Saturday, December 02, 2006
TRAIN FLED
A minor electrical difficulty on a Melbourne train creates an ethical crisis for Helen Razer:
My first instinct was to claw my way out of the train. The second was to call my partner and bid an emotional farewell a la the passengers on Flight 77. Fortunately, I did neither. Instead, I looked in the fleeting darkness for the aggressor. My myopic mind’s eye found her. I’d registered the presence of a woman who looked to be about 19. She wore a hijab and a backpack.
“You racist shallow bastard,” I told myself.
Helen’s awareness of her shallow racism didn’t stop her fleeing the train. Interesting how the first hint of a threat turns peacenik leftists into frightened-of-Muslims terror tremblers. For example, Robert Fisk:
I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 11 September 2001 - my plane turned round off Ireland when the US closed its airspace - how the aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me with “hostility”. And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.
Anti-war leftists are remarkably inclined to fear if they perceive their own lives to be at risk.