Letter to the editor – Witches, foreign fighters, and other bogeymen…

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from: Frank Macskasy <fmacskasy@gmail.com>
to: Listener <letters@listener.co.nz>
date: Sun, Nov 30, 2014
subject: Letter to the editor 

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The editor
The Listener

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A few hundred years ago, it was witches and jews. But burning witches and persecuting jews is  socially passé, so the powers-that-be require new Bogeymen with which to frighten the citizenry.

That is, if the citizenry can shift their glazed eyes from such ‘conciousness-raising’ (note sarcasm) offerings such as “The Block”, “Big Brother Australia”, “The Voice”, “My Kitchen Rules”, et al, to become frightened of black-garbed “Jihadists”.

Funny old world… the masses indulge in their televised ‘opiates’, “reality TV”, and in doing so by-pass the Real World in which they live in.

Because, when you think about it, here’s the irony: in 1985, after French agents/terrorists bombed the Rainbow Warrior, killing an innocent man. The State did not react by passing a gaggle of laws increasing surveillance, police powers, and other draconian measures. The government of the day simply allowed the Police to get on with the job of apprehending the culprits.

Meanwhile, 29 years later, with not a “Jihadist” or “Foreign Fighter” in sight, this government has enacted more repressive laws and extended State surveillance, than at any time in our short colonial history.

Our esteemed Prime Minister – who currently has hearing, perception, and memory problems of his own – seems hell bent on protecting us from “enemies” a world away, and who, like most Americans,  probably aren’t even aware of our existence. (Until, of course, he deploys SAS troops to Iraq. That will no doubt attract the attention of IS like a red flag to a bull. Nice one, Dear Leader.)

This government could install cameras in every home in the country; set up roadblocks and checkpoints at every intersection in our cities; enact a dusk-to-dawn curfew (except Friday and Saturday nights, so bars and alcohol retailers can still ply their trade)  – and the slumbering masses would simply switch channels from “Home Improvements” to “Masterchef Outer Mongolia”.

If apathy was a strength, we would be a reigning world superpower. (If the middle classes could be bothered.)

-Frank Macskasy

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Reference to “Six months of chit chat”

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