Yesterday, I was once again amused to find myself face-to-face with some people on Facebook who I’d never met, never heard of, and who clearly had no idea they would be meeting me either.

The subject was “Australia Day”, which has become very politically charged in the past, oh, hundred years or so. Seeing as how:

a) Australia Day marks the day white people arrived and started to genocide.

b) We don’t have an actual Independence Day because Australia is a big sandy baby.

c) A certain group of Australians think moving our day of national celebration to some more sensitive day would signal … I don’t know, if you kept reading after (a) I hope it was just because I kept listing things.

So anyway, I’ve talked about Australia Day before. It’s not really my problem anymore whether they change the day or not. We’re visiting Australia in December-January but we’ll be headed home before the 26th so we won’t be enjoying the fireworks or race-related beatings or anything anyway. Oh well.

This post popped up though, and I had to have a chuckle. First of all, I’m not sure if Alf Stewart from Home and Away (Ray Meagher) would approve of his likeness being used in this way, but maybe he’s on board with it. Second, of course this issue was all about a certain demographic of “red-blooded Aussies” (the erstwhile “Guardians of Australia”) making the day into a symbol of a heritage they’re afraid of losing, and others protesting that it’s a celebration of violence and oppression, and if this is starting to sound familiar to any Americans in the audience that’s probably not a coincidence.

Anyway, I did my best to help Dale, who seemed puzzled as to why a bunch of nasty liberals, and I, and also my old pal Ilya, had pierced his self-affirming bubble in the worst possible way.

It was amusing. I was hoping there would be a bigger series of crying and gnashing of teeth and arguments to screen-cap, but I think Dale just adjusted his privacy settings and moved on. Or, since that would probably require expertise he didn’t possess, he just deleted my comment and stopped replying.

Straya.