exercises in futility

[morsla]

Dear diary.

I don't get the joke, but I think someone is laughing out there. We walk without directions, look but see nothing, and everyone talks so loudly they can't hear what's being said. I read some fantastic satire and laughed my head off, but when I found out I'd been reading the news I cried instead. War is peace; hate is love, and the goddless fucking pigs are back in charge of the animal house.

If one day can be lifetime in politics, how much of this country will die in the next three years? What do we have to do, to start this over again? I don't know where the truth became a losing policy, where being caught out lying to your country earned you the right to keep dragging it through the mud. I do know that I don't want to live there any more.

Maybe in three years, or six, or nine, or twelve, people will wake up and realise how far we've fallen. Maybe the damage will be so obvious by then that we'll finally get rid of the tumour that's been growing in the heart of this country, but cutting it out by that stage might just kill us anyway. Who cares what happens in the "next" election? In twenty years we'll still be living in the aftereffects of the next three.

Three more years of "no committment" on sustainability and greenhouse pollution. Three years to bind us into trade agreements which will see Bush's government tear apart our agricultural economy. Three years to continue putting nails into the Kyoto coffin, to scale up petroleum exploration on the reef, to keep on delaying research in alternative fuel sources.

I'd just like fresh water to drink, and air that's clean enough to breathe. I'd like to one day take family to see the colours on the Barrier Reef, before it bleaches and dies. To keep some of the forests that we have left, and to know that most of the species that were alive when I was born, are still surviving somewhere on this continent. But I don't know how long any of those things will last.

Comments

[peacockangel.livejournal.com]

Merr...I feel like I should apologize for Bush -- but I really can't. Yeah, my country is going to hello too, good fun that.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Oh, no one person could ever apologise for Bush - probably not even Dubbya himself. He's waaay beyond an apology, now ;)

Hopefully, both our countries will manage to climb back out of the mud. It'll take a long time, but I have to hope that we'll get there in the end.

[peacockangel.livejournal.com]

Bit by bit the world shall be less doomed, I gues thats kinda cheerful.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

"Morbidly cheerful"? I'm smiling that rictus smile...

Even when all the plans have failed, and my bleached bones have been picked clean by carrion beasts, I'll still be able to smile. It's hard-wired into the human condition - if my bones can express amusement, why can't the rest of me?

:)

[peacockangel.livejournal.com]

Our skeletons laugh at us, we may smother them in flesh now, but they know in time they shall win...

Grrr...you had to get me thinking about this, now I'm going to be rambling creepily all day. Meh, probably would have anyway.

Still, I'm trying to remain hopeful -- I've got a nice prime piece of real estate in Dis, capitol city of Hell.

[bishi-wannabe.livejournal.com]

What sort of government do they have in Canada? Might be time to move offshore for twenty odd years until rural Australia is finally rendered electorally irrelevant and the grey legion shuffles off.

[virtual-munkee.livejournal.com]

i dunno if it was so much the rural vote that should be blamed for this, but perhaps the white middle class urban voters?? they are the ones that swung the most within their electorates...the rural voters ALWAYS vote liberal.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's tempting.

But I'm a stubborn bastard at heart, and having a ship sink under me is rarely enough reason for me to head for the lifeboats. One day I should develop some kind of self-preservation, but it could take some time.

Ask me again after I've had a chance to visit Canada, and I'll let you know. virtual_munkee - how's their environmental science / earth sciences research community doing?

[virtual-munkee.livejournal.com]

what, canada? kicking ass i believe! they dont have enuff graduates, so i guess they'd be killing for some new research students also.

[harkon.livejournal.com]

Well New Zealand is kinda like Australia right? And I hear it isn't too bad.

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

It's times like this when I can stop making jokes about being a New Zealander and actually be proud of a country that refuses to let American Subs into their waters (No Nuclear Policy). That votes in proportion to what the people want in power and that has had a woman Prime Minister in power since I left the Country almost 8 years ago.

New Zealanders aren't that much less conservative in their rural areas and there aren't that many differences, but there's something there that changed the order of things from the limited minds of two legs good, four legs better, to borrow Ben's Animal Farm metaphor.

It's proof that a country with much of the same make up as Australia can still do the right thing by its environment and its people. I also note that their economy hasn't collapsed as the result of a labour government and that the NZ Dollar is performing just as well if not better against the Australian than it ever has, despite no "Liberal" government.

Liberal Government, Australia's greatest tragedy and its greatest oxymoron.