A BRAVE NEW CULTURE

This blog has been created in honour of that Chaser video that has been doing the rounds... you know, the one that proves that Americans are stupid. If it wasn’t for the Chaser Team, who knows, we would never have realized that Americans were so thick. So popular is that video, that it has been reformated for consumption into various languages. For example:

Chasers war on everything - Americans (in Spanish)

Chasers war on everything - Americans (in English)

But paradoxically, the Chaser video, created by Australians, says more about Australians than it does about Americans. There is a part of Australian culture that is built on a "bullying" mindset, and this is reflected in a survey of 17 countries, where Australia consistently holds the highest criminal victimization rates in 7 of 9 categories, generally either coming top of the list, or within the top 3 (Kesteren, J.N. van, Mayhew, P. & Nieuwbeerta, P. Criminal Victimisation in Seventeen Industrialised Countries: Key-findings from the 2000 International Crime Victims Survey. The Hague, Ministry of Justice, WODC. Onderzoek en beleid, nr. 187, 2000).

In this blog I introduce the idea that America is being Australianized. And the Australianization of America has global consequences because the politics of Prime Minister John Howard have influenced the politics of President George Bush. America's invasion of Iraq was also Australia's invasion of Iraq.

The truth about mateship

There are some naïve presumptions doing the rounds about mateship. But the reality is that there is something far less wholesome taking place in Australia. There is a darker side to this mateship. Mateship has less to do with genuine friendship and more to do with the forming of allegiances. The Charles Firth on Mateship article in The Australian newspaper (September 29, 2008) unwittingly illustrates what I am getting at. Notice in this example how the author of the article is “testing” his American friend, like some kind of explanation is owed for his “odd” behaviour, like he has to somehow “prove” himself. Forget the idea of naively presuming the best in people. Presume instead that you are always on notice. Do we get what’s going on here? If not, then refer back to the Chaser video proving that Americans are incredibly stupid. It’s about being “cleverer” and “smarter” than anyone else. It’s about compensating for an inferiority complex. In Australia, vulnerability is regarded as a weakness, and this meshes in neatly with what mateship is about. It falls in perfectly with the Chasers’ agenda.

And how do the Cronulla riots of 2005 in Sydney fit in with the grand scheme? Australian racism can be difficult to put your finger on, because Australia presents the façade of being a “one-class” culture... it can appear that Australians are not racist. But the reality is that there is a powerful group-think in Australia. Australians are under a lot of pressure to conform (assimilate) – what mateship is about - and with everybody trying to measure up to the limited cultural norms, differences become concealed. Australians are deeply suspicious of differences. Australian hedonism is a collective denial, a kind of refusal to confront hidden truths. If you are having fun, just like everyone else is, then no-one will see you as a threat. But a spark can set off those sublimated impulses, as what happened in the Cronulla riots.

So perhaps it is somewhat premature to regard the Chaser video as proof that Americans are stupid. And while both Europeans and Americans are fawning adoringly over Australians, Australians are out there making fun of everyone... and getting a free pass for it. It’s wonderful being Australian… you can get away with just about anything these days.

Australian democracy going global

Australia has provided the world with draconian precedents, such as seat-belt laws (a nanny-state nonsense that has been roundly debunked by experts such as John Adams), that are being adopted everywhere with relish, without any regard to the democratic freedoms that are being trammelled over. In Australia, newspaper articles now routinely admonish “seatbelt idiots” for failing to buckle up, warning them of minimum penalties of so heinous a breach, of the order $230 in Adelaide, $245 in Sydney and… wait for it… $500 in Perth. And yet, invisibly, the global rot on democratic principles that seems to receive its inspiration from Australia seems to have gone entirely unnoticed. Australia gets another free pass. Maybe the Aussies are right. Perhaps Americans are stupid, but in view of the gullibility of other countries, we would have to conclude that so too is everyone else. Stupidity has now gone global.

G W Bush gets all the blame for invading Iraq. But where did he get his inspiration from? John Howard was Prime Minister since 1996, and he has been ramming through his brand of undemocracy long before Bush. And the embryonic, pre-elected Bush Administration noticed. G W Bush was watching. Howard's undemocracy is the bastard child of Australia. Check out the Silencing Dissent website to note the parallels. The Patriot Act would have been inconceivable had John Howard not provided Bush with the inspiration.

