Sunday, 11th July: Open Forum:

Has Australia Now Become Merely a Mirror of American Society
Both Culturally and Politicaly?

	In a recent article of Le Monde diplomatique, early 2004, I was intrigued to find that the language used by the conservative Right in American politics echoed the same clichés as used by the Right in Australia. In the light of this observation I was prompted to ask “has Australia merely become a mirror of American society both culturally and politically?” In the recent pre-electioneering (if not actual electioneering) that is saturating our media the Right is playing the following gambit: In our national interest we must support USA – if you do not support our supporting USA then you cannot be a good Australian (because you, obviously, don’t support what is good for the security and trade interests of Australia). How then can the Australian public vote for you if you do not have their interests at heart?” Do we now have to be also good Americans to be good Australians? One must wonder to what degree we may have become Americans if not in name but in spirit when one takes into consideration the cultural influences of Hollywood and its parallel in an over production of television programs like sitcoms, etc., trends in music and fashion, the magazines some of us read, right down to the very labels on the packaging of the food we eat? Even our buildings now have an appearance that would not seem out of place in any American city or town? (1)

	Let me quickly look at this article from Le Monde diplomatique and note some of the parallels with conservative expressions and clichés used in this country. Then let me draw your attention to another article, this time in the Sydney Morning Herald, where this same point has been observed. I will conclude with some rhetorical questions and philosophical arguments about what might constitute national identity, and, to what extent it might or might not be successfully assailed by extra-cultural influences? (2)

	This first article is titled The America that will vote for Bush and was written by Tom Frank. In a subtitle to this article the author states: The Aversion to Bush, at home and abroad, makes us forget how many people support this spokesman for another America sure of its superiority and values. After thirty years of shifting to the Right the American electorate is closely divided into two almost equal camps - Republicans versus Democrats. A similar situation in Australia sees the electorate almost equally divided between the so-called ‘Liberal’ Right and a ‘Labour’ Left. Talk back radio in the States is also heavily weighted to the Right, and, again, a similar situation prevails in Australia. Some of the put-down epithets frequently used by the rightwing media include a number of expressions echoed by our current Prime Minister, John Howard, and his congregation of ministers and his choir of Public Servant who seem to have been appointed to sing from the same choir-book. Common rhetorical themes used as invectives against the Left include the mantras that they are all latte-sipping elites, foreign car owners, people who go on foreign holidays, wear foreign suits, are a class of intellectuals who know nothing about the common man (the ‘battlers’ to quote a favorite expression of the current PM). Now, this type of language does sound very familiar here in Australia. So, it would seem, that much of the recent politicking of the Liberal Party is not as original as one might have thought? (3)	

Unfortunately, regardless of its origins, regardless of its adoption or not and local adaptations, this type of invective is mythic both in its nature and in its proportions and through repetition seems to have stuck? Yet, any reasonable person would suspect, as a near certainty, that many rightwing politicians, e.g., also sip their lattes, take numerous foreign holidays, wear foreign suits, and belong to a variety of elitist organizations? The same author also notes, however, that much of the Left in American politics does appear to be elitist, not well-organized and certainly not as well organized as the right in the dissemination of its message or sense of a political program. (4)

	The Right, in both the USA and in Australia, also appears, equally, to be obsessed by a perceived need for a ruthless trend in the privatization of public resources, utilities, media, etc. The Right has argued “that Government is in the job of governing” so let us outsource all non-core assets and institutions. But, then, if government is not in the job of supervising this rash of outsourcing who is? Has government also relinquished its role of supervizing this capitalist free-for-all with no adequate attempt to ensure the real maintenance of services in both quantitative and qualitative terms of reference? You would think that as the economies of most Western countries become progressively wealthier they could afford to improve upon these important facets of society (especially in the vital fields of education and health?)?   (5)

	It would seem that the best defense is to be the most offensive first and the most offensive thereafter!? At least to get in first in order to rhetorically sling mud that might well stick if slung often enough? These disparaging right-wing myths about the left, just alluded to, being a case in point. This is an observation noted recently by Anthony Albanese in the Australian Parliament according to the article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled Albanese lays it on thick. This article by Alan Ramsey also states: “Recently the House has been subjected to the idiotic claims of the Foreign Minister [Alexander Downer] that the Leader of the Opposition is taking his cue on every issue from the American political strategist Dick Morris. [The] claims are nothing but poll-driven sleaze. It is interesting, though, to ask where [Downer] and his colleagues get their advice. You don’t have to look too far. They are getting it from Karl Rove. Let us look at Rove’s strategies, outlined in a recent magazine.” The article then goes on to list eight practices adopted by the Liberal Party that seem to support this contention, one of which is to incessantly accuse your opponent of plagiarism regardless of the merit of such an accusation. (6)

