For some months now an old saying has been echoing in my head. “When America sneezes, Australia catches a cold”. I can’t remember where I first heard that, or who said it, but it’s a statement I both hate, and cannot deny. And now, ten days out from Donald Trump becoming President of the United States – again – it’s gone from a bitter grumble to a cry of warning fuelled by frustration.
Ever since we realised that our older sister, Great Britain, had better things to do with her time than drag around an annoying younger sibling, we’ve latched on to the United States, our cool big brother. We dress like him. We talk like him. We like the same things he likes. We’ve had a bad case of hero worship for 70 years now, and we don’t show signs of growing up any time soon.
America went to Vietnam? We’d better go, too! America decided anything that even smelled like Socialism was bad? So did we! America doesn’t like our government? We’ll sack it! America said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that regime change in other countries was a great idea and we broke land speed records rushing to give our support and sacrifice the lives of our troops in wars that had no possible justification beyond “big bro said so”.
It wasn’t all bad. After all, our big brother did have that flirtation with giving peace a chance, and we thought we’d give that a go. And let’s not forget when he decided that maybe giving people equal rights could be cool. We got behind that, too. It’s increasingly clear, though, that those were just phases America was going through. He got over it. So, of course, we did, too.
Now, looming on the horizon like an iceberg, is a new America led by a man who thinks he is so far above the law, consideration for humanity and common goddamn sense, that he can do what he wants both within and outside the borders of his own country. Riding on his back is a conglomeration of racists, misogynists, anti-intellectuals, warmongers, queerphobes, snake-oil salesmen, isolationists, fossil fuel addicts, would-be theocrats, venal “fuck-you-Jack-I-got-mine” billionaires, and people who think The Handmaid’s Tale is a how-to manual rather than a cautionary tale. His way is being cleared by an ice-breaker driven by a judicial system prepared to sacrifice justice and fairness on the altar of keeping the Dear Leader happy. And grovelling at his feet is the media, desperate to curry favour – or at least, to not make El Supremo mad at them.
Our big brother has turned into Biff from the first Back to the Future movie. He’s every bully who beat someone up for their pocket money or having the wrong name or just looking at him funny. And are we, the little sibling desperate to have big bro tell us we’re cool, going to emulate him now?
Of course we are.
I can already hear the objections. Wait a second! Australia is the land of the fair go. We’re capable of making our own decisions. We’re too apathetic to get really worked up about the kind of issues that Trump and his MAGA minions go on about. And besides, we’re not that religious. She’ll be right, mate.
It’s comforting to think that we’d never embrace the kind of behaviour that sees people demonised for simply existing, or wanting the right to control our own bodies, or having a particular skin colour, or wanting to mitigate the harm we’re doing to the planet. We all want to believe that we’re not “that” guy, and we won’t become that guy when Trump takes office. But here’s the thing.
We’re already doing it. And, in a very real way, we’ve never stopped.
In the months leading up to the US election, we saw the first stirrings, and it’s only getting worse. A sudden push-back against “wokeness” – that handy-dandy catch-all term for anything that might make white, cis, heterosexual capitalists uncomfortable. Welcome to Country ceremonies? Racist. Learning indigenous names for the places colonised without a second thought? Divisive. Calling a Nazi a Nazi? How very dare. Free speech! Free speech! But only the kind that allows people to be vicious, hateful liars.
Drag queens became targets for some of the most disgusting lies that could be told about a person. Forget Australia’s long history of embracing drag as part of our culture — America said that drag queens are evil criminals corrupting Our Precious Youth, so it must be true. Proof? Evidence? Pshaw. We don’t need any of that, because our big bro wouldn’t lie to us, would he?
Trans folk became official punching bags for the worst of human impulses as the Australian Labor Party crawled away from its support of LGBTQIA+ people and started to mouth nonsense about how there was a “debate” as to whether a trans person should have the right to use a fucking public toilet. The Victorian Liberal Party dumped the only leader it’s had in decades who had enough tiny scraps of human decency to stand on principles and boot a lying transphobe from the party room, and then they welcomed said transphobe back like a conquering hero.
