IT’S SPRING. THE SUN is shining and the birds are flying around the bees. God’s Own Paradise. The beach is sandy, the sea is salty and Senseye and I are contemplating Life and the Nature of Things.
I muse. “History, as is well-known, endlessly repeats itself because the idiots out there refuse to have proper regard for the past. It dictates everything. Nothing is happening today, now, that hasn’t got some claws in from the past. People forget and then when they get burned they wonder how that can happen in this State of Delusion.”
Uncharacteristically, Senseye remained mute, wondering where my contemplative monologue would end or whether it would include him and thus become something of a duologue, if there is any such thing.
“Consider the problems of this great state of ours. It all began back at the University of Western Australia in the Seventies.”
It was now a duologue. “Hang about,” the scribe interceded. “I never went to that – or any – university. Hard Knocks maybe.” He had learned his dark verbiage in a far rougher school.
I shifted my benign gaze over Seneseye. “Not you, but that’s where your various bete noir, or should that be betes noir, got together in little cabals of political persuasion to further their radical views. I speak of sundry gentlemen of the left who are now sundry gentlemen of the right in positions of high authority. Judges, politicians, businessmen and movers and shakers of all manner. At the same time as there were the little cabals of the left, there were cabals of the righteous, such as others desiring political advancement or the rewards of public office such as police and prosecutors. It was back then that a substantial portion of our present predicaments was fleshed out, so to speak.”
I poured out more green tea, paused, and continued with the scribbler’s educational tour of the perfidious personal background of the contemporary political players who, I must say with some considerable focus, had caused my own good self numerous heartaches at the wailing wall of life. I suppose it would be difficult to present this picture of duplicity and deceit, not to mention downright treacherous lying, without saying that we were somewhat caught up in the great matrix of events enveloping the story of Hamburger Bob and his merry band of Bobettes.
“Getting back to the old Uni days, there was a group of radical students who were vigorously opposed to the calling up of young fellows to go off to Vietnam and fight the local peasantry up there. Right? Wrong? Who cares! That was the politics of the age and everybody had a view one way or t’other. But these fellas went a bit further than the odd demonstration through the streets and belting coppers with the hoe-handles to which they tacked their placards.
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