From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: DAMN THIS LIE!!!!
Distribution: world
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 92 07:01:00 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <BxD6wn.Bv7@access.digex.com> corun@access.digex.com writes:

 > Are you talking about the state, or the District of Comlumbia? And are you
 > really so gullible as to believe everything the press or diplomatic corps
 > tells you?

I don't know what I am talking about, Corun, and I certainly don't
believe anything at all anyone tells me. I mean, is there something
*needing* to be believed, or what?

 > Good. Stay in Australia. Please!

I do! Already!

 > For your information, bucko, *I* didn't do a damn thing to Vietnam. I
 > was in school at a college where the favourite past time of the National
 > Guard was shooting the students protesting that very war. When was the
 > last time you got off your fat ass and protested anything except your
 > right to spout drivel and make bigoted remarks to people about their
 > countries. Just how many of the indiginous life forms in Australia did 
 > your ancestors wipe out, up to and including the aborigines you *claim* 
 > to be studying?

Another outstanding contribution, comprising a wholly unsolicited
revelation of personal life history. But, behind all the teasing and
amusement, how indeed are claims to be substantiated here on the
Internet?

Actually, we hold the record for species extinction. Haven't you been
appraised of our situation yet? Why do you think we are so worried now
about stopping it before the whole place turns to desert? That would
put us really in the shit, in a big way . . .

 > If your people are so bloody special, then why the hell aren't they a
 > more prominent first world nation? Why isn't Australia doing something
 > to help the rest of the world? I've met a couple of Australians face
 > to face, and they've all turned out to be either bigoted drunks who
 > have no respect for women or anyone else they consider to be a lower
 > form of life, or complete chowder heads without so much as clue one. 

Oh no, not this! Corun, we aren't special at all. Just a mob of bloody
convicts trying to scrape a living from the desert fringes. She'll be
right, mate! No worries! We are just a bunch of flamin' larrikins with
no redeeming features whatever beyond our monumental insolence toward
all things noble and pretentious. Indeed, that is our great contribution
to posterity, the reason we are so loved by educated, thinking people
the world over.

What other claim has ever been made about us, or by us? Have I myself
demonstrated any other qualities, here or anywhere else?

That's our lot and our philosophy in a nutshell, or haven't any of you
younger generation of Americans realised that yet either? Maybe that
is why you still try to take us all so seriously?

Oh dear, you do have a job ahead of you . . .

 > Does this mean I should judge *all* Australians this way? The way you
 > automatically judge all Americans by what you read in some cheap tabloid?
 > You need a real big bowl of Reality Chex. Until you come over here to
 > live for a few years, and meet the real people of this country, you
 > should be a little more judicious in what you say, especially if you're
 > going to go off on all of us, and blame us for things we either weren't
 > around for or had no control over. How much control do *you* have over
 > your government? Not bloody much, I'll wager. And maybe we should blame
 > you for the atrocities your people performed on the aborigines 100 years
 > ago. Actually, from what I heard from an Aussie this summer, you still
 > do practice discrimination of the abos, though maybe you don't drive them
 > into a billibong and slaughter them wholesale. But then, maybe we don't
 > get *all* the news from down under, either.

I don't know what this means at all, beyond a classic exposition of what
might well be included in modern pagan philosophy.

Bill, we are getting some really substantial, heartfelt outpourings here,
and you might like to save this to file.

What is Reality Chex?

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
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