Being
a pacifist and having worked with young people for years, trained
within the realms of youth work, mediation, counselling, mental
health and pastoral care, I have learnt to control my emotions. While
those around me can be quick to anger, reckless and at the whim of
their emotional reactions. I tend to be quick to listen, slow to
anger, non-judgemental and trying to draw the best out of
people. I have treasured being called a 'calming influence'. But recent events have left a sour taste on my tongue. And when I spit, it is laced with vitriol. I'm showing signs of cracking.
The culmination so far of my journey towards losing it came through SBS's Dateline report on Manus Island. I think it was
the most important piece of journalism I've witnessed all year (and
another in a long line of powerful reasons why we need public
broadcasters). If you didn't see the program, I suggest you should -
everybody should. That is; if you think you can handle the truth.
I was so furious from it that I felt the
need to express my rage. Did I punch walls? did I pick up a pitchfork and
go marching to my nearest political representatives office? No. I did
what any repressed activist with an inclination to blogging and
social media would do - I sat down and wrote about what I thought and
how I felt. Checking myself, I refrained from publishing. It wasn't
because the use of the word 'fucking' as an adjective in every
second sentence bothered me as lazy from the perspective of a writer. It was
more that it was just a therapeutic exercise of release.
I feel sorry for Biz sometimes
when I get all righteous and shouty, starting to share tidbits of
the internal dialogue I have where I rip Abbott and Morrisson to
shreds. I'm thankful she puts up with my outbursts. Outbursts that
are coming all too frequent of late due to a Government that declares
itself open for business but closed to humanity. Heck, even the
Uniting Church got rejected for offering to care for children who are being punished because of the choices of others.
ABC Uniting Church offers to take child asylum seekers
SMH church slams cold blooded treatment of asylum seeker children
SMH church slams cold blooded treatment of asylum seeker children
And when exactly did that happen?
When in this democracy did power and business interests take precedent over the
interests of people. We have a power hungry PM who has said in
the past "I would do anything except sell my arse to become PM."
And now he and the likes of Campbell Newman strut around like they
own the place. We know power corrupts and it has surely corrupted these men
to where they have forgotten (if they ever knew it) that leaders
are there to serve the people. A business is not a person. We have
become a nation that ignores the consequences to people and the
environment because we tolerate leaders that serve business interests
to serve their own self interest.
I am not always on the side of
our propensity to cut down the tall poppy. It can come across as an
aversion to success, a way to drag down the intellectual to our
level. There are days though that I am thankful we have such a
cultural system in play, I want to see it happen in this case. I want
the senate inquiry announced today into Manus (thank you Greens and
Labour) to expose the horror that we are accountable for. Likewise the inquiry from the UN human rights commissioner. And I want
to see us take our democracy back from those that are far from
conservative with their radical tea party neo-con privileged plutocrat idealogies.
Oh dear, I've gotten off tangent and turned all ranty again over the last two paragraphs. See! I have a problem.
Still, I wonder
if they'll even deign to answer the questions that the senate puts to
them? And if nothing changes, I wonder if (while not being individually oppressed)
I can claim asylum in New Zealand? On what I consider reasonable grounds of course, that my country has
gone mad with irrational fear and it is causing me considerable mental anguish?
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