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With Joe Biden securing the electoral college votes necessary to win the White House, the concern is whether the transition of power will be one marked by paroxysms of rage and disruption. Donald Trump is promising not to go quietly.
Real power never changes hands. And yet like a spell, we cast our votes in a ballot box for the same corrupt government.
The story of colourism has roots that go back many generations; it has trickled relentlessly through time and is still evident in many ways today. In many countries with a colonial history, light skin was perceived, for a long time, as belonging to the upper classes, constituting power and wealth.
It’s tempting at this point to blame 2020 for the almost comically bad situation we are facing right. But here’s the thing: this isn’t bad luck or even some kind of testament to the power of numerology. This dire situation was entirely predictable and even, sadly, entirely preventable. We walked right into it — or, at least, we allowed ourselves to be led here.
The capacity to story our experience is a powerful tool for reflection and understanding. As adults we learn that no story is pure and we are capable of telling ourselves spin, but the shaping of experience into story is the bread and butter of our lives. Narrative, it has been said, is a primary act of mind.
During times of crisis concepts such as power and liberty are often brought into the light and re-examined, and it is a sad fact that during those same times, people in power often try to chip away at liberty, at democracy’s most basic freedoms: several current world leaders immediately spring to mind.
Ideology is a powerful presence in our lives. It works its way into our consciousness through the dominant discourses of government, media, institutional religion, legal frameworks, popular culture, advertising, all the means at the disposal of the powerful. Once we learn to recognise it we see it everywhere. If it feels like we were born into it, it is because we were.
2020 has been the year of the mask. The masks worn during the smoke of bushfires, during the threat of COVID-19, and during the Black Lives Matter protests. Masks are a powerful and complex symbol.
We must ask: are our police forces keeping us safe? All of us? Poverty, discrimination and disempowerment cannot be solved with more policing. What if we took the money that is currently spent on policing and spent it on supporting the community?
The new ASIO Powers Amendment Bill 2020 is being rushed through Parliament in a time of pandemic, guaranteeing that it will lack even the minimal level of scrutiny normally accorded to legislation dealing with ‘national security’.
The question remains, however, is there a straight binary trade-off between granting the state power (to organise lock-downs, track its populace and coerce the people) and keeping its people safe?
85-96 out of 200 results.