The Limits of Social Cohesion (Arena)

My sense is that political cartoonists are finding it pretty difficult to encapsulate the events of the last two weeks in our sunburnt country girt by sea. Not because they are so depressing: a good cartoonist can always wring dark humour from a tragedy. But because they are so clearly self-satirising. Having identified a lack of ‘social cohesion’ as the deep cause of the Bondi massacre, and formalised that stance in a Royal Commission whose terms appear to beg the question, the political class has attempted to manage (or manipulate) the mourning process in a way that runs roughshod over the rights and convictions of other sections of the community. If more social cohesion was the aim, it has backfired spectacularly. [More here.]