everyone's wrong
So violence and mob behaviour has well and truly kicked off in Cronulla. Cronulla mob attacks beachgoers. 11/12/2005. ABC News Online, Gangs rampage in Sydney streets. 13/12/2005. ABC News Online, etc. You know what's happening.
I just don't know where to start; but I'll go out on a limb here and say this has not happened overnight. Tensions will have been building for months, probably years; and what we are seeing is the situation reaching flash point.
There's a strong temptation to blame one side or the other. Well here's a fucking news flash: nobody is "right". The people who beat up the lifeguards were wrong. The people who attacked the ambulance and the ambos within were wrong (but I'll bet you anything those same people would still have the hide to call 000 if they were hurt). The people who formed mobs were all wrong. The people who attacked people and property were wrong.
The government is wrong for ignoring the problem. White Australians™ are wrong for making very little attempt to genuinely mix with Other Cultural Groups™. Said Other Cultural Groups™ are wrong for making very little attempt to geniunely mix with White Australians™. Politically correct or not, we have to face the fact that ghettoism is a reality - there is no multicultural society, there is no fucking "melting pot". That was all feel good bullshit.
The Political Correctness movement has only made it harder to talk openly about cultural problems. Racism can be easily masked with PC terms, genuine concerns are trivialised and left to fester. People know there is tension, but it's left in the Too Hard basket. It was so much easier to quibble about what the problem was called than it would have been to work on the problem itself.
So everyone is wrong. Everyone needs to be honest with themselves - a bit more tolerance would be good, both for and from minorities. If people truly can't stand another group, they should just learn to leave each other alone - pure and simple. People have to be able say "enough" and let the situation calm down. Everyone needs to go home, have a quiet night in. Otherwise things will just follow the pattern of endless escalation so prevalent in the world's hotspots.
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