I’m totally giving up. Yes, it’s time for the obligatory left-wing whinge where I claim I’m going to be totally apathetic about politics. Indeed, it’s time to toss in my ideological towel and spend my days just making cash money, downing schooners, discussing how hot chicks are and occasionally buying Ikea furniture.
Wouldn’t that be good? I’d like it. I’d adore nothing more than not giving too shits about underprivileged children, or people dying in under-funded hospitals, or fucking Somalians dying of hunger and Rwandans being massacred. Then I could just concentrate on relaxing in a magical middle-class world where fairies of industry provide economic incentive to li’l worker gremlins to work harder and faster, and unicorns made of low interest rates gallop across the beautiful plains of wealth and prosperity.
I could secretly support George W. Bush, and I’d never have to waste my time going to a rallies organised by do-gooder, politically correct, inoffensive geeks like Resistance. I could support the war on terror, anxiously waiting for the
How much easier do conservatives have it? Abortions are gross… let’s ban them! Drugs make people look gross… let’s ban them! Poor kids probably smell like poo… let’s ban them from universities and cut off their parents’ welfare payments too!
I’m getting tired of all this reading, this philosophy, this intellectualism, this yearning for equality, justice and all those other tired clichés. I’m never going to pay to see a Michael Moore film again.
Indeed. It’s all a bit of a wank, this left-wing game. It’s full of uppity self-righteousness, unnecessary political correctness and terrible liberal guilt. It requires going to demonstrations and discussing things at length and – most taxing of all – genuinely wanting the world to be a better place.
So I’m out of it. I’m never reading Marx again. I’m going to start slagging off Gough Whitlam. I’m going to start voting for the Liberal party. I’m developing a healthy disrespect for immigrants and people from other cultures. Oh, it really will be something. I’ll be living the fucking life.
Until a couple of days pass, and Labor elects a new leader, and I get all excited about the prospects of an Australia that isn’t so completely embarrassing. And then, predictably, I’ll be back here, writing yet another column where I slag off the Liberal party – and most of those who vote for them – as vicious little deviants hellbent on the destruction of our nation. Of course.
(Originally published in The Brag in the Fear & Loathing column).
(Photo: Republican mastermind Karl Rove, renowned kitten-hater).
4 comments:
Is it possible to have a middle ground, where you care both about yourself and the world. A nice little median where you have a well paying job, yet you give back to society, you recycle the boxes and what not from your new Ikea furniture, where you sponsor children (or a village) overseas through a non-religious organisation, where you ride public transport to work, only bringing your car out when you need to travel longer distances, where you give blood regularly..etc..
I'd rather be there than either the left or the right, personally I think more good is achieved that way rather than spending time fighting a battle that neither side will ever win..
Well, I think you've pretty much summed it up.
Those who care are outnumbered, and the world is getting more and more screwed up. . .
Makes me feel so helpless, you know?
Except labor didn't elect a new leader. Just an old one. My history teacher was explaining the other day why he thinks labor will never be re-elected in australia. But he also said some rather nasty stuff about me being deaf in one ear and unable to write my name in a straight line. Neither of which is true, I just didn't feel like writing my name on the line. Hmmph.
Nothing is happening really, except the slow slide down into... oh, somewhere. I think I've read a book about this, and it didn't have a happy ending.
By the way, I think I'll steal some stuff you've said for a speech I have to write. Hope you don't mind. Not that I would care if you did.
xo
i think it's the people who say 'our problems are too big, i can't do anything about them' that are the worst. they know how fucked up the world is but try not to think about it. they are worse than the masses who have no idea how bad things are. if these people did something, even if it is something small, change could be made.
they say ignorance is bliss but knowledge is power.
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