For many Australians, last week’s US election felt personal. We’re steeped in American culture. We think we understand the place.
How then could nearly 71 million Americans have voted for a man who doesn’t believe in democracy? How could it have been so close?
Let me comfort you.
Joe Biden’s election was a resounding rejection of Trumpism. In fact this election was not very close as American elections go. Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight, projects Biden’s winning margin in the popular vote will be north of four percentage points and possibly as high as six. Since 1996 only Barack Obama’s 2008 win has been larger.
Biden is only the fourth challenger since World War II to unseat a one-term president. Democrats also flipped two Republican strong-hold states — Georgia and Arizona — and made Texas competitive. These changes would have been unthinkable two decades ago. As electoral rebukes go, it doesn’t get much bigger.
Yes, Donald Trump’s behaviour has been so monstrous, so destructive of democratic norms and institutions that it seems unthinkable any Americans would have voted for him, let alone 71 million. But Americans, especially Republican Americans, are more different from Australians than you think.
In 2002 I was part of an Australian 60 Minutes team that interviewed Trump — then a failing casino-owner and buffoonish fixture on the social pages — in his offices in Trump Tower, New York. We were reporting on New York’s recovery from the 9/11 attacks six months earlier. Trump was bankrupt and eager for attention. The hair was an architectural marvel, but the man was unremarkable — until the camera turned on. Then we got the show, the charismatic conman who would go on to dupe millions.
I mused that Trump exemplified the difference between Americans and Australians. He was the personification of “Big Time Barry”, the term my father uses for people who have more regard for themselves than their achievements merit.
Sceptical by nature, Australians are suspicious of such braggadocio. Trump would have been laughed out of the office of every prospective lender in Australia. But in America he was not only credible, he thrived. His poor business record didn’t stop large banks lending him millions. And then — astounding those who knew the truth — he became the face of corporate America for 12 million viewers of The Apprentice.
Americans are not sceptical. They believe in Hollywood stories. They are not disposed to be suspicious of a character like Trump.
Republican voters are particularly vulnerable to his con. For years, evangelical preachers in red states have taught congregants wealth equals morality. Their gospel of prosperity has convinced voters that conspicuous riches, like those of Trump, are God’s reward for creating wealth and jobs.
Republican voters also live in information ecosystems that resemble those of an authoritarian state. Right-wing media disinformation campaigns have exploited the deep fear of communism instilled in Americans during the Cold War. Many Trump supporters fully believe Biden will turn America into a socialist state. Any media that says otherwise is seen as part of the conspiracy.
From an Australian lens, Republican leaders have always had repugnant policies. And yet about half the American electorate always votes for them (43% of Americans did not think Nixon should be removed from office after the Watergate scandal).
Trump had some way to go before he caused as much destruction to lives and personal liberties as the last Republican president, George W Bush. Bush, a C student, was deluded by neocons Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld that toppling Saddam Hussein would install a democracy that would “send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran, that freedom can be the future of every nation”.
That ludicrous notion underpinned the US-led Iraq invasion, giving birth to Islamic State and the death and displacement of millions of people across Iraq and Syria. More than a million returned servicemen and women from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan struggled with physical and mental health injuries that became burdens on families and communities.
The Bush administration forced all men in the US from Muslim countries — including some of my journalist friends — to register with authorities. The unlucky ones were detained without charge or recourse. At least 136 Muslim men were snatched and transferred by “extraordinary rendition” to secret black sites where they were tortured out of reach of international law.
A vast state surveillance was secretly established to monitor Americans. And Bush’s parting gift to incoming president Obama in 2008 was an economic meltdown that wiped out the wealth of large swathes of Americans and sparked a global financial crisis.
Every Republican leader in three decades has opposed badly needed reforms that would provide health insurance for all Americans. They routinely lower taxes to corporations and the rich while cutting the social welfare net and defending obscenely low federal minimum wages (currently $7.25 an hour). Republicans spend 15% of the government budget on the military, deny climate change and oppose reforms to address entrenched racial and gender inequities.
And yet every time, roughly half of Americans vote for them.
With his vulgarity and disregard for democracy, Trump offended our sense of our selves. But Americans are different. The backlash against Trump represented by Biden’s win last week is as good as it gets.
Prue Clarke is an Australian journalist who has lived in the US for most of the past 20 years.
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What ya think all the guns is for?
