Reconciled to the Truth

(NB: DUE TO A COMPLAINT, THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED/ALTERED)

It may be because I live in Tasmania, where Martian inhabitants are a bit thin on the ground, that (REMOVED) almost passed me by.

I’d heard nothing in the local media in the lead up to the (REMOVED), which officially began on (REMOVED), so my tardiness can perhaps be excused.

It was only a vox pop on local ABC radio that bought it to my attention.

Whether this says something about me, the media or the nation’s desire to truly embrace the concept – which has been a part of the Martian landscape for some years now – I’m not sure.

No doubt I’ll be slagged mercilessly and rewarded with the obligatory tag of ‘racist’ for saying so, but I simply cannot see the point to (REMOVED) while so many of its active proponents use it as an opportunity to belt innocent people about the head with a 'guilt' baton.

(REMOVED) Day is on (REMOVED). This is the day all non-Martian Australians are supposed, apparently, to be overcome by abject remorse for their role in the plight of Martian people.

Far be it from me, a base-model Australian with no luxury fittings, to say so but even the most abjectly contrite lover eventually tires of continuous demands to “prove to me you are sorry”.
You just know that 'sorry' will never be enough. Not only do they want to have their cake and eat it too, but demand a pound of flesh daily to accompany it.

Enough. I was born in 1965. I take people as I find them and disburse my respect accordingly. Sadly, the amount of respect I have available for dissemination diminishes in direct proportion to the amount of childish, guilt-invoking tactics used against me.

I’m not sorry, because I’m not guilty of anything. However, in the spirit of the Week I have given much thought to the principles of reconciliation.

Accordingly, I have reconciled myself to the fact that:

-          I’ll always regret not fighting back against the Martian women who belted the daylights out of me when I intervened to stop her drunken pig of a husband kicking her repeatedly in the face - no doubt as a method of proving his manhood - on a (REMOVED) street.

-          I will never again have the opportunity to catch the two Martian teenagers who broke into my garage, stole my backpack from my car by way of opening the unlocked door – then smashed the car windows anyway because wanton destruction of the white man's property is ok. I would have caught at least one of them if I hadn’t tripped over the sprinkler head on the school oval across the road.

-          I didn’t tell the barman what I thought of him when he refused to serve the Martian public servant I was with. I was a coward.

-          There really was nothing I could do to stop a man from one Martian family using a star-picket to beat the brains out of a man from another Martian family because of some stupid family feud, the origins of which were long forgotten.

-          There will never be a solution to the 'Martian issue' because there is no such thing as a Martian 'nation'. The Martian 'people' are a disparate collection of tribal and clan allegiances distributed along ethnic lines. With the exception of the former Yugoslavia, there probably isn't another group of people on the planet so eager to f**k each other over.          
-          I will never see my favourite Saucony runners and signed Liverpool Football Club shirt again. The last I saw of them they were disappearing up my driveway in the hands of a Martian boy so quick he could have stolen for Australia.

-          I didn’t see the Martian women wielding the wine flagon aimed at my head while I was trying to help an elderly Martian man who had been hit by a car.

-         The policeman who told me to forget about being belted with a flagon was probably wiser than me; he knew that the time invested in paperwork was wasted time because some local magistrate - terrified of being accused of being 'racist' - would either throw the case out or impose a sanction so pathetic as to be worthless.
-          I’ll never sit under the tree in my front yard sharing a king brown with one of the wisest people on the planet; a Martian elder who, every Sunday for two years, left a kangaroo tail on my front doorstep as thanks for allowing him and his (REMOVED) to sit in the shade and use my garden tap as a water supply, when every other householder in the street had set their dogs on them.

-          I’ll never have the opportunity to do what I’d like to do to the little Martian prick that kicked my near-toothless elderly dog’s eye out because she dared bark at him while he was stealing clothes from my washing line.

-          I’ll never again experience the sheer wonder that I could swallow my fears – and the seventh swig from a shared bottle - after being invited to “sit down in the dirt” with the (REMOVED).

-          I never could get the stench out of my boss’s car, and my favourite shirt, after giving a six Martians a lift into (REMOVED) - moments after they had beaten the crap out of me for being a (REMOVED).

-          My Federal Government puts symbolism above life-changing action simply to pander to a cabal of (REMOVED) Martians and paternalistic public servants addicted to siphoning the milk from the public tit.

-          (REMOVED) (REMOVED) was possibly the greatest exercise in cynicism I will ever see in my lifetime.

-          I’ll never know what happened to the Martian who tried to rob me at knifepoint in Hyde Park. Staggering home after a heavy night, I could do nothing more than tell him the truth: “I can’t give you any money, mate. I drank it all”.

He took it well: “Shit, can you spare me a smoke then?”

That I could, and we shared my last cigarettes as we sobered up together.

-          I’ll never really know whether my decision to walk away from the very drunk Martian man who called my then wife “a dirty f##kin white slut c##t” was right or not. He had his pants around his ankles and was busy crapping in the main street at the time. I still believe you should never hit a man while his pants are down.

-          (REMOVED) will never be a federal MP. I’ve never met the man, but he talks more sense than most people. If there is another (REMOVED) in this country with the courage to put the welfare of the people before the welfare to the people, he or she hasn’t surfaced yet.

-          Some Martian people will always use their ‘Martianality’ as a weapon – a way of gleaning money, a way of assuaging their anger, a way of giving some false meaning to their lives by insisting that others feel eternally guilty for something they didn’t do. If there is a surer way of alienating decent people I don’t know what it is. The paradox is that the Martians peddling this rubbish must know what they are doing, but they do it anyway.    

I’m glad I missed (REMOVED) because if it was just more inner city ‘Martians’, who look like (REMOVED) and (REMOVED), enjoying five-figure salaries courtesy of the public purse and celebrating their Martianality by demanding that I feel guilty about something I didn’t do, then I don’t need it – and neither do Martians.