A Lack of Dissent

 Is it just me or are dissenting and moderate views leaving our social media. 

Case in point. January 26 in Australia. 

I have a very defined view about January 26. It's two days before my sister's birthday. It commemorates the day in 1788 when the English came and established a penal colony on unceded lands.

Am I making a song and dance about it?

No. 

These are my firm held beliefs; I'm not going to change them. Do I think the date should change to celebrate our national day? Absolutely. I think it's particularly sucky that we celebrate the founding of a prison, and trauma inflicting hell hole of a prison at that. That's just perpetuating trauma - why the hell would we want to do that? 

Am I going to go out and challenge people who hold opposing views to me? Not directly? What's the point?

As a nation we are not mature enough to form a republic, as much as I would love to see it. In some ways the "It ain't broke, why fix it?" rationale and it possibly keeps us at arm's length to the shitfuckery that's going on in America. Never before have I been happier to live in a country with proportional representational voting and the requirement to turn up at a polling booth on Election Day. You might not like the outcome and dislike the fuckers on the right with the force of a cyclone, but it's fairer. If you don't vote, you lose the right to whinge about politics. 

Okay, I'll get off my soap box. 

My point is, in years past, my feeds would be littered with a lot of pro-change the date posts. I'm good with that. This year very, very little among the ads for cooling blankets, menopause supplements and book group posts. 

Hmm.

Anyway...

Today, on this most contentious of days, I decided to do something positive. I took the train into town, avoiding the large rally that was blocking the trams on Collins Street. On arriving in the city, I took myself to the blood bank and donated plasma. It felt good to do something positive. You can have sausage rolls at the end of it. And with only 3% of the population donating regularly where one in three people will need blood or blood products over their lives, I'd like to tip karma in my favour if I ever need this resource, so that somebody is kind and community-minded enough to donate at that time. 

On this day, which frankly irritates the hell out of me, some good came out of it. 

Today's song: