KEVIN RUDD versus DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
This web log will compare and contrast the sayings and policies of the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd -and his Government - against the benchmark of the life and teachings of his self-confessed hero, the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
This was inspired by my reaction to Kevin Rudd's acceptance speech on Saturday 24 November 2007. This televised speech made me feel ill, and I had to leave the room where I was watching it, knowing that every next sentence was likely going to be more of the same sacharine cliché, homing in to the seemingly winning centralism of said nothings, emptying meaning out of words in the grasp for power, relegating truth to that place Bonhoeffer called 'The Void'.
Rudd's speech seemed to me to be a circus act directed like a play of soap bubbles into the kindergarten of Australia. It was a play of suds and hot air in obedience to the surface tension so as not to ripple the artificial pond for an Australian ship of fools, sailing down the bubble bath of tolerances that lead to ruin.
If we are reduced to this level of immaturity, if we are taken in by sermons in Newspeak, if we are lulled like licked-chickens by reassurances of taking action about the story that The Sky is Falling, and satisfied with the there-there repetitions of rhetorical nursery lines, well, then we are captivated by soundbites of spin, then this country is democratically choosing a farrago of lies instead of mature policies... from a leader whose words elsewhere raise hope for what could be policies of Bonhoefferan maturity
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