Interesting read:
Australia, you've never had it so good
Article by Possum Comitatus, The Drum.
Excerpt only:
Australia, you've never had it so good
Article by Possum Comitatus, The Drum.
Excerpt only:
"Australian Exceptionalism"… let that phrase roll off your tongue.
Now stop laughing for a moment if you can!
There's something about that phrase that just doesn't sit right with us. We're not only unaccustomed to thinking about ourselves that way, but for many it's a concept that is one part distasteful to three parts utterly ridiculous - try mentioning it in polite company sometime. Bring a helmet.
We'll often laugh at the cognitive dissonance displayed by our American cousins when they start banging on about American Exceptionalism - waxing lyrical about the assumed ascendancy of their national exploits while they're forced to take out a second mortgage to pay for a run-of-the-mill medical procedure. That talk of exceptionalism has become little more than an exceptional disregard for the truth of their own comparative circumstances.
But in truth, we both share that common ignorance - we share a common state of denial about the hard realities of our own accomplishments compared to those of the rest of the world....read on