I’d begin by saying that this is not funny, but unfortunately I often find that I’m funny when I don’t mean to be. But I wish to begin by saying that I understand that there is nothing funny in what happened in Melbourne today.
A man drove a car through the CBD and killed several people, injured dozens and scarred many people for a long, long time into the future.
We could demonise him. We could hate him.
We probably will.
A random thought: Once I wrote that everything, whether we realise it or not, is system problem. I guess that I don’t feel like reflecting much at the moment because this was my city and…
No, I need to focus.
When nobody knew who was driving the car, people speculated about it being a terrorist incident or one of the Apex gang or somebody that they wanted to blame. David Linoleum – or however that senator with the funny sounding name spells it – used the incident to make a cheap point on gun control.
However, it seems from looking at the man in the nightly news that he’s just your typical white, mentally ill, drug addled domestically violent individual so it’s all ok now and we can just go back to sleep and say thank god it wasn’t us.
Except…
Except…
I have these echoes in my brain that tell me that earlier this week we had a terror incident when someone threatened that unless a billboard was taken down people would be hurt.
And I feel that I need to say sorry and condemn these things because they were done by people who share some similarities with me. White, male, Australian.
Ah yeah, it’s just those politically correct people… White men should never have to apologise for anything. It was someone else in a galaxy, far, far away. And even if it were me, it’s past and…
F*ck politics.
We can never make it up to the people who’ve suffered loss today, but we can do better. We can learn to be better. We can stop the stupid way we try to deal with things by anger and big sticks and attacks on political correctness…
Maybe John Donne said it best all those years ago.
“No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.”
Namaste… (“I bow to the Divine in you”)
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