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-election-trump-biden-count-votes-michigan-pennsylvania-huppke-20201104-idkp47gx4rhrrjhxsaglrvbiwu-story.html
Interesting of course to remember that Rumsfeld-Cheney wanted to export democracy to other countries. According to the orange megafauna himself, they have just failed to hold a proper election in the US.
Times were once different. Back then we thought that a death toll of 3,000 people in a 2001 event was a big deal. Nowadays we reckon 240,000 deaths from a mismanaged disease outbreak is not even grounds for removing the presiding political party.
It wasn’t the death toll in 2001 – it was how it occurred, and who and what was attacked.
Yes, for the first time the result of their many abuses came home to the Evil Empire.
Thank you.
I think I get it now but I could not understand it previously. Trump is appalling in every way.
I’m still glued to the CNN election coverage and looking forward to ‘Planet America’ with John and Chas tonight.
Chloe Stanley – Would suggest you read this very good piece by Keir Semmens Crikey Nov 27, 2020 “Homer heartland: why 73 million voters stuck with Trump” to get a more balanced view on Republican and Democrat outlooks and potentially why the USA votes as it does.
Firstly I’m not a Trump supporter but this story is so far from the mark.
Uncle Bill from the Lolita Express with the aide of Biden brought in the supa preditor laws that incarcerated more blake males than anytime in history. Clinton’s repeal of the Glass Steigall act repealed all safe guards that American’s had from preditory banks and built upon the Reagan/Thatcher era’s of deregulation of the finance industry. This finalization of everything propelled the 1% to the point that they own 60% of America.
A survey found that 80% of Americans could not find $1,000 dollars in an emergency.
When legislation was bought in to extend bankruptcy rules which would have predominantly effected woman Hilary was away because Bill was sick.
Obama’s QE policies was the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the 0.05% in the history of the world.
Obama can been viewed on youtube bragging that he was a better business person that Bush, sitting next to him, because his QE established the fracking industry making America an oil exporter, petrol cheaper and renewable less competitive.
I have listen to immigration experts talk about Obama as the the deportationer in chief.
The Democrats for all their bluster have always past bills that gave Trump more surveillance power.
I could fill three pages.
The ultimate thing Trump had going for him was that he wasn’t a politician and he always spoke his mind.
Unlike all the other politicians who say one thing publicly (I’m thinking locally maybe Christian Porter) but do things completely differently behind closed doors.
This is another piece of identity politics, right bad – Left good, with cognitive dissonance at peak levels.
Could I also add to this one-sided article, Obama prosecuted more JOURNALISTS using their draconian secrecy laws than ALL previous Presidents before him. Just a minor issue that I though a journalistic retelling of history would think important.
I think this article and your point (i see the Dems are only slight better than the Reps) proves Australia should be very wary of any aligning to the US apart from some of their entertainment and self reflection (music, tv and film predominantly).
Yeah we might in theory need their protection but screw their ideologically poison.
Privatized healthcare and schooling\university, deregulation, free market, trickle down, free trade agreements with ISD clauses are all poison pills that will eventually relegate us to the same fear, hatred and loathing for community and society.
I just wish more people understood our our Liberals are mostly wedded to the same idealogy but just deliver it via stealth and subterfuge.
Mark, nothing you have said is wrong, but nor is it against w.hat is being said in the article, apart from inaccurately pinning the GFC on Bush, which you correctly identify.
Can we stop calling anything we don’t agree with as identity politics. This article doesn’t go there, and I can’t understand why you did.
DB, you are confusing what you deem as identify politics with the Marxist concept of class. This seems to be the point that Mark.o.w was making.
Dog
The reply was to illustrate that it “IS” identity politics because to believe that millions of America have a choice is fanciful.
How is the historical impoverishment of millions of middle class Americans through the Quantitative Easing that enriched the 1%, not essential in your review of history.
How is it that the Clinton’s can paraded around as ethical people that will bring fairness to their system not a display of moral bankruptcy.
To believe the American people have real choice, that both side are not captured by Big Money is IMHO fanciful.
While painting Trump as evil incarnate to pass all laws expanding his powers.
What Trump presented to the journalists was a conundrum that despite his total lack of morals millions voted him in and tried to again.
What they want is business as usual and go about pretending like Christian Porter.
