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History with a soft focus : Comments
By Graham Young, published 20/7/2012George Megalogenis has reviewed the last 30 years of Australian history through an idiosyncratic lens.
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If it’s not radical, I say what’s the good of it? In that case it’s not criticism but it’s opposite--reassurance.
I haven’t read the book so I can’t take you to task, though I find the paragraph you pedantically criticise as lucid and aporetic as prose is generally.
“George is definitely in the Labor cheer squad” you say. Well what’s wrong with that, except his nonsense doesn’t suit your nonsense? You’re in the conservative cheer squad. And isn’t your conclusion derivative: “so what could have been a good tour through the last 30 years of Australian economic history, becomes subtly slanted so that it isn't an accurate guide to what happened at all”. As if there is an accurate guide, or you’re a fair judge. There is of course for conservatives, albeit fatuous. There are myriad ways of reading history, but none of them “definitive”. Economic history is the most delusional of all. Real history is tumultuous, and the rest is just process.