Saturday 5 October 2019

standing here with my mouth open

I haven't written anything on this blog for ages, and haven't done any further work on the draft article I posted in June (previous post)

(Update March 2020 - I finished the article and submitted it to a journal in late November 2019, but I’m still waiting for results of peer review at present.)

It's largely because I've been too busy, updating and teaching in the unit I coordinate, Climate Change and Public Health (link later, Monash links not working at present). So much information coming out all the time, it's hard to keep up.

I feel very pressured to do the best I can with this unit, because so little is being done.

Another reason I haven't written anything though is that I'm aghast - metaphorically standing open-mouthed - at what is happening in the world. Trump, Johnson, Morrison - they are like clones of a loud overbearing white man who is determined to destroy our world in order to maintain his dominance, his order, his idea of how things should be.

It's not even clear what they want. It seems to be some idealised past, in which rich white men were in charge, women were decorative creatures controlled by men, the earth was there for men to use, the lower classes were happy and subordinate, and foreigners, people of colour, and Indigenous people knew their place, and either stayed there, or were grateful for being allowed into superior civilisations.

They can't say any of that, which is why it's not clear, but they show it by their actions.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I share your sentiment.

But I hooe it doesn't come to this in Australia...

“We've tried for 230-plus years to appeal to the colonisers' morality, which just doesn’t seem to exist. I think violence is OK because if someone is trying to kill you, there's no amount of, ‘But I'm really clever. I'm really articulate’. No amount of that is going to save you. Let's burn stuff.”
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/q-and-a-was-raw-rude-and-radical-and-came-with-a-language-warning-20191105-p537fi.html

I cannot bring myself anymore to watch q n a.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Val.

I can't bring myself to watch q n a these days.


I hope it doesn't come to this in Australia.

“We've tried for 230-plus years to appeal to the colonisers' morality, which just doesn’t seem to exist. I think violence is OK because if someone is trying to kill you, there's no amount of, ‘But I'm really clever. I'm really articulate’. No amount of that is going to save you. Let's burn stuff.”
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/q-and-a-was-raw-rude-and-radical-and-came-with-a-language-warning-20191105-p537fi.html

And annarticle in Can'bra times agreeing with your post.

http://www.crispinhull.com.au/2019/10/05/anglospheric-apoplexy-a-threat-to-us-all/

Val Kay said...

Thanks for the comments and sorry for delay in posting, I have been remiss with the blog lately. Mainly on Twitter these days.
Val