An infantile disease
January 28, 2012 in Collage Nation, Politricks | Tags: are we getting uglier or is it just me?, Australia Day, Cronulla, do any of us know what we're doing?, Fuck off we're full, I admit that when I was a teenager I too loved the flag of my country, nationalism, Nationalism is an infantile disease - it is the measles of mankind (Albert Einstein), patriotism
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January 29, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jan
Tristan
The great Australia Day irony continues – a day that purports to celebrate the country but in fact goes some way in representing the worst of it.
While I think we reached peak ugliness a few years ago, ugly levels are still shamefully high. I fear that for as long as it’s trendy – and I do think these people are so vacuous as to be led by a trend – to be a drunken, racist, arrogant, yobbo knob, and for as long acting like the problems affecting large parts of the Indigenous population are nuisances rather than things to be seriously and sincerely worked out, it will only continue.
But there is some hope. I saw a great story about the inaugural Australia Day Challenge, a cricket match between the Sri Lankan Victorians and the Greek Victorians. I like to think of it less as a metaphor for British colonialism and more as part of a happy mix of the cultures that make the country what it really is.
Also, the day after Aus Day, I went to get a haircut. My barber is an Iraqi who came here to escape the war several years ago. He has no desire to go back, both because the Baghdad he knew has further descended into pandemonium and because, apart from a brother, his family is dead. Needless to say, he bloody loves it here.
Thanks for a provocative post, Nigel.
January 30, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jan
Nigel Featherstone
Tristan, you’re right that it’s a great day of irony.
What is happening to what’s often said to be one of the world’s great multicultural societies? Are we indeed getting uglier? Or, as you suggest, did our ugliness peak a couple of years ago? Is there more flag-waving than ever? Or are we just more sensitive to it now?
I do feel that Howard-era Australia encouraged a more narrow-minded view of what our country is and could be. When a leader governs by fear, doesn’t that fear become embedded in our psyche, and then, slowly but surely, it manifests in ways that can be photographed and put on newspaper websites, like the photo above?
What inspired the kids in the picture? What did they want to say? And what were their motivations? In my tags I mention Cronulla because that’s where the photo was taken; the boys would have been old enough to remember that riotous day. Were they inspired by it? Is it innocent imitation? Or did they think that the young men who went before them were some kind of heroes, warriors even?
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
January 30, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jan
jonnylewis
who set the trend for flag wrapping all those years ago? None other than Pauline H!!
What we see now is the legacy of this as per above..(the language of images)
January 30, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jan
Nigel Featherstone
Jonny, of course, you’re absolutely right. I’d forgotten about old Pauline. She had extraordinary fashion-sense, didn’t she, which led us all the way to Australia Day 2012 in Canberra.