As Noam Chomsky pointed out that this is about manufactured consent, that true change agents are not welcome, as OAC has found as is thinking of resigning.
It’s all identity politics because the true substance of these people and the description in the article are so distant.
Paras 1, 2 & 5 being ‘pure’ Marxism. Leo T. made similar points.
Just another labeling exercise without substance
Sorry : I assumed that you were familier with Trotsky and to a a less extent : Lenin’s ‘What is to be done’
No I haven’t read them does that make me and my comments lesser ??
Strictly, no, at least not in a broad sense. The social ills of today were in existence from the Napoleonic wars. The survey peg is important because life and customs during the (e.g.) English Civil War was quite different to circa the late 18th century. From the late 18th century (and very early 19th century) the social effects of the Industrial Revolution became all too apparent.
We actually need to examine the social effects of the Seven Years war (kinda related) but we won’t digress; interesting as they are.
Marxism in a clause is “the history of class struggle” which the Manifesto went to some trouble to illustrate. Then we have Rousseau. Rousseau declares that (referring to the common man) “everywhere he is in chains”. Rousseau was not given to Hegelian teleological pronouncements of history (the mark of a Marxist – at least in the 19th century) but the point that he was making was that
all modern governments repress the freedom of the individual (apparently for the individual’s own good) and such acts do not, contrary to the asserted justification, secure civil freedoms much less freedom per se. The same could be said for expression.
In other words, for Rousseau, [a basic example] someone on $180,000 and maxed out with a mortgage, kids in private schools, cars, boats etc. is as good as being in any gaol for what ‘freedom’ they think they have. Somerset Maugham wrote “The Moon and Sixpence” [or 5c] on this very theme in 1919.
Ahh mort gage our old friend. ‘In his Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Angliae (1189), Ranulf de Glanville explains that this latter type of pledge, in which the fruits of the property were taken by the creditor without reduction in the debt, was known by the term mort gage, which in Old French means “dead pledge.” and so it remains.
No Erasmus sorry I’m not, does that make me and my comments lesser
Never ‘assume’.
Many a head has been lost after its owner assumed the crown.
The same could be said in an environment of Republicanism; a current case “now showing”
M-O-W
I completely agree with your assertion that the Yanks don’t have a lot to choose from. The democrats have been bought & sold and both the Clinton and Obama administrations displayed stunning amounts of amorality.
Interestingly, Michael Moore in his 11/9 Fahrenheit makes some pretty stunning claims of corruption within the Democratic Party, which backs up your points about lack of real choice. (BTW, I’m very aware one cannot simply take Moore at face value!)
But, in a 2-horse race, Biden was clearly the lesser of two evils. People who want real choice have to somehow ensure the identity of the 2nd horse is not Rep or Dem next time around. Good luck overcoming those hurdles.
Yes – this is a truth – they are different. Before I went to the U.S. I thought this whole gun insanity was because the NRA had captured the politicians. To fix it you just needed to outlaw or breakup the power of this lobby group. But the problem lies in the very make-up of Americans. They are an entrenched warlike people. At every airport every 20 minutes soldiers are thanked and rewarded for their patriotic service. The young address their elders as Sir. This is not deference to age – it is the outcome of not knowing if the recipient has a gun under their coat. They have convinced themselves that they are the protectors of democracy when as Ms Clarke says, they are responsible for the worst breakdowns over the last few years both in the M.E. and South America.
And what about their ideas on socialism. In this election Biden is a socialist! He’d barely get acceptance into the labor party out here.
They are a sick society and we should distance ourselves and observe from afar.
They are a sick society…
Absolutely true, Matt. A sick society; a backward country in so many ways, and constitutionally constipated.
You are right about the differences. If only Australians would see that and live as if they believed what they see is true.
One odd thing that has stood out for me as iconic of this for 40 years: Try finding an Australian pop singer (or even a folk singer) who does not use an American accent (and deliberately reject an Australian accent). Another I can’t resist: there must be 1000 times more hoodies in Australia celebrating US universities and cities than there are hoodies celebrating Australian universities and cities.
One point Prue missed is that Trump received more votes in 2020 than he received in 2016. To that extent I think her explanation fell short.
There are some Australian singers who don’t use USA accents-Sara Storer and John Williamson come to mind.
Thanks for reminding me of these two greats, Bushby Jane. When I heard Slim Dusty go all Yank I thought all was lost.