Bruce Pascoe’s history of the Aboriginals before European settlement is the way the story should be. His DARK EMU is the story that best fits the times and the prevailing ‘moral’ mood. Cardinal Pell is in jail convicted of child sexual abuse because that’s the way the story should be. That’s the story that suits the mood and the feelings of his accusers. The established and observable detail makes no difference in both cases. Those established and observable details just give one particular scenario of what is alleged true and just. It is a narrative that has no privilege.

One may ask where this madness comes from. Well, the immediate source is the academic precinct where the purveyors of Marxism and postmodernism tell their students what to say and think. More remote is the dialectic of Hegel whose metaphysics has a line back to the Greek Heraclitus. The idea is that reality is in constant flux, constant change. In Marx’s materialist dialectic reality is conflictual.

Hegel, and Marx following him, proposed that the world is not only in flux but constantly evolving. The social ‘truths’ of Marx’s superstructure are generated by the production relations and economic base. If the base is bad, so are the ‘truths’. Capitalism, a market economy for most of us, is a very bad base. In time, we will evolve (perhaps with some violent help) away from that badness.

Of course, few people who swallow the Marxist and postmodernist scenarios will be ready to defend their social creed with chapter and verse of their Scripture. No, most have only a vague idea of the theoretical tangle. But they have a concrete-solid mentality and they feel the vibe. That’s the important thing.

That’s why Louise Milligan does not reply to criticism of her poisonous book about Cardinal Pell. Nor does she answer the heavy criticism of the court case and the appeal by legal academics and professionals around the world. We’re all just a pack of unfeeling monsters who sympathise with clerical paedophiles rather than the victims – heartless people who don’t feel the prescribed vibe.

The same holds for Bruce Pascoe who refuses to explain why he calls himself indigenous when the records shows no Aboriginal origin. Indeed, the records show, as does his pink complexion, that his ancestors come from the British Isles.

All this explains why Australia finds itself in 2019 dumbed-down and degraded. We are in an age of unreason.