Hi Joe,
I saw your interview one morning several weeks ago on Australian TV and was struck by your politeness in answering a question suggesting that as a visitor to our shores, you could not expect to fully understand a culture you were just visiting, etc. First of all, how refreshing to hear this from an American. Most Americans I've seen would not hesitate to bloviate about something as complicated as culture even if we do both speak a similar tongue.
Having said that, I'm sure you do see similarities in culture, and not just the facts like we both wear shoes. I have read or heard a number of times expat Americans say of Australia that "it's just like America 20 years before" and not in any condescending manner at all. This phrase truly chills me to the bone.
I have a strong political interest in what happens over there in the US as a sort of over the horizon radar of what's coming here next. I see (as far as the media will allow) the rancid state of American politics and marvel at how these people can get away with what they say and do (William Kristol and Ann Coulter), seemingly oblivious to any consequences such as being seen as a intellectual fraud on a public stage. Clearly there are no consequences if you have the right backers in a culture of what's next. Our own recent federal election saw a glimpse of what I have read has happened there, but to our credit we wouldn't cop it and threw the party in power out on their backsides.
Anyway, I just wanted to send you a message, letting you know I do enjoy your website ("Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven" still ranks as your best essay yet in my opinion) and really appreciate what I think you are trying to do (besides make a living) in blowing away some of the myth and BS (can't believe you actually said "bullshit" on blander-than-bland breakfast Australian TV and the two interviewers didn't even blink) constantly pushed through US media. Hologram indeed.
I also would like to suggest that guys like you do a service you may not fully appreciate. You are giving the rest of us outside the US (in the reality based community?) a clearer window with which to take a peek at what is happening there in the US and, most importantly, not allowing us the easy route to write you all off as a whole county of seemingly pious holy rollers and grubby potential Jerry Springer wanna-be guests wrapped into one. Many times I catch myself doing just that to my discredit. It would make me just as weak as those that I disapprove of.
Keep up the great work. I liked your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus. Shame that I couldn't buy you a beer when you were here and talk about real politics, like why is America so scared of socialism?
Best of luck
Allan
Australia
------
Allan,
Thanks for such kind words.
You are quite right that I see similarities between Australia now and America 20 years ago. In some ways that may be too easy a comparison. One could just as well say Australia is -- materially at least -- what China hopes to be. The old half full or half empty thing.
Whatever the case, Australia is more like the US than China and operates under the very same political and economic belief system as the US. As far back as the 1960's there were many voices to be heard in this country warning of exactly what we are seeing happen. The Port Huron Statement, Mario Savio and dozens of others who held the public spotlight at least for a time. None of those would be heard today in America, but rather would be contained by the system in their own communications ghetto that we call the leftist Internet.
I must confess that 30 years ago when the warning voices spoke, I nodded in agreement, but in my heart of hearts I never really believed America could come to this. America seemed just too big and too varied and too complex for a simple profit-based capital totalist state to happen. So I do not come to the table of accusation clean. I am just like most other Americans, the difference being in timing of the realization that the theatrical political production put on for us masks more sinister issues and things afoot than the phony stem cell and abortion debates, which are dangled before the masses. In other words, I came to understand that politics did indeed have much to do with my daily life, given that the role of politics is to control the behavior of the masses, be that for good or evil.
But getting back to your question, simply put, I got the feeling that Australians too fail to grasp the deep importance of politics in their lives. This, despite compulsory voting. And for the same reasons as Americans:
- the plentitude of cheap diversion
- and the lack of a clearly defined threat (most people do no look up until the jackboot is on the doorstep)
- and a lack of understanding of modern oppressive forces (they still think it wears jackboots and cannot believe that they carry around legal proof of their gulag residency in the form of plastic credit cards)
And you are right in that we are not entirely a nation of "... pious holy rollers and grubby potential Jerry Springer wanna-be guests wrapped into one." Unfortunately though, the cost and consequences of dissident action are just too high for mist citizens to contemplate. Or at least the perceived consequences scare citizens away from effective action such as a tax revolt. Perception is everything when it comes to controlling people. (I have personally planned to quit paying taxes to our rogue government for a long time, but just cannot get up the ass to do it alone. And I'd bet a hundred dollars to half a ginger cake that there are millions of Americans who would do the same, were we not all so cowed by that faceless monolith our government has become -- the one that only last week anointed itself with all-but-total powers of surveillance.
Many Americans assume occasional or constant surveillance. (No one wants to step forth first and go to court to find out, given that it is costly and one cannot be sure of getting the truth.) I can tell you this: It's a hellluva lot easier for me to take the podium in YOUR country and call things what they really are (and on network television, too!), than to do so in MY country, where even we left leaning bloggers out there on the Internet can be labeled a threat to national security. The current administration, and even some Democrats, are calling for legislation to make punishable anything deemed counteractive to the so-called "war effort." That alone says something about the remaining differences between the emerging Corporate Military States of America, and that land "down under" where citizens remain asleep in the fading light of a "fair go" for every man.
In art and labor,
Joe
