Broken Promises, broken dreams ~ Australia Day, 2021

Yesterday in the land down under, we had Australia Day. Like most days of celebration, it is controversial these dark days. On this day, modern day Australia was born, as boats laden with white men and previously unexposed diseases arrived on our shores, with devastating results for the locals.

A decree from a distant religious despot had decreed the land unoccupied and so the rest is history.

Debates raged this day, while others sat back with an ale and the attitude of what one much loved local poet describes as being ‘alcohol tolerant’.

It’s no easy fix, of course, for years governments have thrown money at the problem, not knowing what else to do. Well, truth be told, they didn’t like what doing the right thing would look like. A landmark high court ruling for Mabo pointed the way. The land was not in fact unoccupied as stipulated under the assumption that since there were no fences, nobody wanted it… you couldn’t write home about it.

Greed and a lust for power has driven mankind since the days of nimrod and his legacy has seemingly just had a victory with the stolen seat of the highest office, in the most powerful nation on earth. It’s not just in Australia that the lust for power has stolen the rights of the many for the benefit of the few.

So we’ll see how it goes. I, for one, think that such madness cannot last.

History, of course, has its lessons and the bad guys nearly always seem to overlook this fact. Gandhi’s famous quote rings out, “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall… think of it always.”

These days we seem short of heroes, as the mob rails out against imperfection. A bloke could make blind men see and raise the dead to life and still be found wanting for some small matter or other.