Ignorance of the world, along with a belief in American exceptionalism, combines with an obsession with a capitalism that is rapidly increasing inequity. That is the USA.
These are not new phenomena but increasingly problematic in an era of political turmoil and a pandemic that is the biggest disaster in American history. President Biden seeks important reform within the US but some policies for the world are destructive, continuing the drift of the Obama years to solve problems by military means.
Australian perceptions of the US derive mainly from news sources in New York, Washington and commercial TV correspondents in Los Angeles; plus Hollywood … and these days doses of spin from Sky ‘News’. For most Australians, news is in tiny grabs. Great minds in Canberra and other lofty places are immured in the language of the American mighty.
When my wife and I travelled from Australia to work in the Washington embassy in the beginning of 1976, to better understand the USA we bought a second hand car in San Francisco and drove 4000 miles via LA, Arizona, Texas, New Orleans, Georgia, and so on to Washington, counterclockwise to avoid snow. Two things made lasting impressions of continuing relevance.
First, on that route after the San Francisco Examiner we saw no newspaper that reported the world beyond the local until we got to the Washington Post. This was a huge difference from Australia, where every city at that time had at least one newspaper that considered the world beyond Australia to be important — to report as facts not attitudes.
Nowadays, in vast tracts of the US there is an intergenerational depth of lack of knowledge of wider issues. Upon this the internet has burst with its information revolution, comparable to the arrival of the printing press in Europe around 1500, ripping into closeted knowledge and power, uprooting control of language, boosting rights to offend the mighty… Except that this revolution is much bigger, much faster. That last one just halved Christendom and led in the 1600s to separation of church and state and the rise of the modern state. They didn’t know what was under way then, nor do we know now where we are going.
Second, I realised back then in 1976 that I had never properly understood capitalism, capitalism without government engaged in wealth redistribution and support for the troubled. In America we encountered the extraordinary ability of people to rise to enormous wealth, or crash or remain in deep poverty, as a normal thing, deserving not even a shrug. There are vast pockets of disadvantage and intergenerational misery in the US. We have a little of that in Australia, not to be compared with the American ‘dream’.
How does this fit with the persistent belief in American exceptionalism?
When you put those two factors together in this newly open, YouTube-full-frontal-laughing-angry-Tik-Toky world, you need to add the depth of readiness for messianic belief and action in the US, which just licks like small bushfires in Australia, albeit happy clapping as far as the office of prime minister.
There is great openness to beliefs and actions which from a distance we might patronisingly describe as crazy, but needing to be understood with the anthropologist’s eye as central to what America is, deserving not just uncomprehending attitude.
In 2016 Hillary Clinton said half the Trump supporters were ‘deplorables’. That, in my view, lost her the election, defining her (as did much else) as the rich folks’ candidate. Consider the huge vote for Trump in 2020. Biden has not distanced himself from that Clinton remark. Consider the great glossy show of the recent presidential inauguration, yearned for so long, a must-have, but out of touch with demands for others to show restraint, living in the deadliest crisis in American history.
There was only brief critical reporting that more than a thousand National Guard members, imported to provide security for the event, were sent to sleep on the concrete floor of the Senate’s underground parking garage, midwinter. Security-vetted before deployment, with what fresh anger did they return home. Attitudes on race have been under attack, but attitudes (unthinking, natural) to lesser order people of whatever background contribute to the pot of discontent.
Put all such together when considering rebellious people in the midwest and elsewhere rejecting advice on mask-wearing. America is angry.
There is great virtue in reforming announcements by President Biden, but there are two problems. Domestically, the members of the House of Representatives are elected for only two years and it is impossible to know what the congress of 2022 will look like, with Trumpism likely to alter Republican representation as did the Tea Party movement in the 1990s. It is noble to hope that buckets of money will move mountains but as they say in Naples “who lives in hope dies desperate”. Turmoil will continue.
Chinese economists have expressed concern about the external effects of the massive pandemic relief budget being sought by the Democrats: that there will be a massive lift in American demand for Chinese goods and that this will impact on exchange rates and macroeconomic management in China. There will also be disruption in South East Asia, financial markets already briefly jolted with the announcement of the plan. The pandemic has thus far dramatically increased the wealth of the 1% in the US, as the ‘middle class’ and underclasses struggle. I have not seen how the package will reverse that. Biden has shown no indication he will reverse tax cuts granted the very rich by Trump.
Biden-Blinken strategic and foreign policies are a forced march away from erratic Trump follies, but thus far showing extremes of old style alliance shouting, spear shaking and inflexibility. With some puzzling nonsense. Endorsing the so-called Quad of US, Japan, Australia, and India is endorsing a square wheel of hostility to China. Japan invited to do more militarily will eventually lead to independent actions, declining fealty to the US. Japan in but South Korea out engages us in hostilities, preferences, and disrespect for the ROK. India as a democracy? – increasingly repressive Hindu nationalism, not least against its large (second largest after Indonesia) Moslem population, repression more ingrained and extensive than any such in China. Care we not about Kashmir?
Australia: we make our graduation from poodle to donkey, maintaining our enthusiasm for long strategic reach, legal or not, disrespecting our immediate neighbours as usual and opening a bottomless pit of defence expenditure, $270,000,000,000 in plan who knows what in eventuality, when we have serious and growing domestic social, economic, and environmental adjustment needs far more relevant to national security.
