Factor in boredom
Simon Heffer in Australia, which, in case you haven't heard, is about to have an election whose universally forecast result is that the incumbent PM, John Howard, will be thrown out so that Labour's Kevin Rudd can take his place.
Yet for an Englishman – or anyone else – coming here now, the place is humbling.
We really do see a people who have never had it so good.
Indeed, it is hard to name a nation in history that has ever had it so good as the Australians are having it now.
This is a happy country: happy not just because of its opulence, its climate and its beauty, but because it is, to use a ghastly politician's phrase, largely at ease with itself.
It's good. It's never been better. Therefore, they are going to change government. Right!?
I think people underestimate greatly the importance in politics, and in much else, of boredom. People, especially media people, just get sick and tired of the same faces and, because things are basically OK, whimsically decide to change those faces for other faces, no matter what those other faces say or may do. Then, if things go badly, people, even media people, get serious again, and look at reality and experience and even listen to what the faces are saying.
Unreconstructed humanity. Richly deserving to be wiped out by Global Warming (or by the people who preach it).
No comments:
Post a Comment