As yet another year staggers toward to its final resting place in history and the faint glow of a dawning new year is almost visible on the horizon, I am quite delighted that you, and by inference, I, have managed to avoid the random and capricious depredations of fate yet again, and are on the cusp of making it through yet another year, mildly shell-shocked but otherwise relatively unscathed.
Just older and even more buggered than last year.
Which is, in all likelihood, better than the alternative.
It was not my intention to bore you or distress myself with another tirade about the Cowardly, Uninspiring, Negative Tory Shysters (I love acronyms) of Her Majesty's Government in this country, but the provocation is too great.
The hope that good would finally triumph over evil has proved to be ephemeral, with the snake-in-chief, Murdoch Snr., managing to avoid the sharp-shovel-across-the-neck and slither off into the undergrowth unscathed, and with Trump, that ghastly repudiation of the legitimacy of democracy, ascendant.
The prevailing mood in Australia is characterised by anger and frustration, not calmed by our stand-for-nothing Prime Minister, an egregiously god-bothering eschatological happy-clapping Pentecostal holier-than-thou smirker, taking time off from talking in tongues while he waits for the Rapture.
(Just as an aside, has nobody wondered whether an individual who believes that the End Times are imminent is the right person to develop a plan for the future of this country?)
Meanwhile, Anthony Albanese, the newly minted leader of the Australian Labour Party, attempts to pick up the pieces left from the catastrophic defeat in the last election, hopefully determined not to repeat the failed tactics of his predecessor, who apparently imagined an electoral advantage in me-too-ism, abandoning Labor's honourable traditional role as defender of workers and the disadvantaged, sneaking slowly to the right, hoping to attract the votes of the few conservative voters who still had a vestigial conscience, hoping no one would notice.
The Greens, relishing their new role as the only party of the true left, happily claimed the abandoned ground.
At the same time there is an apparent resurgence of authoritarian, nationalistic, sexist, racist, anti-intellectual, bigoted intolerance in society, for whom self-determination and freedom of choice seem to be unsettling. This is accompanied by scapegoating, which confirms that the fault is with others, not with ourselves.
Democracy, distorted by the vested interests of the media, appears wounded and dangerously ill, and socialism seems to be moribund.
Fascism and religious fundamentalism may well be expanding to fill the vacuum.
All this Heisenbergian political movement is occurring in unfortunate juxtaposition with the reemergence of international tension, made all the more unpredictable by the school-yard chest-thumping and braggadocio of Trump and Kim.
In anxious, uncertain times, there is comfort in authoritarianism.
We find comfort in a strong leader who knows who to blame for our difficulties. A strong leader who has the answer for our uncertainties, who gives us simple solutions for our complex problems.
We consciously disregard Menken's injunction.
I hope we never look back on this period of history as the prodrome of national and international conflict.
In any case, as Groucho said, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
One can gain some comfort from that.
Meanwhile, Anthony Albanese, the newly minted leader of the Australian Labour Party, attempts to pick up the pieces left from the catastrophic defeat in the last election, hopefully determined not to repeat the failed tactics of his predecessor, who apparently imagined an electoral advantage in me-too-ism, abandoning Labor's honourable traditional role as defender of workers and the disadvantaged, sneaking slowly to the right, hoping to attract the votes of the few conservative voters who still had a vestigial conscience, hoping no one would notice.
The Greens, relishing their new role as the only party of the true left, happily claimed the abandoned ground.
At the same time there is an apparent resurgence of authoritarian, nationalistic, sexist, racist, anti-intellectual, bigoted intolerance in society, for whom self-determination and freedom of choice seem to be unsettling. This is accompanied by scapegoating, which confirms that the fault is with others, not with ourselves.
Democracy, distorted by the vested interests of the media, appears wounded and dangerously ill, and socialism seems to be moribund.
Fascism and religious fundamentalism may well be expanding to fill the vacuum.
All this Heisenbergian political movement is occurring in unfortunate juxtaposition with the reemergence of international tension, made all the more unpredictable by the school-yard chest-thumping and braggadocio of Trump and Kim.
In anxious, uncertain times, there is comfort in authoritarianism.
We find comfort in a strong leader who knows who to blame for our difficulties. A strong leader who has the answer for our uncertainties, who gives us simple solutions for our complex problems.
We consciously disregard Menken's injunction.
I hope we never look back on this period of history as the prodrome of national and international conflict.
In any case, as Groucho said, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
One can gain some comfort from that.
.
Comments
Then I realized that, except for the names (other than He Who Must Not Be Named), ALL of it sounds painfully familiar.
You can therefore disregard the above copy and pasted quotation.
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