--- Jill Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > on
2/9/01 10:18 AM\
But I wonder,
> or perhaps I'm being merely hopeful, that more
> people than we think are
> disturbed and disgusted. I base this on little more
> than the amount of
> correspondence (letters, email) I have seen in the
> media - more anti than
> pro Howard's stance - and some conversations with
> self-proclaimed 'red neck'
> friends in Queensland. OK, so I'm probably wrong.
>
What bothers me considerably about it is that Mr
Howard (a canny political operator in the domestic
sense, if a fool elsewhere) is quite sure he has read
the electorate correctly. And I have a horrible
suspicion he is right - (it would be very nice to be
wrong)
and given that Pauline Hanson has congratulated him on
his "stance", and that when Mr Howard met that
enlightened columnist Andrew Bolt last week (the Bolt
of the Louise O'Donoghue stink not long ago, one of
the most outrageous and malicious tabloid beatups I
have ever seen), he told him he liked his column, what
Mr Howard is reading is an electorate which has swung
dramatically to the right, to views that a decade ago
would have been called "extremist" but which are now
ajudged as mainstream.
And I read _this_ as very bad news for poets and our
ilk, ie, anyone who sees the world in more complex
fashion than the faux black and whites of ersatz 60s
nostalgia - that is, a nostalgia for an era which in
fact never existed. Stupidity and self interest
(defined in the narrowest possible terms) rules,
folks, and as long as questioning the intelligence and
morality of the government is aligned with heeding the
international community and labelled "cultural
cringe", we're in deep shit. That such views can be
maintained in the contemporary world is somewhat
amazing. It's possible Australia is more
anti-intellectual than it's ever been before: small
and frightened and blind. The levels of self
deception which are practised in public discourse have
long been staggering, but I'm wondering if this plumbs
a new low. Or maybe it just exposes it.
In any case, it's deeply shaming.
Best
Alison
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