Our plague of belligerent fools

EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO BE MUDDLE-HEADED. BUT THESE PEOPLE COUNT NOW IN WAYS THEY USUALLY DO NOT. THEIR CHOICES STAND TO HURT EVERYONE ELSE.

THERE’S one in every gathering. They thrive in every classroom, local council meeting and, in another age, the crowd at the footy.

Let me declare that I have nothing against these people. Some of my best friends are “d---heads”. They’ve been known to stand at the finish line at the greyhounds, and throw beer on one another as the dogs pass, so that the moment is captured on TV for eternity.

But the rise of the particularly Victorian d---head, and their place in the pandemic, ought to be addressed.

Not the woman pulled over late at night, with two dogs in the car, who spoke of coming home from work — in her pyjamas. Or the bloke who supposedly drove 320km past God knows how many Maccas outlets for a date with a drive-through.

I mean the dangerous kind, the belligerents imbued with misguided notions of righteousness and rights. Denied freedoms and liberties, they believe they are separate to the decisions of the herd.

Clusters of them appear to be growing. They challenge police who ask them to wear a mask. Some of them read from a script when they are pulled over, often after they have deliberately driven to a roadblock.

They believe that COVID-19 is a conspiracy, much as their forebears doubted the moon landing and still keep a look out for Elvis. They cite the Australian Constitution, smug in the knowledge that almost no one has read the Constitution. They separate “laws” from “directives”, and distort interpretations of legal acts as wantonly as evangelist preachers bastardise the Bible.

The other day, one of these people filmed himself being arrested after he refused to put on a mask. He cited the Public Administration Act (something to do with the role of the public service in the public interest) and labelled the arresting officers as “evil” and “communist”.

He normally wouldn’t matter much. “I have had a number of interactions with police, members of DHHS and government and the results were triumphant,” he wrote before his rather inglorious clash with protective services officers at a train station. Nor would the woman, 38, who slammed a police woman’s head on the ground after being asked to put on a mask.

These kind of people have always been out there; shrill in the face of perceived injustice, wannabe victims hoisted on false premises. Some of them write piles of one-way correspondence, filled with capital letters and underlines, to newspaper columnists. That’s usually OK. Everyone has the right to be muddle-headed — so long as they cause no harm. But these people count now in ways they usually do not.

They have gathered without face masks to try to make a point. Their choices stand to hurt everyone else. They claim a “human right” to harm their fellow citizens.

They have become a uniquely local problem, and some commentators have queried whether the Andrews government lacks the moral imprimatur that other state leaders have applied to compliance.

Own goals by the State Government have riled the masses, such as the loophole that allowed three in 10 in hotel quarantine to be released despite refusing to be tested.

It’s odd that those quarantining at home (including 800 from 3000 doorknocked) were free to exercise, or to say that they were exercising, when they were found not to be at home.

For this, we can credit the largely unheard of Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act, which seems to do little except serve to endanger the majority by imposing the potentially lethal whims of the minority.

Questions of poor management keep rising. Yet the need to adhere to the collective best interest remains unchallenged. The rules are there, starting with heavy fines. Writing in The Australian, the dean of law at Swinburne University, Mirko Bagaric, has even mooted the notion of manslaughter by criminal negligence if virus spread could be reliably attributed to an individual.

What about a new law in the meantime? Call it the D---head Principle. Those found to have deliberately flouted rules should face 100 hours of targeted community service.

They could clean the COVID-19 wards at hospitals, and do odd jobs such as taking the personal protective equipment of health workers to the trash. As orderlies, they could move the elderly and infected.

The best bit is that they can apply their theories. They could be free to work without a mask to “prove” that COVID-19 is a myth, and they could be forced into hotel quarantine when they test positive.

Nothing in the Australian Constitution will save these people from themselves. But such an approach would at least save us from them.