waiting for results

I'm sitting here, playing with my various blogs, thinking about the presentation I've got to give tomorrow - 5 minutes on "About Freedom: Words for Movement", thinking that I should be looking stuff up and printing it out to make overheads etc etc, sitting here with the The New York Times open, watching the US election results roll in.

It's always tedious waiting for results, nerve racking even, imagining the best and the worst. Imagining.

Robert Manne wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald about what our response can be to the 2004 Australian election result. He asserts, and I agree with him, that we can do stuff, we do not have to sit around waiting for the party, or anybody else to do it for us. He writes:

". . . members of the left-liberal intelligentsia have essentially three political options from which to choose. The first is a movement to the Greens. The second is to remain inside Labor, under the discipline of a self-denying ordinance, while waiting for the arrival of more hopeful times. The third option is for the left to conduct the struggles for the causes in which it believes outside the framework of party politics, temporarily at least.

We are fortunate to live in a free society. There is no reason why those who still care about Aboriginal reconciliation, for example, should not devote themselves to work at the grassroots. There is no reason why those who believe in multiculturalism, and who are concerned about the growing anti-Muslim mood, should not involve themselves actively in inter-communal dialogue.

There is no reason why those who believe in justice for refugees should not help those living in the purgatory of temporary visas to try to get on as well as possible with their lives. There is no reason why those who opposed the invasion of Iraq should not work prodigiously against the propaganda of the Government and the bias of the Murdoch press to create a public awareness of the frightening deterioration of conditions of life in contemporary Iraq.

During the days of Bob Hawke and Keating the left-liberal intelligentsia became too reliant on government support. What we ought to have learned since the election of Howard is that what governments can give so can they take away.

Just as the scope for action has narrowed in recent years, so has the need for action, independent of government and outside the framework of party politics, become even more vital in these unpropitious times."

Yes, "the need for action, independent of government and outside the framework of party politics" is vital.

tags: politics, change