today

A lot of the time I am happy to live in the present day. Certainly I enjoy a level of health, comfort, wealth and so on that would not really have been available to almost anyone in previous eras. This decade, too, I have enjoyed the fact that my generation has come to be, if not 'in control', then at very least in the vanguard.* I am less likely to feel oppressed by a sterile passe way of thinking that seemed endemic in, say, the 70s and 80s. Then I get emails like this:

Australia Day is the day we celebrate what's great about Australia and being Australian.

At Jetstar, we're proud to be Australian. Being Australia's Low Fares Airline means we can help bring families together from all over this great country of ours.

I probably was never going to fly Jetstar again for fear of being stranded somewhere overnight without a blanket, but this puts the lid on it. Maybe I misunderstand the term 'white trash', because I will refuse to use it or accept it assuming it has certain racist undertones, but in that context, let's just say that this ad is a trashy appeal to trash. If there is a line between racism and nationalism it's a fine one, but this kind of lazy stuck together with ya chewy bundle of jingoism, familyism and jetstarism makes me SAD.

* Life would be bulk easier if I felt I could get away with these kind of statements. Whatever 'my generation' is, it plainly doesn't think as one. I hope you kind of get what I'm suggesting though.