Most of the democratic world agrees that the scenes in the Capitol were terrifying. But what of Australia’s democracy? A government obsessed with secrecy, faux threats to security, MPs in the grip of the neoliberal sickness, and some who appear in thrall to the failed US President.
The scenes in the US Capitol might still lead to criminal charges against the President; they have already caused him to be impeached, for a genuinely “unprecedented” second time.
The fact that the crowd was incited by Trump is seemingly settled, and politicians from around the world have condemned both the actions of the murderous mob and those of the ‘Instigator in Chief’.
The political leaders include Boris Johnson, Nicola Sturgeon, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau, Jacinda Ardern and even Vladimir Putin. They all condemned the revolt, but in good old Australia we weren’t that concerned, it seems.
While Prime Minister Scott Morrison expressed his “distress”, he could not bring himself to connect the actions of the mob with President Trump. That is a disgraceful omission for a democratically elected leader, considering that Trump’s goal was to incite a violent insurrection, with the possible outcome of seizing power, perhaps permanently. Trump is still the “Commander in Chief” of the most powerful nation on earth.
Some MPs thought Twitter was more at fault
Michael McCormack, acting Prime Minister last week, was asked whether he condemned Trump’s actions, but went on to say that “violence is violence and we condemn it in all its forms” and then compared the Black Lives Matter demonstrations with the attack on the Capitol. He did not want to be drawn on who was to blame.
Liberal MPs Craig Kelly, Dave Sharma and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Nationals MP George Christensen and McCormack are among government members who have condemned the “silencing” of Trump.
Is this because they believe the right to incite violence is more important than the competing right of having ones vote counted and not overturned by a mob of illiterate thugs? These ‘luminaries’ also seem woefully ignorant of the exceptions to the First Amendment. These are as follow:
Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats and commercial speech such as advertising.
Why would Morrison not condemn Trump?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has always been embarrassingly taken in by Trump’s ‘braggadocio’ (an apt term, meaning boastful or arrogant behaviour). Morrison has stopped well short of condemning the President, an extraordinary omission considering Trump’s goal to overthrow the results of a democratic election and retain his power.
A complicating factor is that much of Trump’s electoral success has been built on the white evangelical vote. Footage of charismatic Christians ‘laying hands on’ Trump in the White House may be viewed in Australia as quaint, but is Morrison ‘blinded by the light’ when it comes to Trump? We can only hope he does not see Trump as “the chosen one”, as Trump has been described in the US.
Well after Trump lost the election, he awarded Morrison a Legion of Merit for leadership. Presumably, not for tackling global warming.
So John Howard gets a medal, and we go to war in Iraq. Scott Morrison gets a medal, and we defend Trump’s right to attempt to overturn an election.
Trump has been exposed over the past four years as a violent sexual predator, an adulterer, a white supremacist, an anti-Semite, a religious bigot, a homophobe, a fraudulent businessman, a liar, a thief, an environmental vandal and a putative dictator, and yet many of our elected representatives appear to support his right to invalidate elections and undermine the rule of law.
The death and destruction he caused by mishandling the pandemic are yet to be calculated, but the fallout will continue for years, I suspect. Will he ever be brought to book? Maybe not. Again, where were Australia’s leaders as he touted dangerous and stupid solutions? If you were Craig Kelly, it was shoulder to shoulder.
These matters set Trump apart from most of humanity, and it is worth thanking fate for his incompetence and lack of care for detail. The US is still a democratic republic, and we can only hope Joe Biden can repair some of the damage.
But what of the state of our own democracy? A government obsessed with secrecy, faux threats to our security, unaccountable, most of its members in the grip of the neoliberal sickness, and some who appear to be in thrall to the departing, failed US President. How many times must we utter “Poor Fellow, my country”? It might be time for Australians to actually stop, and think. This is serious.
Mark Buckley is a writer based in regional Victoria. He has a particular interest in politics, history and ethics in public life. He blogs at www.askbucko.com
Comments
8 responses to “Poor Fellow, my country, indeed: Trump’s Australian fans.”
Don’t forget Morrison is an evangelical Christian; that bunch have overwhelmingly supported Trump.
Like Australia, some of the US states are called Commonwealths. The first thing a politician has to do is get elected. But the commonwealth is the objective. If getting elected becomes the objective we are all in trouble.
Morrison is a two-bob Trump. A pale imitation of a fascist criminal.
Scotty Morrispin is worse than Trump. With Trump, you knew that you would be covered with orange dandruff all the time, With Morrispin, not so much. He waves in the wind – first one way, then if he perceives resistance he changes direction in an instant. And this happens daily.
I think Morrispin is far more dangerous than Trump, and he has one thing in mind – his political survival as Prime Minister – and he will do anything to retain that, but at what cost to Australia?
Good point. Also in Australia the unflushable turd really has no opposition unlike the fierce opposition to Trump in the US. Timid Tony has given him a free pass. Where is our Bernie Sanders?
Agree completely. He is very dangerous, especially with the perhaps contrived back-up of Dutton and others of the same ilk. Morrison has failed at a number of jobs but has always bounced back, in a manner similar to Trump over his history.
He is also very skilled at reading the mind of an electorate, a large portion of which is apathetic at the best. He knows complex policy prescriptions are beyond the heads of many in the electorate, likely including himself, and does nothing to educate the electorate in a critical manner.
The fact that he refuses to answer questions and appears to take responsibility for nothing seems to provide the raw material for somebody who has dictatorial tendencies. And if we consider that he answers to a higher authority every Sunday, then any sense of agreed upon rationality may go out the window. Many christians, of course, are highly rational but the symbolism and emotion in the more extreme evangelical churches goes beyond this towards a quite unmitigated faith that seems to all almost anything.
I think Scott from Marketing is especially good at providing a very comforting balm to the conservative and reactionary groups of Australians who are always suspicious of such inconvenient truths like climate change, or the science that says the universe came into existence a little while beyond 6,000 years ago!
John Howard as PM was also conservative. But at least he was cognisant of Australia’s true interest. He made a lot of the correct noise that the Americans wanted to hear when he sent our troops to Iraq in 2003, but I think he also made sure that Australian casualties would be at a minimal. Similarly, he was careful not to upset the golden goose (China) that lays the golden eggs.
But this mob is different, and a lot more dangerous. In the South China Sea, they actually want to go further than even the Sheriff in confronting China! And they don’t care how many billions of dollars or jobs we lose as a result.
They have God on their side, and they have no doubt they are going to win!
The moron with the cigar has had a piece published in Costello’s rag praising Biden after backing the rapist in the election. The rats have jumped the sinking SS Trump and are swimming to the Biden gunboat. Its tough being a US stooge these days. So much swimming.