted instead to oust Joh!
The old Mad King had been usurped and, to everyone’s amazement, went quietly.
To his credit, he didn’t demand his supporters’ storm Brisbane’s parliament house, beat up the cops and trash the joint as he drove off scowling into the sunset.
Ah, those were the days…
And, America, here's the comforting part
We (Queensland) Survived Joh
Time moved on, the culture changed.
The new look Nationals continued to rule under a new, not so corrupt, leader, Mike Ahern, until the 1989 election when they were beaten like a dusty rug by the Goss Labor Government.
Nowadays, when a plane lands in sunny Queensland, passengers only have to turn their watches back five years.
Such progress!
So, take heart my American friends, the political wheel will turn.
Although, I expect like old Joh, Donny will eventually be booted out of power by his own party who will be appalled at some outrageous Trump overreach (which I admit will have to be something fairly spectacular seeing as how they’ve happily turned a blind eye to everything else so far) and, with the electoral wipeout writing on the wall, will scramble to save themselves from political oblivion, or prison.
Also, like King Joh, The Donald, won’t get his full legal come-uppance, but a lot of his bootlicking deputies will.
And life will go dully on until the wheel turns yet again and the next conservative dumpster fire rolls into Dodge City.
Trust me, it’s a’comin’.
And, once again, it'll be arriving on a stagecoach from the backblocks of Queensland:
Cheers,
Gb