Subject:
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Opinion hardens against the people
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 4 Nov 2004 03:07:39 GMT
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Viewed:
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1215 times
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I don't want to hit this too hard, because its limited to feedback from only a
couple of dozen people, and there is ample reason for them to exaggerate.
That said...
When John Howard's party was re-elected in Australia with an increased majority,
my own friends from Asian countries, both living/working here and in their own
countries reported a hardening of feeling against the Australian people. Its
all very well to hold John Howard and his government (as distinct from the wider
group of humble Australians) responsible for hard line treatment of refugees and
illegal immigrants, for invading Iraq, and for talking up the idea of
pre-emptive armed responses to threats to Australia on foreign soil, but when
the Australian people ratify the behaviour by re-electing them with an increased
majority, we are being (quite sensibly in my view) held responsible. Of course
there is a recognition that not all Australians agree with everything that the
government does, but obviously most of us support most of the headline things
the government does or we would not have re-elected them.
The democracy thingie imposes responsibilities as well as delivers authorities
to the people.
One imagines that there will be a similar response to the re-election of Bush
with a popular majority (in contrast to his previous minority).
Sure these re-elections send nice stern messages to terrorists. But there are
scary sides to what these re-elections say about us, and what they say to our
friends.
Richard
Still baldly going...
(and before someone else tells me 'but we only re-elected Howard's team on the
basis of their domestic economic record, and we didn't care about the foreign
policy side', we can note that this obviously doesn't cut any ice with our
northern neighbours - to them, this just sounds like more support for the well
worn recruiter's argument that westerners are just selfishly motivated
consumers, recklessly indifferent to the consequences their high lifestyles have
on the rest of the planet. That argument then goes on to suggest that the only
way to change western thinking is to bring the consequences back to them in
their own countries.)
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