Although politicians constantly urge us to move forward, a much harder challenge is to move on.
During this May and June there has been much to move on from. Among some of the events that have caused dismay are the Malaysian solution to asylum seekers, the forced resignation of Bishop Bill Morris, the moves towards severe and inflexible sentencing in New South Wales and Victoria, and most recently, the resignation of Simon Overland, the Victorian Police Commissioner after he lost the confidence of his police minister.
Whatever his failings, Overland was a patently good man. His resignation followed a disedifying and concerted campaign against him by media groups, the police union, some of his colleagues and many politicians. It is hard to see any good coming out of this affair. We may expect something like the New South Wales police department as portrayed in Jon Cleary's Scobie Malone novels.
One of the difficulties we may have with moving on is that it's always the victors who counsel us to do so. They suggest we should accept what has happened, and go into the future not only with respect for the humanity of those who have engineered these events, but with admiration for their wisdom, courage, motivation and methods. We should leave behind any solidarity with the people who have been injured in these affairs.
In moving on, we are to accept our helplessness, fold up our tents, deal clinically with our feelings of guilt, and cut our connections with the asylum seekers we have sold into exile, with Bill Morris and with Simon Overland.
For many that kind of moving on will seem too come at to high a cost. But what are the alternatives?
One response, popular after the Whitlam sacking, was to 'maintain the rage'. But as time goes on, anger seems faintly ridiculous. It also tends to corrupt those who nurture it and does little for public life.
A more constructive response is to weave abominable and piteous deeds into art. The Bible, which has fed so much of Western literature, is full of stories of good people undone and humiliated by scheming arrogance. The Book of Psalms particularly contains expressive prayers of complaint at the triumph of the unjust. Dante's Inferno, and the novels of Solzhenitzyn fix the protagonists of their era for all time in heaven or hell. The literature of the Holocaust remembers the reality of things done which were suppressed by