Thirty years ago, Australia faced a nightmare. The Port Arthur massacre was a horror that should have broken the country. But it didn't. Instead, something very strange happened—something that seems almost like a fairy tale to us today. The politicians actually did their jobs. They stopped yelling. They looked at the blood and the tears, and they decided to fix the problem. The Prime Minister at the time, a man named John Howard who was about as exciting as unbuttered toast, did something brave. He made strict gun laws. He angered his own supporters to save lives. The country stood together in silence. They mourned as one tribe.

Fast forward to today. We have the Bondi Junction tragedy. A man with a knife tore through a shopping center and broke the heart of a nation. We had a chance to do it again. We had a chance to stand together, hold hands, and say, "This is terrible, let us fix it." But we didn't. Instead of unity, we got a circus. Instead of silence, we got noise. The recent national day of mourning wasn't a funeral; it was a food fight in a cafeteria.

It is fascinating, in a sick sort of way, to watch how modern politicians handle death. In the old days, a tragedy was a time to put down your weapons. Today, a tragedy is just another chance to pick up a microphone and blame someone. The political fighting started almost before the flowers had wilted. The leaders of the country could not simply stand there and be sad. They had to make it about them. They had to make it about their enemies. They turned a grave into a soapbox.

The news tells us that political arguments overshadowed the mourning. Of course they did. We live in an era where anger is the only currency that matters. Being sad doesn't get you likes on social media. Being sad doesn't get you votes. But being angry? Being outraged? That is gold. So, instead of coming together to comfort the victims, the political class decided to use the event to score points. One side yells about gender violence, the other side yells about mental health, and the public is left standing in the middle, wondering why Mom and Dad can't stop fighting for five minutes.

It shows just how much we have lost in three decades. We haven't just lost the ability to solve problems; we have lost the ability to feel things together. Thirty years ago, a conservative leader could work with the other side to change the laws. Today, if a politician agrees with their opponent, they are treated like a traitor. The goal isn't to make the country better. The goal is to make the other guy look bad. The tragedy at Bondi became just another episode in the endless reality TV show of government.

Think about the incompetence required to mess up a day of mourning. It is the easiest thing in the world to do. You wear a black suit, you look sad, and you keep your mouth shut. That is all you have to do. But our modern leaders are so addicted to the sound of their own voices that they couldn't even manage that. They had to turn a rally against violence into a rally against each other. The Prime Minister gets heckled, the opposition leader makes snide comments, and the message is lost. The message should have been "stop hurting women." Instead, the message became "look at how much I hate that other politician."

This is the tragedy of the modern West, and Australia is just the latest victim. We have replaced action with performance. After Port Arthur, Australia got new laws that the world envied. After Bondi, Australia got a headache. We have become a society of children who cannot share a toy, let alone share a moment of grief. We are so busy trying to prove that we are right that we forget to be human.

So, spare a thought for the victims, because the people in charge certainly aren't doing a very good job of it. They are too busy checking their approval ratings. It is a sad state of affairs when you look back at the 1990s as a golden age of competence. But here we are. We used to fix things. Now, we just argue about who broke them while the house burns down. It is pathetic, it is exhausting, and sadly, it is exactly what we deserve for electing actors instead of leaders.