Oops just watched a trailer for Unrivalled…urgh what is going on with the world or am I just some latte drinking trendy overeducated and underpaid, indulging in some romantic sensibilities? Lordy lordy be.
It seems everywhere you have to have a position on something. Where do I stand on land rights for gay whales? Do I support the notional redistribution of capital into the hands of the rich at the expense of the useless layabouts bludging on the dole? What did Milton mean by promoting a straw man to finger Eve in the downfall of MAN? Jesus wept…a freakin decision please, just say where you stand!
Menzies took a stand 60 years ago against the evil communists who were in the words of the then Country Party like a poisonous snake, kill it before it kills you. Never mind the implications of outlawing a political party in a democratic state, some people are just too dangerous to let loose on the streets. 2001 and some bloody ideologically motivated nutbags fly a few planes into a few buildings and the whole world goes into shock therapy while governments aided and abetted by the media keen to broadcast a plethora of shocking images to the unsuspecting goes into legislative overdrive labelling any dissent no matter how trivial as an act of TERROR! For Fuck Sake! Get a grip a people.
What happens? The US leads a coalition of very unwilling in arms against a bunch of third world Arab states who happen to have the misfortune to be sitting on a large chunk of the known oil reserves and a whole shitload more people die, most of them innocent poor nationals of Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile private security multinationals collect a fuckin windfall in government money as they covertly roll out the next police state at home.
Here’s a bloody position for you dear reader. The acts of 9/11 are over. Sure they have echoed a few times around the world but they didn’t and don’t herald a new wave of popular armed insurrection that transcends national boundaries. In breaking news it appears that most people just want to eat sleep and be fuckin merry. The last ten years has handed back power to private interest after any social gains that might have occurred in the preceding 100 years. Wealth is increasingly disproportionate in its distribution, a very important consideration if you subscribe (as I do) to the belief that the usefulness of money is proportional to its distribution. In other words, money becomes more useful and powerful when it is not distributed evenly.
Oh and then there is the little matter of global warming. Remember a few years ago (I do, I went to Al’s little film one night in a George Street movie house)…global warming was going to get us and the culprit was humanity’s greedy consumption of all things carbon. The scientists, bless their little empirical socks, happen to by and large agree. The powers-that-be got a bit nervous, what if widespread populism actually motivated people to act? Well government can’t have people acting for themselves and the economy certainly wont put up with people absconding from their consumer responsibilities so let’s have a RECESSION and remind the wavering where their loyalties lie, with the economy!
So there. Three positions. The War on Terror is morally, legally, socially, ethically, emotionally completely WRONG! The re-distribution of wealth to the rich and the ongoing preoccupation with making and selling shit is utter FOLLY. And the mainstream political system in cahoots with big business should all be sent to Antarctica so they can bask in the new found warmth of a carbon enhanced globe. Cus sure as shit stinks, these things will bite us all on the bum one day, and probably sooner than later. Call me a greenie, a socialist, a lapsed hippy or whatever label comes with the position, frankly I don’t give a damn.
Oh and I think Milton was a closet misogynist who found it easier to attribute evil to women then admit it in himself.