Then there are reproductive rights. The Queensland Liberal National Party’s state election campaign signalled its intent to roll back abortion rights, and the South Australian Parliament actually debated legislation to do the same thing. Meanwhile, so-called “men’s rights activists” are agitating for what’s effectively the right to rape.
Let’s not forget climate change. We’ve got Peter Dutton fallling all over himself to push a nuclear power strategy that has been proven unworkable, while simultaneously crying, “Won’t someone think of the poor fossil fuel giants?!” We’ve got lunatics like Malcom Roberts sounding off on Twitter about the “dangers” of renewable energy, claiming that solar farms and wind towers are responsible for everything from deforestation to “pollution”. We’ve got federal Labor wringing its hands and quietly sidling away from their commitment to renewables, all the while protesting that they really truly do want to do something about climate change, honest.
Oh, and our Medicare system, which is frankly the envy of most Americans who happen not to be incredibly rich? Well, that should be more like America, too – at least according to influential voices in both major parties. We’ve already seen Labor rip out the heart of the National Disability Insurance Scheme because apparently it’s more important to keep paying lawyers to browbeat disabled folk than it is to actually help them have a halfway decent quality of life. Now the spectre of “co-payments” has raised its head again, along with mock-sorrowful head shaking about how “unsustainable” the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is, and how Medicare covers “too much”.
All the while, there’s a steady stream of Australian moguls beating a path to Trump’s front door, eager to kiss Trump’s rings. Politicians like Ralph Babet and Malcolm Roberts (hello again) write sickeningly sycophantic paeans on their social media, talking about Trump as though he’s the Great White Saviour. Media are increasingly platforming them and their Trump worship. And there is an alarming, and growing, number of people who seem to think that Australia is a de facto 51st state (or maybe 52nd, now that Trump apparently wants to annex Canada) – so maybe we should just get on with it and adopt everything MAGA says is a good idea.
On the face of things, it’s utterly crazy to think that we would so willingly participate in our own undoing. After all, it’s not like Brexit happened in spite of the known fact that it would spectacularly screw up Britain, or that Donald Trump could ever be a serious candidate for President, right? Oh, wait. The human race has a history of cutting off our nose to spite our collective face – and if we continue down this route, that’s exactly what will happen. Yet, here we are. We have willingly yoked ourselves to America, and we are so convinced that we should do what our big brother does that we will destroy ourselves in the process.
But wait, comes the objection. Not everyone is like that! Some of us don’t want to be mini-MAGAs! We don’t even like Trump!
That sounds encouraging – it might even be true. It’s one thing to say that to each other, though, to sit in our lounge rooms and shake our heads. But where are the voices screaming, “No! We do not want this! We want an Australia that doesn’t just believe in a fair go – we want an Australia that actually makes it happen!” Who is loudly and unequivocally rejecting this contagion of mean-spirited, destructive hate that is spreading through our country?
It’s time to stop the “both-sides” nonsense that seems to be all that centre-Left voices understand anymore. It’s time to say there are not two sides to every story, and that when someone’s idea of free speech is to silence the voices of the most vulnerable, they’re just plain wrong. It’s time to call bullshit on the lies and yes, call a Nazi a Nazi. The voices on the Right give exactly zero time to ideas that the Left cherishes (weird little things like equality and opportunity and diversity), so the Left and the centre-Left need to return the favour.
To borrow a quote from Aaron Sorkin, it’s time to “speak truth to stupid”.
And it’s time to stop accepting that the erosion of people’s rights is inevitable, because believe me, when they’re done coming for the rest of us, they will come for you too. No matter how white your skin is or how “feminine” you look and act.
Mask up, Australia. Socially distance. America may have sneezed, but maybe this time, we can stifle this cold before it becomes a pandemic.
