After two months of research for my QE on the new/far/alt right in Australia, two months of deep diving into the history of the neoliberal think tanks, German research papers on radicalisation, polling data and focus group research, funding sources for the Atlas Network and Advance Australia, academic papers on the algorithm and epistemic collapse and, well, heaps more, I finally placed arse to Aeron yesterday and wrote my opening pars.
You can leave your hometown, but you can never escape it. I sometimes feel as though Ipswich has followed me across oceans and decades, and I wonder why, because all it has to do is wait a while and I’ll be back. I was back for winter this year, flying up the freeway past the abandoned insane asylum on the other side of the train tracks, letting the car do most of the driving, wondering if anybody still cut laps in town, and how many laps I’d have to cut in an electric Volvo before somebody picked a fight.
Three laps, I reckon.
Three circuits of Limestone Street, up past the opshop and McDonald’s, a hairpin right around the bottlo at the Federal, down Brisbane Street past Vogels Sports Store, where I got my first Grey Nick and…
No, wait.
I’ve got so much thinky content in this piece that I decided I needed a solid, narrative opening, so I drove up to Ipswich to find me one voter each for Labor, Liberal and One Nation, hoping that their personal histories would provide the spine of the essay.
We’ll see.
As an aside, I accidently published this post at ASB, where two people quickly ‘liked’ it. I didn’t think anybody was at the Boob thru the week. Now I feel bad, like I should put more stuff there.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.