Bài này sẽ được trang Nhân Chủ chuyển ngữ trong thời gian sắp đến để quí độc giả chưa có khả năng Anh ngữ tham khảo! Tuy nhiên tốt nhất vẫn nên đọc nguyên bản Anh văn để cảm nhân được tính sắc bén và dí dỏm của luận cứ "phi bản sắc dân tộc" của ông Cameron.
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Nguồn : Bài này được đăng tải trên hệ thống truyền hình- phát thanh- báo chí chính qui quốc gia Úc Thòi Lòi ABC (http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/44694.html)
Proud to be unAustralian
I went to the tattooist on Saturday to get a word inked on my arm. He didn’t like my word and offered me a thesaurus of other rebellious labels to choose from:
MANIAC, DERSPERADO, REBEL, MADMAN, NO FEAR, FREE-THINKER.
“No”, I told him, “I am sane and afraid and thought is costly. No. I want ‘UNAUSTRALIAN’. In some slanty Eastern font. On my forearm.”
He refused to do the tat. TRAITOR would have been fine. BAD-ASS he offered a discount on. But he wouldn’t sully his needle with UNAUSTRALIAN. Just another fool who doesn’t understand what it means to be free.
{C}
I was such a fool myself once. I’ve fought against being unAustralian most of my life. I’ve suppressed my guilty urges and denied the awful truth about myself. For years I felt a worrying kinship with the anti-war protesters, scabs, vegetarians, Aboriginals, tax cheats, unionists, yacht owners, lady politicians, mothers who put their toddlers in crèches, Italian chefs and parking inspectors who were labelled unAustralian. I even felt an empathy with the Liberal Party when it was called unAustralian by Brenton Pavier for dumping him as a candidate after he texted a joke to friends regarding sex with goats. (Though, to be honest, I felt a kinship with Pavier, too. For why should the retelling of a Sagittarian tryst make one unfit for high office? Napoleon often spoke of his love for his steed Marengo.)
I had hoped, as a young man, I was in that tiny minority of my countrymen who weren’t unAustralian. But now I know I am not. I am out of the closet and I feel a great freedom, as if a stone has been lifted from my chest. No more will I deny the un-ness that dare not speak its name. I’m an unAustralian. My stomach vaults with excitement and pride when I write that. I’m an unAustralian. Loud and proud from here-on in.
It was Malcolm Turnbull who finally pulled me from the closet. Last week he announced that it is unAustralian to denigrate someone else’s religion. And I immediately got where Mal was going with this. The subplot of every Holy Book is denigration of the non-believer. So, reading between the lines, Mal is cunningly saying all believers of all faiths are unAustralian. I can dig that. Well spotted, Malcolm. And welcome aboard, you God-Bothering unAussies. I claim the right to denigrate one more religion than you guys, but I uphold your right to denigrate all those you don’t hold Holy.
Highlighting the religious as unAustralian is a start, but Malcolm is a mere rookie at unearthing unAustralians. The greatest discoverer of unAustralians was his tutor John Howard. John was a pioneer in the field and discovered and identified more unAustralians than Darwin did beetles. (And Darwin’s pockets fairly bulged with the things. Every time he took out the rubbish he’d come back with a couple of stinkers, a ladybug or two, and a scarab in his snuffbox.)
Striking workers, anti-globalisation protesters, anti-war protesters, bikie gangs, cyclists in lycra, the opposition, feminists, The Chaser, socialists, whistleblowers, leaf-blowers, Peter Costello, Doc Mahathir, Doc Evatt, Doc Holiday, Public Holidays... John’s Australia was bound by such a tight set of values that virtually everyone was outside them. Rumour had it that in the bedroom when Janet was demanding something a little more oriental, experimental, callisthenic or tawdry than the stuff the po-faced Churchillian metronome was inclined to deliver, he would pinch her by the ear and whisper, ‘Now dammit, Janet. That’s unAustralian.’ I don’t say that’s true. But if you look at as many photos of the woman as I have you’ll notice her left ear occasionally has a red, puffy appearance.
The more exclusive your definition of Australian, the more unAustralians you find yourself surrounded by. I once knew a marquis whose lineage wound its way back to the Doomsday Book. He found the royal family gauche, nouveau and plebeian. He was in the sad position that virtually no-one on the planet was worthy company for him. He dined alone at a fifty-foot-long oak table beneath elk-heads appropriately fashioned by taxidermists to appear bemused. People who constantly identify unAustralians remind me of that sad marquis.
The irony is that Australian is a romantic concept none of us live up to. We’ve all got some dark stinkweed sprouting in the secret garden of our soul that disqualifies us. Thus all Australians are unAustralian by definition. By accepting Australianism as a moral or behavioural standard you either make yourself an unAustralian or a Mary MacKillop. (And you will need a minimum of two miracles.)
The tattooist who refused to ink unAustralian on my forearm was chubby and emphysemic, you can bet he was cheating on his tax by day and drinking Belgian beer by night. You don’t need to tell me what he was. I can spot 'em a mile off.
Anson Cameron has written five critically acclaimed novels. He lives in Melbourne.
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