What, is it Democracy and Dissent Sunday and no one told me?
I applaud SBS’s “Democracy” season. Damn good idea. I will make sure to watch the one on Liberia this week. It’s a pity though that despite SBS’s efforts, the audience that needs to see these programs won’t be tuning in, either through disinterest, bad reception, no reception or maybe they just don’t like SBS.
After their show about democracy in Japan (which I didn’t watch, in spite of wanting to — The War and Peep Show were calling too loudly), they showed part three of the Decadence series, which is on democracy.I don’t think I’ve ever seen all six episodes in a row, but I have seen some of them. The democracy episode raises some damn good points about democracy and dissent in this country.
It got me thinking again, see? I know, a dangerous thing to do in this country. I’ve been concerned about our political apathy for some time now. When the people get lazy and stop thinking, they stop caring about our democracy and our country and that’s when things can start to go downhill.
Democracy is all about the people. If the people don’t care about it, it ceases to become a democracy. If the people let the State get away with manipulating them and placating the people with money, tax cuts and materialistic dreams and stop holding them accountable for their actions, then we’ve ceased living in a democracy.
The Howard Government does not like dissent. It persecutes their enemies and elevates their friends. We have a piss-weak media that is not prepared to challenge the Government and properly inform the people the way it should. The few lone voices out there are drowned out in a sea of conformity.
We have become a society hellbent on sameness. Everyone must fit in. We must all be unthinking clones, all with the same hungry desire for things that keeps us working horrendous hours, making us time-poor, all in a bid to keep the people sated and happy and dependent on that one desire.
In a way, we’re all addicted to the pokies, feeding in every dollar we earn in a bid to come out a winner in a marketplace that just wants our money and dependence. Advertising grooms brand loyalty, incites a desire to acquire things we don’t need, have made us so out of touch with what one really needs to live off.
I’m all for the country prospering, but does it have to be so viral? Does it have to make us all slaves to the economy?
I turned over to ABC2 to watch a show on teenage transsexuals at 10:30pm, and happened to catch most of Race Around The World. It was the second-last episode of the second series.
I missed the first two stories, but the second two I caught. It intrigued me that they both had similar themes. The third one from Myanmar about the two political satirist brothers and the fourth one from Argentina about the mothers of the 30,000 young dissenters killed during the military dictatorship were quite striking. That fourth one especially made me want to cry.
Even though the show is from 1998, those two stories had so much relevance to today’s current situations, at least they did to me, the third one especially given everything happening in Burma right now.
I’m scared for this country, and I hate that I’m afraid, because I shouldn’t be. If only the people would wake up and realise that this isn’t a democracy without the will of the people, then maybe we can change things before it’s too late. Otherwise, I fear we’ll get the government we deserve for being too apathetic to stop it, and that will be a sad time for this country indeed.