verging_on_random

We’re so obedient

August 13, 2006 on 12:49 pm | In Uncategorized |

Today’s mood:

The way the Australian public allows governments to do pretty much whatever they want never ceases to amaze me. I remember Vietnam moratorium marches and demos against the Springboks and mass rallies over environmental issues. The vast majority of the people who did these things had no personal interest in them ….. except for those of us who were eligible to be called up for army service and sent to Vietnam, which certainly made me take a lively interest in the matter  …. but most people just did it because they believed passionately that their government was acting wrongly.

These days governments do things that clearly do affect everybody’s rights and people passively sit and cop it sweet. Consider some of the things the Howard Government has done over the last 10 years:

• Supported an Australian citizen, David Hicks, being put in prison indefinitely without access to any of the rights that people of English descent trace back to Magna Carta, 800 years ago. It’s OK to do it apparently because Hicks is a Terrurist and anything goes in the War On Terror. The fact that Hicks hasn’t broken any Australian laws is used as an excuse to justify leaving him in an American concentration camp. To my simple mind, it means that he should simply be allowed to go about his business.
• Passed a series of laws that allow public servants to lock up people indefinitely on the grounds that they are “illegal immigrants”. This week the Senate will consider the latest proposed laws that will let us ship these wretched people off to some god-forsaken place like Nauru and leave them there for pretty much as long as the public servants feel like. Once again, hardly anybody seems too fussed. After all the boat people are probably damn Terrurists. Or Muslims. Or *shudder* both. Anyway they’re definitely foreigners so fuck’em.
• What else …… oh yeah. ASIO can lock you up because they think you know something about a Terrurist. You’re not allowed to tell anybody and you can’t even find out what it is you’re supposed to know because that’s secret information. Don’t you know we’re at War Against Terror?

Our governments also feel quite justified in lying consistently and deliberately about practically everything, just like their mates in London and Washington. I talk to a friend in England who reckons more than 50% of people there are convinced this latest Terrurist Outrage is all a scam to boost support for Blair and of course his mate in the White House. Who knows if that’s the truth? The fact is that these days governments are serial liars and it’s impossible to separate fact from fiction.

The changes that the Howard Government has made to our industrial relations laws will also change our society in ways that many people won’t like but once again nobody seems to give a shit. Students in France rioted in the streets earlier this year until the government there agreed to withdraw changes to the unfair dismissal laws but here people shrugged their shoulders and were like “we don’t really understand it cos it’s too complicated …. besides Big Brother live eviction’s on in a minute.”

I think most Australians have been sucked into such a materialistic frame of mind that they regard life as an endless series of transactions where they acquire commodities ….. cars and mobile phones and travel and child care and huge houses that cost 8 or 10 years’ income to buy (and that’s before tax) …. so all they have time for is wealth/families/small circle of friends …. and somebody else can worry about public policy because we haven’t got time for all that crap. That’s why we get a choice at election time between John bleedin’ Howard and Mark omfg Latham  (don’t blame me I voted Green).

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller

Niemoller was writing about Nazi Germany and of course nothing like that could ever happen here ….. we’re good people, not like those damn dirty Germans. Except the Germans thought they were pretty virtuous and civilised too.

Which countries were the last ones to invade another country in an unprovoked war of aggression? That’s right, it was the USA, Great Britain …… and us*. We did to Iraq just what Russia did to Afghanistan and with about as much justification. How many Australians care?

Not enough.

ttyl

*I think the Poles might have been along for the ride too but honestly, who cares about the Poles?