The Great Aussie Battler

What happens when a cancer doctor gets cancer? No, it’s not a riddle, it is a media phenomenon. The doctor, who won Australian of the Year in 2024, was diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2023, and, went from unknown (at least in the public eye) to media sensation as he embarked on a new treatment regime that was documented on various social media platforms, enthusiastically picked up by mainstream media (MSM) and even captured for posterity (although a post publication note may be needed) in a recently published memoir.

Most, if not all, the public commentary has been positive. We love the story of a battler, and what better battler than a cancer doctor who gets the disease he has spent his life working to eradicate. It could be the feel good story of the Australian decade. Except, it’s not, because, predictably, the cancer is back and time is limited.

The prognosis for glioblastomas is dismal and I can understand the desire, particularly for a relatively young and fit individual to try anything. What I don’t understand is the desire to make your private cancer journey so painfully public? Is it the TikTok/Instagram/Strava effect that if you didn’t post it (whatever it is), it didn’t happen? Is a cancer journey even analogous to my latest rip down the Mogo bike trails? I don’t think it is. One is a recreational pursuit, the other is a deeply personal, and probably (I don’t want to make any assumptions) traumatic journey that is unlikely to be improved upon by feeding a social media machine.

In a converse twisted kind of way, the inevitable recurrence of cancer seems somehow worse given the hype and near hysteria that accompanied the experimental treatment. The results of the neoadjuvant checkpoint therapy was described as “nothing short of phenomenal” and “generated in 10 weeks discoveries that would normally take years.” Where have we heard that hype before? Posted public comments such as “supposedly incurable brain cancer” must now make anyone with any sort of empathy weep. Is this “desperation oncology” as one prominent cancer clinician/researcher has written or merely the human propensity to have our hope validated by a larger audience? And does anyone, least of all, the afflicted individual, truly benefit?

International Womens Day

On International Womens Day The Guardian published an article about how terrible it was that men who identify as women are being returned to men’s prisons under the Trump’s new gender orders. The subtitle of the article was: “Incarcerated trans women report being groped by male guards.” That sounds terrible. Too bad, The Guardian did not think to cover any of the true incidents of men, who identify as women in order to do “easier time” who, upon being transferred to women’s prisons go on to rape and sexually assault women prisoners. There are dozens and dozens of these reports, but, as only real women are harmed by these incidents, they are not worth reporting, even on International Womens Day.

Such is the banality of evil we now live with every day. And the irony, of “pussy grabber” Trump actually standing against the ideologues to offer real protection to women is not something I thought I would see in my life time. But I also didn’t think the entire world would shut down over a virus that well over 99% of people survived. But then again, I didn’t think the Left would become the political party of war (as long as they don’t actually have to fight), or big Pharma, or big Food, or rampart authoritarianism or child mutilation the likes of which would have made Hitler proud.

I turned away from the Left when gender ideology went mad. I thought, “if you can convince people that men can become women, you can convince people of anything.” And here we are. A chunk of society believes men can become women and visa versa. This same chunk of society believes anything and everything the MSM pumps out. Their social media accounts are a continuously rotating rainbow of icons signalling the latest virtue. And, in their hubris, they “call out” – Lefties love to “call out” - anyone who disagrees as stupid and manipulated while not recognising that they have signed up to a cult which demands absolute and devout obedience to each new and increasingly ridiculous edict. How long until the Far Left cuts their own hands off to pledge allegiance to the latest hoax? Already they are cutting the body parts off children and young adults. Mental illness and the inability to give informed consent is not an impediment.

I’m now a single issue voter. I’ll vote for any party that dismantles the woke mind virus. I agree with Gad Saad. These are parasitic viruses which take over the mind of the infected. Wokeism is not, as Jane Fonda recently said, “caring about other people.” Woke is indefensible ideas and failed policies that make everything worse. The Left, as someone much smarter than me once said, “does not understand the power of incentives,” which is, of course, the height of irony as everything the Left proposes is intended to signal their own virtue and raise their own social status; in other words, the Left is responding to incentives.

A Warning Not A Condemnation

The problem with Australians is not that so many of them are descended from convicts, but that so many of them are descended from prison officers. Unknown.

I posted this (see below) to my Facebook page yesterday, and a longer but very similar screed went onto my Instagram account. The Facebook post got two likes, one of which was from a fairly high profile Australian climber. You should not read too much into this as I have a grand total of 16 friends on Facebook: the audience is small and I have no interest in garnering “likes” so most of my posts are either stupid, sarcastic or both. To be clear, despite the Zuckerberg back flip on censorship, totalitarianism and toxic femininity (if masculinity can be toxic so can excessive feminism), I am no fan of Facebook and the only reason I got an account was to see the trail updates about our local mountain bike tracks. Unfortunately, Facebook still seems to have a strangle hold on this type of communication for local community groups. That often happens, the first kid on the block manages to garner the most success. Outside of that, like all social media, Facebook is not a healthy place.

Still, I pop into Facebook and put up the occasional post. Ironically, the other thing I keep up with on Facebook is the movement to keep the climbing areas in Mount Arapilies open to climbers. Climbing is, or at least it used to be, counter-culture. Climbers were outside society, lived in their cars (before the Trust Fund kids all got $100 K+ Sprinter vans), and shunned mainstream movements. These days, climbers, like the left itself, have morphed into authoritarian tattle tales who have been co-opted by the Critical Race theorists and now spend most of their time talking about how climbing (and the outdoors in general) is exclusionary to various identified victim groups.

No-one who conducts these ludicrous surveys or dreams up these unworkable strategies – which, by the way, always include the exhortation to “check yourself” because you too are, obviously (it really goes without saying), also a racist, sexist homophobic sinner - ever thinks that perhaps the reason some IV’s (identified victims) are not into climbing is because they are uninterested. I am a 62 year old white female and, for my entire outdoor career I have been – mostly but not entirely – the only female in a group of mixed race males. I never thought this was systemic sexism because it was patently obvious to anyone with two neurons capable of synapsing, that the real reason I was the only woman was because, as a general circumstance, women were not interested in climbing, skiing, mountaineering, or whatever the relevant sport was. Reality, as they say, is a bitch.

Riding around our local trails today I was thinking that anyone who saw my Facebook post and is a nanny state government supporter (most, if not all of the political left) would be quite insulted because, in a round about, sly kind of way, I was calling the folks who love signage, safety regulations and the like, weak and stupid. Oops. Not actually my intent. The post was a warning not a condemnation.

I’ll do an Andy Kirkpatrick here and say, as Andy would after a series of non-PC talking points “I do apologise.” Andy Kirkpatrick, of course, was cancelled by the woke-rati climbers for some perceived slight or use of “hurty words” and, just like that a brilliant mind from the climbing scene was erased; but such is the nature of the new world order where mediocrity is infinitely preferable to meritocracy.

Anyway, I rode my favourite trail today: RU12. It’s old school, narrow, twisty, rocky, a little technical, lots of steep uphill sections even though it is officially a downhill track with a steep, rocky climb out an eroded fire trail at the end. The good thing about the heart pumping ride out is that every other up-track feels easy afterwards. The other good thing is, for some reason, the E-bike riders don’t venture down RU12 much which automatically gets my approval. Anyway, take heed of my warning, or don’t. It’s your choice.