G'day Thaxists,
Melancholia Alert!
A few typical stories that would be carried by a half-decent news bulletin
on this particular but ordinary day:
Thousands of Irish Republicans sit in the road to demonstrate, and they're
clubbed to a bloody pulp as they sit there ...
100 000 Melbournians rally in the city centre against neo-liberalism and its
peeling back of basic democracy and is all but ignored by the media ...
20 000 Australian miners go on a one day strike to protest the government's
failure either to enforce a deadbeat boss to come up with the $6.5 million
dollars he stole from his erstwhile workers, and their union finds the price
of solidarity may be bankruptcy as the courts tell 'em 'be a union, and we
break you' ...
MOST Australian Aboriginal males can not now expect to see fifty ...
A new Israeli PM promises peace, and promptly razes a Palestinian village
near Jerusalem to the ground ...
The UN sits back as Kosovo's Serbs emulate their Krajinan compatriates and
retreat to god-knows-where in terror before a western authored purge ...
'Civil' Wars in Liberia, Angola, Democratic Congo, Eretria/Ethiopia, Sierra
Leone, Sudan and Burundi ...
Erstwhile Reagan henchman Oliver North DARES criticise Warren Beatty's
presidential aspirations on the grounds that he's just a Hollywood actor ...
As I said, an ordinary day. But then, to realise that, you'd need a clue
about what other days are like. Some history is invented, sure, but a lot
more of it is conveniently forgotten - or just plain ignored, I reckon.
I've stopped appealing to history to make my points when I teach - none of
the bright-as-a-button, full-of-potential youngsters in a packed Australian
lecture theatre would know what on earth I'm on about! Humanities
Departments are cutting their history departments, high schools don't seem
to teach it any more, and the news tells us nothing about how any of the
particular episodes of carnage or ineqity in which it wallows came to pass.
History starts anew each day, and dies as aching head hits pillow. No sense
of direction, none of erstwhile victories, none of more recent losses, none
of danger, and none of hope.
Oh, and the aggregate countering weight of good news stories on this
particular day? Viewers of pay TV will soon be able to choose the angles
for their replays of footbal matches!
Well, ya can't make omelettes like that without breaking a few hundred
million eggs, eh?
Sigh.
Rob.
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