The Quad as a basis for economic integration away from China? Nonsense; compare the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that Australia has signed, inclusive of our neighbours including China, but not the USA. Consider also the web of supply chains between China Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, pandemic permitting. A recent EU-China investment treaty. These are the realities. Along with more than 10,000 rail freight carriages between China and Europe in 2020. Contact a friendly freight forwarder, see what is normal, what we are missing out on.
The exclusion of China, Biden’s so-called ‘cold peace’, is destructive and unreal, and can’t be done. The objectives of the United States in many fields, especially on climate, cannot be done without a good relationship with China. The cold peace will weaken the world economy.
Dennis Argall’s degrees were in anthropology and defence studies. his governmental work in foreign, defence and domestic departments and for the Australian parliament. His overseas postings included Beijing as ambassador, and Washington. He regrets the extent of his personal experience with disability but it has perhaps sharpened his desire that the future be a better country.
Comments
8 responses to “Alas America, the outlook is difficult; but should not be aggressive”
Such an interesting discussion, old friends and new.
Erik, we may have crossed paths. One of my happiest memories is of New Years Eve 75-76 when we went out to dinner and we scooped up, together with our two month old in basket, by a crowd at the next table, and taken to see the new year in at their apartment, in San Francisco. It is a terrible disappointment to watch what is happening in the US, some family and some friends in the US now. Stay safe!
In almost all of history, the masses have languished in ignorance. The US is normal in that regard. What is exceptional about the US is how stupid the government is. Instead or acting on the advice of experts, of which the US has plenty, it panders to the ignorant masses. If it had educated the masses, which is the same as wisely leading them, the masses would have produced more and better experts, the cream of which should be the government’s main source of advice.
The introductory statement of this article is a good description of “plutocracy” runing the US with 1% getting richer while the economic gap bw poor and rich widens. In the 1980s, “social welfare” is a dirty word in the US and probably still is. One will never get elected as President if you are a socialist (Bernie Sanders). The elected top leader don;t believe in socialism, and this gap keeps widening unless the American psyche changes.
Despite being the richest country on earth, the US has got anomalies as well s excecption. It would appear that most of the knowledge are broadcasted from the richer coastal regions of the US with blackholes in the central US – an astute observation by Ambassador Argall which is consistent with my findings when I began going to different parts of the US to deliver scentific papers in the 1980s.
With a lack of knowledge of the world, how can an ordinary American stand up and resists information generated by “plutocrats” or have sufficient infomation to analyse what they have been told is good or bad for them.. In a way, both China and US use the same strategy to control their population, but the Chinese appears to be more benevolent than the US as judged by the increase std of living in China and the opposite in the US..
However, there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel when both Presidents started the Lunar New Year greets – and maybe these pragmatic approaches will bringforth peace on earth.
President Biden’s Lunar New Year greetings
https://youtu.be/v6BiDqJ2g3I
Xi, Biden exchange Chinese New Year greetings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJjWpZPE1LY
Hello Dennis
Very good article and very perceptive. We may well have driven past each other at some stage. I taught at SFU in 1976. Most of my students were mature age and many served in Vietnam. None of them, not one, knew where Vietnam was and certainly had little sense for why they were there apart from “kill as many gooks as possible”. It was well nigh impossible to read international news in the local papers. The LA Times occasionally slipped up and mentioned Russia. To compensate, at least partially, I bought The Washington Post and The NY Times.
Extraordinarily insular country with far too much power and far too willing to exert that power.
Erik
Dennis, it is good to hear from you again. Thank you for sharing your experience. I have always felt that Trump supporters are just victims of ruthless politics. What you say in this sentence is true:
“In 2016 Hillary Clinton said half the Trump supporters were ‘deplorables’. That, in my view, lost her the election, defining her (as did much else) as the rich folks’ candidate.” They are not ‘deplorables’ but victims of a system that is increasingly unequal. They are desperate people seeking a “messiah”
Today, we witness another example of that ruthlessness combined with a complete lack of integrity. Donald Trump was acquitted in the second impeachment trial despite overwhelming evidence that he incited the Capital riot. Security guards died protecting the lives members of Parliament. Yet the majority of the Republican Senators could not find it in their hearts to find Trump guilty. This suggests a disturbing indication that winning matters above all else for these leaders of American society. It reflects again and again the American attitude that one must win at all costs and that the winner takes all. No one seems to be accountable for the lost of innocent lives.
The callous attitude towards other peoples’s lives, even among the Americans themselves, is astounding. Take the Covid19 pandemic for instance. One year into the pandemic, the US with a population of about 328 million people suffered a death rate, on the last available data, of 495,763, almost half a million people; while China with a population of 1.4 billion, about four times that of the US, only had a death rate of 4,636. They had a whole year to do something about the pandemic but did very little, excelling only in the blame game.
About five years ago, I visited New York and met an American doctor. He told me that he fought in the Vietnam War and asked me where I came from because he was intrigued by my accent, I wouldn’t blame him because it was such a hybrid (part Australian, part Malaysian, part English). I told him that I was Chinese/Australian/Malaysian. He asked me where Malaysia was. I said just next to Singapore. He did not know where Singapore was despite the fact that he was in Vietnam. That lack of aware of others is reversible if the American government were to spend less on arms and military bases and more on education. All they need to do is to send all of their university students abroad on student exchange for a couple of semesters. That will do a lot to address the problem and it would cost them a fraction of the trillions they spend on the military.
Winning at any cost is also imbedded in Australian culture, particularly the Liberal Party.
Well done Dennis. Now how do we get the Minister to read it?
This is such a perceptive essay, a shaft of sunlight, a cold shower.
Thank you.