I Couldn’t Look Away – You Never Can from a Slow Moving Train Wreck
“No” Brett said “we don’t express a political point of view in the Monday Reflection, even about some other country.”
So this article about why we are so fascinated by this US election won’t be coloured by our views on who should win.
Because we are fascinated by Trump v Biden.
The coverage has been similar to what you might expect for an Australian federal election and a lot more than you’d expect for a state election – in Queensland for example. There are two Queensland election stories on today’s The Australian home page compared to six about the US election. The SMH is even more stark – not a single story immediately apparent about Queensland – Annastasia who? – compared to a complete standalone section and a story in just about every other section on Donald vs Joe.
So what is it that has made someone else’s election so critical for us? And what does it tell us about ourselves that causes this election to stand as such a symbolic event. Because it seems to me that it is symbolic.
Is it that Donald is so awful that we want to see him get his comeuppance – bigtime?
Or the backwash of Coronavirus and the deaths of so many Americans – although the US is down the list in total deaths per million, behind Belgium and Spain and level pegging with the UK and way down the list in deaths / million in the last week?
Or the media business model that prefers “breaking news” to considered argument – allied with the fact that many journalists probably want to see Trump thrashed?
Or wonder at how the “deplorables” to use Hilary’s unfortunate phrase continue to be attracted to Trump?
Or the bare-knuckle savagery of it?
Or amazement that the Democratic Party couldn’t find a more compelling candidate than someone who appears to forget his lines sometimes.
Or the result of the size and transparency of US politics and media which makes the process so visible for us?
Or the significance for Australia of the leadership of our key defence partner?
Or the sense that we may be witnessing the decline of the USA and the notion that individual rights and greed should be tempered by notions of what makes a just and tolerant society?
Or the dawning awareness that China thinks nothing of using corruption and trade as political weapons and appear to have an under us or against us view of geopolitics?
All these factors have a part to play. But we didn’t have this fascination when it was Clinton (H) v Trump (2016) or Obama v Romney (2012) or Obama v McCain (2008)
It seems to me that this election that brings the challenges that we feel we are facing, individually and as a nation, into focus.
Although we can’t influence the outcome, the process and the result and our reaction to it tells us a lot about ourselves.
In the same issue of The Australian[1] is an interview with Barry Jones, former Labor Party President, in which he is quoted as saying of Australia and the world more generally
“We see a retreat from reason; the rejection of facts and expertise; the rise of populism, snarling nationalisms, tribalism, and conspiracy theories; a fundamentalist revival and hostility to science; a failure of ethical leadership; deepening corruption of democratic processes; profound neglect of the climate change imperative; and the triumph of vested interests”
That’s a pretty damning litany and suggests a real pessimism about to world we’ve created. It also leaves out the fact that fewer people per capita died in in the last two decades in armed conflict than at any time in the past century or two, declining crime rates everywhere, a billion or so people dragged out of poverty in the last two decades, an enormous decline in famine[2]. By the way Jones has a new book to plug.
Is Jones’ view of what’s wrong with the world, and Australia in particular, simply an enumerated list of what we all feel? And a view that is summed up in the contest between Trump and Biden?
The events of the past 12 months have made us realise how fragile we potentially are – to bush fires (and perhaps climate change) – to a pandemic and its economic consequences, to a China that doesn’t hesitate to use utterly spurious excuses turn off our exports of barley, iron ore, wine, beef in an instant, to a change in the post WW2 certainties of an engaged USA underpinning the stability of Europe and Asia.
The other thing it has made some of us question is where it’s all going to end. Since 2005 our debt to GDP ratio has risen from ~10% to ~50% and it’s heading higher. The US federal government ratio is about 100%. This and other challenges are wicked problems and if the US with its sclerotic political system can’t fix them, what will be our chances.
In a peculiar way Trump v Biden makes us reflect on the apparently greater fragility of our own place in the world, to realise the extent to which The Lucky Country was supported by US policy and cultural alliances. Whether the failure of the US political system to throw up admirable candidates is mirrored here. And to wonder, whoever wins, what it will take, indeed whether we can, retain a positive, optimistic view of what the future holds for Australia and Australians.
No wonder we can’t look away.
[1] https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/labor-luminary-barry-jones-warns-of-the-retreat-from-reason/news-story/b29e40b00db47d61c8156fe72cf315b9
[2] We recommend https://ourworldindata.org/