Is all this a mere coincidence? Are we becoming more American? It would seem that I am not the only one to believe something along these lines? Are the many parallels between the USA and Australia in the political sphere an indication that we are moving closer, overall, to an American vision of life? Indeed, in another article in the Sydney Morning Herald we find a similar comment in the form of a quoted email from a liberal supporter sent to the same essayist/editorialist Alan Ramsey: “Have not changed my mind about the outcome of this eight-month election campaign. Howard will lose, not because he is personally hated (like Keating was by many) but because normal people are getting tired of the constant fear-mongering, the lies, the over-the-top propaganda, pathetic use of flags and soldiers in uniform, the wedge attempts, kids locked up, the shrilly desperate Downer, the revolting Ruddock.., and above all the old-style politics of say anything, do anything, deny everything…” In the next paragraph this same emailer is recorded as writing: “It is eerie watching CNN or Fox cable news. Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft; it could be Howard, Costello, Ruddock. The words and symbols are almost identical….”  
     (7)

	Last, on a more optimistic note, let me briefly argue for a defense of the continuing development of the Australian psyche and, therein, our unique sense of identity despite the relative onslaught and ubiquity of American culture. (8)

	First, let me state my belief that we see the world from our own point of embodiment and that that embodiment being embedded in Australia we cannot see things primarily from an American point of view despite the prevalence of a growing influence of American values, ideas, fashions, icons and practices, etc. That, in this regard, we can note that we cannot escape being Australian despite how that sense of identity is being re-constituted around the ‘edges’ so to speak by American and other non-Australian influences. (9)

	Second, we cannot escape our history despite an increasing lack of historical consciousness (even if that were to be the case) since the continuance of our identity is ongoingly re-constituted and not merely re-directed in a totally new direction from time to time. Our identity is already rooted in a range of prior commitments to various forms of practices and institutions that already constitute a sense of our being Australian that can never be absolutely uprooted and replaced. History remains ‘history’ and becomes ‘our history’ - something that we can never escape as long as we remain raised and/or a resident in this country, and, this country remains a sovereign country without a fatal loss of its current sovereignity! (10)

Third, in this dawning age of the Contemporary we are no longer ‘absolutely’ subject to the monolithic ‘self-possession’ of authorial intent be it literary or non-literary, whether it be issued in Australia or in the USA and delivered through the form of icons, labels, fashionable trends, novel concepts, so-called values, etc. Indeed, through post-modern and Contemporary disruptions of the hitherto mono-textual-like dimension of the Life-World, as lived by-us-in-this-society-before-others, a plurality of voices can now be heard above the grand narratives of religion, politics, psychotherapy, art and culture, etc. (and the orthodox political narratives that have tried to wield a synthesis of, hitherto, such an uncritically examined ‘absolute given-ness’). In this shift to a more audible plurality of ‘voices’ the virtual hegemony of the authorial can no longer be dictated and instilled with the political vehemence found in the past. Into such a cultural transition the ‘forging’ of the Australian identity will come about through a plurality of Australian identities and their collective, mutual cross-fertilization! (11)

	Fourth, as we can have no absolutist sense of an identity it means we can have no absolutely intrinsic identity that can be labeled x or y and then re-labeled as a or b. That identity is a work in progress dependent upon its relationship to and before the embodied flesh of others and its variety of communicated responses that at no time can be equivalent to those of other cultures and nationalities despite all superficial similarity in cultural inputs, etc. This does not mean to imply that identity cannot change, indeed, this lack of an intrinsic essence enables and ensures that identity is re-constituted and in the process does change, but, never radically in an absolutist sense with an absolute loss of historical integrity (since interpretation and re-interpretation  can only utilize what re-constituted version(s) or vision(s) of a cultural history that is/(are) already to-hand!). (12)

	Hence, in my opinion, cultures may appear to converge, in truth, this can only be a superficial appearance since the weight of prior history can never be changed even though our interpretations of the same will change. Second, our embodiment in the world is here in Australia and that sense of location will forever colour what we do and who we become (even if we were to be politically incorporated into the American body politic just as colonial subjects of the British crown could never really escape being seen and being self-seen as ‘colonials’). Third, identity can no longer be suppressed within the reductive embrace of one mould and various senses of Australian identity will now be better heard raising their collective voices whether we like that fact or not. Fourth, and last, as there is no ‘real’ intrinsic sense of identity it follows that as ‘a work of progress’ the sense of being an Australian will remain ‘an Australian work in progress’! (13)

	In this short essay two major issues were raised. First, do these increasing parallels between the semblance of an overall American psyche and the semblance of an overall Australian psyche mean we are merely becoming americanized and, perhaps, too americanized? And, lastly, am I correct in believing, as I have argued, that despite the massive influence of an unavoidable American-like ‘imperialism’ (and other cultural forms of ‘imperialism’) the essential, core Australian identity as ‘a work in progress’ will remain an Australian search for identity despite the increasing prevalence for a Contemporary pluralization of this so-call Australian identity in and through an interacting set of recognizable, yet non-discrete, Australian identities!? It would seem, I believe, that this comparison effectively acts as a parallel commentary on the political life of both scenes and perhaps gives us some insight into the shifting dynamics behind recent trends? (14)

							          Noël Tointon, Sydney, 3.7.04.

Materials Cited