So a British actress is charged with importing methamphetamine worth A$300 million into Australia. The knee-jerk response from the chattering classes: outrage at the quantity of drugs, sympathy for the fall of a career mired in relative obscurity. But let us cast a colder eye.
This is not merely a criminal case. It is a parable of our times: the decadence of a nation that once prided itself on moral clarity now exporting vice to its own dominions. The fall of Rome had its gladiators and poisoned emperors.
We have celebrities and narcotics. The Victorians would have seen this as a symptom of national degeneracy. They would have demanded flogging, not forgiveness.
Yet here we are, wringing our hands over the fate of a woman who allegedly played a mule for a syndicate. Where is the righteous anger? Where is the insistence that British justice, already a laughingstock in the eyes of the Continent, must prove its mettle?
We are a society that has lost its nerve, soft and spongy at the core, ready to excuse any transgression if dressed in the garb of talent or fame. This actress may or may not be guilty. That is for the courts.
But the broader indictment stands: we are a nation of decadent poseurs, more interested in the drama of the fall than the rectitude of the law. Let us hope the Australian authorities show more spine than our own. They have a chance to remind the world that crime has consequences.
I suspect they will. And then perhaps we can ask ourselves why our own system would have turned this into a television mini-series.
