darren_stranger | (no subject) (Reply)

Okay, this is something i've needed to get off my chest and into words, if only to be able to get to sleep at night instead of lying awake going over it in my head.

It also may explain why i'm so fixated on the asylum seeker issue in particular, and why this next election is so important.

Read it if you wish.

i used to be a very positive person.

i was always the glass-half-full optomist, and didn't tend to get down or stressed. Of course, i used to read and rant about the wrongs of the world, but rather than getting me down it used to be a case of "anger is an energy" and i'd use that as motivation for whatever political activity i'd be involved with (mostly Amnesty stuff).

Naturally, or naively, i assumed that if more people simply knew about some of the injustices and wrongs in the world, they'd be as angry as i was, and things would change. All that was needed was to let more people know. One such topic was the detention of asylum seekers, which i'd been involved in campaigns about with Amnesty for quite a while. Given the relatively open minded, 'fair go' attitude of most Australians, surely if they just knew the facts - that they weren't "illegal immigrants", hadn't broken any law and that there was no "flood" of boat people breaking on our shores - that would change. Given time and the fact that people were already becoming more aware, that's what i expected to happen.

Then, about three years ago, something changed.

A ship called the MV Tampa rescued several hundred asylum seekers from a sinking boat and tried to land at a port in Australian territory. The Australian government was so horrified at the prospect these people might even be allowed to ask for asylum that it sent armed SAS troops to stop them. And, as various countries denied any responsibility to deal with these people, as if they were some sort of human garbage that nobody wanted to touch, i just kept picturing the story of that boatload of Jewish refugees who were refused entry to port after port in the '30s and ended up having to sail back to Europe and into the hands of the Nazis.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Rather than facing a huge outcry, the Howard government's popularity suddenly soared, after hitting an all time low in the wake of the GST, and the ALP couldn't fall over itself fast enough to jump on the bandwagon and claim it would have done the same thing only better. Here was possibly the most apalling and cold-hearted act of indecency i could remember my country committing, and the Australian people were roaring with approval, which they confirmed by rewarding Howard with another term. My opinion of my fellow Australians plummeted to a new low.

The timing was great, too. This incident had come just after a dinner with some relatives, where i had discovered just how racist some of their views were and been gobsmacked at how i could have known someone for ten years without realising they thought that way. That had been where i'd first heard mention of the Tampa, as "another boatload of them on their way here" and an example of "the shit we're letting into the country". At the time i'd been amazed to even know anyone who actually thought that way, but now it seemed that was the flavour of popular opinion.

Then, in the middle of all this, some religious nutjobs crashed airliners full of terrified passengers into buildings to murder thousands of other terrified civilians, shocking the world to a standstill. All of a sudden the world was turned upside down, and despite what gripes anyone had against the US, it paled in the face of the slaughter of so many innocent people and knowing that this carnage was down to religious extremists who would happily butcher any of us just for being different to themselves. Then the US came back with it's "with us or against us" rhetoric and the War on Terror, and all of a sudden the world was in a war to the death and we had to choose which set of bad guys we were on the side of. Then, as we geared up for war, first with the Taleban and later with Iraq, we were still locking people up for running away from those same regimes.

If the Tampa had been what floored my opinion of people, this really sunk the boot in. As one of those family members described watching Arab taxi drivers at the airport cheering at the news of the World Trade Centre death toll, i had no argument to come back with. Now it wasn't just Australians i was disillusioned with, it was the whole human race.

For the past couple of years, there's been something changed in me. My personal life has for the most part been pretty good, but underneath it all something is different, a pessimism and cynicism that's hung around like a black cloud. When i stop and think about it, i can see one possible root cause of what's different - i don't like people any more. That is to say, i like people as individuals, and can still see the warmth and humanity in most people i encounter, but as a group, as a herd, they suck. There are still things which inspire me and remind me that humans aren't all bad, but much as i'd like to i can't escape the feeling that that's the exception, that for the most part the human race is petty and selfish and hateful. i try to stay positive, but it's hard when every other news story i see seems to reinforce the feeling that the human race would be better exterminated as soon as a humane method is found.

And it all started with the Tampa. It took me a while to pinpoint it there, but i realise now that that was the time when i lost my faith in the people around me. Even though i told myself it was just because people had been misled, that they'd been fed for too long on lies about 'illegal immigrants' and nonexistant hordes of boat people, and newer lies about 'children overboard', but deep down i couldn't escape the basic suspicion that people swallowed all this crap mainly because they wanted to, because it made them feel better about simply not wanting those towel-headed nig-nogs moving in next door to them, or that they mightn't have as much luxury to gorge themselves on if they let anyone else in to share a piece of the pie.

That's why this asylum seeker business is such a touchy subject for me, and why i'm so anxious about how this next election is going to go. Not because we've got a government that's so unrepresentative of the Australian character, but because i'm afraid that it does represent it. And this election will be the test of that. Because there's no benefit of the doubt or question of being misled this time - everyone knows that they lied, about the 'children overboard' and so much else, and if all that's forgiven and the majority of Australian people still want Howard as our leader, then it's not because they have been misled, it's because he's told them what they want to hear, because, at the bottom of it all, the Australian character really is "screw you, mate, i'm all right".

And that could well be the last straw.