So how are you coping?
The war on the world as we know it stemming from the Trump-Musk-Vance White House has been bewildering and frightening. Are you looking the other way yet? What’s your response to menace? Fight or flight?
A cold wind is blowing. A shadow moves across the land. Maureen Dowd in The New York Times (reprinted in The Sydney Morning Herald) wrote of the classic 1950s western Shane where Jack Palance plays a hired gun baddie, dressed in a black hat and black vest. He’s so bad that a dog skulks away as he gets up in a saloon. The Palance character is run out of town by the good and honest farmfolk who know wrong when they see it. Now he’s in the White House calling the shots and saying the law can’t touch him as he spouts Vladimir Putin’s talking points on Ukraine.
Heil bile
American columnists known for their breezy banter are mired in anxiety-ridden meditations about the very existence of their democracy. Conservative commentator Bret Stephens lists the calumnies in this order: “Vladimir Putin being invited to the United States is the equivalent of Franklin Roosevelt receiving Adolf Hitler in Hyde Park some time after Hitler marched into the Sudetenland. Trump’s style is to be brutal with our allies — Canada, Mexico, Panama, Denmark, Europe in general — but obsequious toward our enemies. The betrayal this represents for Ukraine, which apparently will now have to pay us in minerals for our tepid support for its right to live free, will be a mark of shame for the United States for decades to come.”
It’s instructive to watch the unfolding of an authoritarian state in real time, an interesting exercise for those of us who were too young to witness the rise of Hitler and who have become comfortable with the thought that democracy is a given.
When a vengeful dictator comes to town it is an acid test of character. It shows us who are the villains and who are the heroes. Who rolls over and who stands up? Let’s look at some real life reactions.
Principles schminciples
At one end of the spectrum we have (Lord) Peter Mandelson, nominated as the UK’s next ambassador to the US. Mandelson’s sin was to have disparaged Trump in years gone by. So did good old Mandy — he of the Tony Blair dark arts — stand by his beliefs? Not for a moment, old boy. Mandelson sat dutifully in front of a television camera and retracted every word from his past. In a hostage-style confession to Fox News (naturally) he declared his previous beliefs were “ill-judged and wrong”. Trump was “a nice person, a fair-minded person” and not at all the “reckless … danger to the world” he he once described him.
As Groucho Marx once said: “These are my principles and if you don’t like them, well I have others.”
At the other end of the spectrum is Danielle Sassoon, acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, who chose to resign rather than carry out a White House instruction to drop corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams. Another half a dozen prosecutors also resigned on principle.
We in Australia might be a step removed from the Washington blast zone but we are hardly immune. At a very practical level, how is Australia to react to a president who has broken cover as an agent of Russia? Who declares that the laws of America don’t apply to him because he is saving the country? And a vice-president who spends time with a far-right German political leader and who tells European allies where to stick it?
If the UK is at odds with the US over Russia, where does that leave the AUKUS defence pact where we are all meant to be one big happy family? If Trump’s national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard is openly sympathetic to Russia, how can US allies such as Australia be sure they can safely share intelligence?
Sweet smell of success
Ghastly it might be, but LNP leader Peter Dutton, of course, has sniffed where all this can lead. The sight of Rupert Murdoch sitting in the Oval Office egging on Trump as he leads the assault on “woke” America is really all you need to know. If in doubt just follow the Mar-a-Lago trail where you will find a cheery Gina Rinehart doing a new year’s eve knees-up.
Australia sure isn’t the US. We aren’t overrun by evangelical Christian nationalists and are perhaps less likely to be so since the departure of Scott Morrison. But there are danger signs. We have learnt this week that an alarmingly high proportion (72%) of students do not understand the basics of democracy. Professor Stewart Riddle from the University of Southern Queensland says in the piece that this made for a population “susceptible to manipulation, whether that’s by social media or international hackers who want to kind of get in and cause trouble”. This lack of understanding comes on top of a general slide in the belief in democracy and trust in institutions.
It means there’s plenty of scope for opportunists in politics and the media to capitalise on a weak democracy, because a weak democracy means weak accountability. So be alert to the extremism spreading out of the Land of the Free. This is no time to look away.
Send us feedback and tips via thepoliticsau@protonmail.com
I wish people would stop equating Russia with Putin! Putin is to Russia as Hitler was to Germany or Napolean was to France. The country is a political tool by which they took advantage of the disillusionment of a small vocal minority to gain power. Rather the same way Trump is attempting to run his own coup-d’etat.
I totally agree with all points.
Keeping our head down is probably best in short term to protect trade BUT
a time is soon coming to call out a bully and sanction appropriately.