Do we get it? Bush's invasion of Iraq was John Howard's invasion of Iraq. Howard provided Bush not only with the motivation and the enthusiasm, but, most importantly, with the realization that if his li'l Aussie buddy can get away with ramming redneck conservatism down everyone’s throat, then so too can he. And yet again John Howard wins a free pass for Australia.... whilst stealing Obama's rightful place at the guesthouse across from the Whitehouse. Ah, those wonderful Aussies, don't we all just love 'em?

Cutting-edge politics

Australia introduced the idea that you can target a group of people not for committing a crime but for simply belonging to a group:

Tough new anti-bikie laws passed

Anti-bikie laws get even tougher

Eight arrested as bikie laws toughen

Now if you knew what I knew - how corrupt Australian government departments and businesses are - you would have to wonder why bikers are being singled out for special treatment.

This is cutting edge politics, and with the current trend towards the globalization of the Australian manner of doing politics, Australia's future as a global trend-setter looks assured. President Obama knows what's good for America, and he knows to take Australia's cue. He realizes that if Australia's anti-hate legislation is good enough for Australia, then it is good enough for America, too.

The world shall thank Australia for Australia's cultural, spiritual and political contributions to the New World Order.

THE HOWARD-BUSH PRESIDENCY

After reviewing the current literature on neo-conservatism and its connection with George W Bush, I have been astonished to find that there has not been a single reference in any of the literature to a most compelling interpretation of this new form of conservatism. As I contemplate the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that afflicts Americanophobes the world over, a more interesting phenomenon seems to have passed under everyone’s radar – the Australianization of America. What began in Hollywood has now come to the White House.

If we accept this interpretation, then the inspiration behind neo-conservatism has nothing whatsoever to do with the philosophy of Leo Strauss or a cabal of scheming Jews intent on world domination. The real architect behind neo-conservatism was not Paul Wolfowitz or any other of Bush’s administration. George Bush, being a practical fellow, simply saw what worked, and he implemented it. And what was working had taken root in another country far away. It had firmly established itself and was careering along unrestrained by the time that Bush was elected as president. No abstract theories from out-of-touch academics had played any kind of role whatsoever.

The real architect behind this new, innovative form of conservatism that Bush was to embrace with gusto was John Howard, who was Australia’s prime minister from March 1996 until November 2007. By the time that Bush came to power in January 2001, Howard’s grand plan was already in motion for nearly five years.

Judging by the references to neo-conservatism that I have found on the internet, it would seem that the most surprising insight into today’s neo-conservatism might be in the realization that the philosophical foundations of neo-conservatism are based in nothing more philosophical than Bush's observation that if John Howard can get away with it, then why can't he? This is redneck conservatism, and it is not rooted in any kind of sophisticated theory. It does not bear any resemblance to the American conservatism of the Founding Fathers that, for all its faults, was nonetheless based in the best of intentions. Instead, this is a philistine conservatism based on the opportunistic initiatives of a leader of another country that provided the template for Bush to work from. It is an autocratic conservatism that would seem to resonate more with the autocratic governing style that was once necessary in a penal colonial outpost of Mother England than with the idealism of the American Founding Fathers.

George Bush’s neo-conservatism has John Howard’s leadership style stamped all over it. An intriguing insight into Howard’s character is provided in his own assessment of himself, as aired in Kerry O’Brien’s 7.30 Report on March 2, 2006:

I believe in being average and ordinary. One of the reasons I do is that’s who I am. I’m out of the lower middle class of Australia if you can use that kind of expression. That’s my background. I’m very proud of it. That’s who I am. The other thing is that Australians are deeply sceptical people. It’s one of the great differences between Australians and Americans. We’re far more sceptical than the Americans. They [Australians] spot humbug and pretension and people who have delusions of grandeur and they spot it very quickly and they’re unerring in their instinct.

