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.
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.
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.
I love your optimism, and wish I could share in it, but Australians are almost identical to the US, just following a few steps behind. Deeply suspicious of collectivism in any form, especially taxing those who should pay, enamoured of law and order politics, fond of marching off to war for spurious reasons, and willing to vote for vacuous leaders, the depth of whose policies is ‘stop the boats’ and ‘have a go to get a go’.
Like Chloe before me I just want to say this piece is a plain speaking insight into the ordinary American voter – really appreciated this article, thanks.
Eric White
Prue, like the others, thank you for this article. I have a few US friends who are quite unlike the ‘republicans’ you mention….much more like us, but then there is a huge selection bias. I could never understand when I travelled to the US the abject poverty they allow, including the working poor. And really, are they that stupid to not know the difference between socialism and communism?
Also like other commentators have mentioned, we might be quite different now, but I think Australia is dangerously following the US path on any number of fronts, be it the surveillance and police state, or how people vote. I still don’t understand what appears to be how gullible people are. For example, the outright lies about Labor’s franking credits policy at the last election. I know people who were told from the pulpit of evangelical preachers that their superannuation pensions would be significantly reduced because of Labor’s policy…an out and out lie. And the other example is our PM, a vacuous amoral person more concerned about maintaining power than good government.
“And really, are they that stupid to not know the difference between socialism and communism?”
Probably true, but not stupid. From far away, it seems weird that very many of the people who voted Republican probably live off food stamps and Medicaid, but hate socialism. A good proportion of the rest of them are probably a pay cheque away from being out on the street or a major health crisis away from being bankrupt, but hey, no socialism for us.
If you look at the middle states in the USA that all voted Republican, I would wager that most people there would go through their entire lives seeing nothing but US television shows and movies, and US centric news. From a very early age they are bought up thinking everything American is better than it is everywhere else (American exceptionalism). All their revered service men and women are out in the big bad world protecting them from everyone who wants to destroy their God favoured way of life, particularly those dreaded commies.
The reality is they live as closed off life as North Koreans.
Barry Jones on Late Night Live the other week made the observation that it is very hard for a US politician to say that there is anything wrong with any American institution (like heath care), because that explicitly goes against the narrative that the USA already has the best of everything and the rest of the world is jealous. It’s inconceivable that any US politician would, for example, advance the Australian health system as a model for America.
You can’t say anything negative in America about Americas unless your a Trump supporter.
Yes, I was told something like 50% of Americans are on socialist welfare such as food stamps or receive food for children from programs like WIC. But hey, I’d rather call it social security rather than welfare in Australia. And as per my previous comment about us following bad US policies, we too are going down the pathway to patronising and mean spirited ‘in-kind’ welfare, instead of money payment social security. Yes, too on US health care, they pay more as a percentage of GDP on health care than nearly any developed nation, yet their health system outcomes are worse…just look at maternal deaths and neonatal death rates.