[csaa-forum] Re: csaa-forum Digest, Vol 6, Issue 8

[Charles Fairchild]

Hi folks. Just reacting to the reactions to the election. I've just moved here
from the States last year, so I'm used to the ripe smell of electoral
disappointment. Its like a cologne I take out every few years in which I douse
myself, um, liberally (small l). In fact, the only winning candidate I ever
voted for was Bill Clinton circa 1992, you know wayyyyy back when his stump
speeches talked about universal health care, and he nominated the most
excellent and progressive Lani Guiner to be Attorney General and such. Today,
it is impossible for me to imagine a left-leaning African American woman
running the Justice Department,especially when I see John Ashcroft singing
hymns with Condi Rice before press conferences and I remember how, as Guiner
went down to defeat so quickly so immediately, that something was terrible just
beginning for real. Sure enough, since 1992, every major institution in America
has come to be dominated by right-wing conservative who claim to some
bizarrely-skewed Old Testament version of Jesus on their side. Its clearly
illogical, clearly an unsustainable paradox and yet it works again and again.
Forget all that turn the other cheek crap and the do unto others malarkey, we
need a renvegeful saviour. And that's what we got.

I've seen exactly where these 'reform' policies lead: 45 million American adults
with no access to health care, corporations which pay no federal, state or local
taxes of any kind and most often get tidy and profitable tax rebates, religious
tests for employment and eligibility for most social services,
'abstinence-only' sex education, some schools that have Olympic class
swimming pools, others that don't have running water.

I know this sounds hysterical, in both senses of the term, but I felt very much
at home last Saturday night in Australia. But when you come from a country in
which conservatives come to dominate every major social institution, from the
media to the courts to the councils and chambers of commerce and schools and
most elected offices, and yes there are a lot of Liberal Party voters in
academia, they begin to multiply and amplify the noises they make at a
exponential rate. I was pretty happy to move here last year, even happier to be
gainfully employed in my chosen field for the first time ever at the ripe old
age of 37. And for the last two days I've never been so melancholy.

The left has to somehow match the right's moral fervor without being moralistic,
match their messages of 'liberation' without sounding like a bunch of
Stalinists, explain that without clean, running water and a survivable climate,
Sydney really loses much of its silly lustre pretty quickly. A lot of these
arguments seem like so obvious and yet I've seen them fail at home election
after election. And the other side kepps putting forward ridiculous,
unworkable, downright nasty ideas, and you think that'll never work. Guess
what.

--------------
Dr Charles Fairchild
Lecturer
Department of Music
University of Sydney
Sydney NSW 2006
Australia




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