Tuesday, November 04, 2003
The Governor-General and "The Past"
So, our new Governor-General is a true military man — “it is sometimes necessary to take military action to prevent atrocities” and “the UN should be prepared to take such action.” What a pity that the UN was preventing from taking such action in Rwanda by the very men who blithely led us to war in Iraq! Oh, I guess Rwanda had the wrong black product — people, not oil. But that’s in the past, I hear you say, we’ve moved on since then. Hitler is in the past too, yet the name of the Nazi bogeyman was constantly raised to whip us into a frenzy against Saddam Hussein.
Unlike the new GG, I am a man of contemplation, not action, and two delicious ironies occur to me in this situation. Firstly, that we are never encouraged to remember ALL of ‘the past,’ but only those parts that serve the interests of the powerful for us to remember. And secondly, that our current Prime Minister’s role model, Sir Robert Menzies, like most of the ruling class in the capitalist West in the 1930s, actually admired the German dictator, particularly for the way he dealt with those naughty Communists
Unlike the new GG, I am a man of contemplation, not action, and two delicious ironies occur to me in this situation. Firstly, that we are never encouraged to remember ALL of ‘the past,’ but only those parts that serve the interests of the powerful for us to remember. And secondly, that our current Prime Minister’s role model, Sir Robert Menzies, like most of the ruling class in the capitalist West in the 1930s, actually admired the German dictator, particularly for the way he dealt with those naughty Communists