It has been my view that the leadership of John Howard provided the Bush administration with a laboratory, a test case that they can observe to see what they can get away with. The first time that this possibility occurred to me was in 2005, when I was watching the late night news when Richard Armitage was being interviewed. He said something along the lines of "Your guys [the Australian politicians] are doing things that are making our administration go weak at the knees." Unfortunately, whilst I found Armitage’s comment surprising – indeed, startling - I was not a political strategist and so I did not realize the significance of Armitage’s words at the time. I did not make a proper diary entry, and I was unable to retrieve any kind of transcript after googling for it later. Nonetheless, I now realize that this was a very revealing comment, because it suggests that this neo-conservative adventurism was not taken lightly by Bush. He understood that Howard-conservatism was a bold plan that was accompanied by inherent risks.

Greg Sheridan’s book, “The Partnership: The inside story of the US-Australian alliance under Bush and Howard” (University of NSW Press Ltd, Australia, 2006), is not inconsistent with my view, though it provides a slightly different perspective that focuses on the close bond between the two leaders as an evolving partnership. In his introduction, Sheridan summarizes his thesis:

The idea, common enough, that in the Australian-US alliance the Americans say what they want and the Australians follow suit is absurdly mistaken. It is the thesis of this book that in the Australian-US alliance, as in many vastly unequal relationships, the power may lie with the bigger party, but the initiative most often lies with the smaller party. (page 12)

… This book asserts four main propositions: that most of the initiative in the relationship has come from the Australian side during this time, that Howard has had more of the running of the relationship than Bush; that Howard and Bush have transformed the alliance from a predominantly regional affair to a truly global partnership; that Howard has got most of what he wanted from the alliance at, for him, very little cost either politically, militarily or economically; and finally that the US alliance greatly enhances Australian national power. (page 13)

There exist disturbing parallels between the political motivations of John Howard and American neo-conservatism. We now know that no WMD’s were found in Iraq. So on what basis did America invade Iraq? Sheridan’s The Partnership considers the influence that Howard had over Bush’s presidency. Could reliable intelligence have averted this disaster? Or was there something inherent in this partnership that predisposed the Bush administration to irresponsible adventurism and thus to fail to exercise due diligence? What was it about this partnership that compromised the reliability of the intelligence upon which the decision to invade Iraq was based? There seems to be a resonance, a commonality between the two styles of leadership. In order to appreciate the karma of clumsy adventurism that was transferred to the Bush administration through the partnership, we have to consider some of the initiatives established in the Howard leadership in Australia.

In Silencing Dissent, edited by Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison (Allen & Unwin, 2007), Howard’s agenda to, well, silence dissent, is outlined. This fits in nicely with the implementation of the Patriot Act that would probably have been unthinkable without Howard having shown the way.

Lies and denial have featured throughout the reign of the Howard government, whether it was the children overboard affair (where government officials insisted that refugees on boats threw their children overboard to secure entry to Australia), or the wheat-for-oil scandal. Somehow the purported intelligence alleging the existence of WMDs resonates with the Howard culture that we had become familiar with. Maybe this “intelligence” was less “flawed” and inaccurate than it was a deliberate and bare-faced lie, a cynical and opportunistic tactic aimed at securing a hold on power.

Silencing Dissent's foreword by Robert Manne provides a good overview of the Howard government's impact on Australian culture.

Silencing Dissent describes a major cultural shift, the erosion of our democracy, with some of the ways in which the Howard government silenced its critics and attacked dissenting individuals and organizations. It describes how Australians had become accustomed to the gradual cultural shift, barely noticing it, like the proverbial frog in boiling water. Silencing Dissent describes a political culture of bullying and intimidation, with increased bureaucratic manipulation, meddling and red tape. The Howard government’s targets included NGOs, public servants, academics, politicians, judges, researchers and most anyone who dared to voice dissent. Silencing Dissent describes the peculiar irony of a democratically elected government, purporting to stand for free speech, but where only certain kinds of speech were allowable. People very quickly got the message that organizations did not receive funding so that they can criticize the Howard government providing it.

Does all this sound familiar? Americans have to be concerned at the very real possibility of the extent to which Howard’s leadership style was transferred to the Bush administration. Was intelligence relating to WMDs merely flawed? Was it a lie? Or was it a bit of both, with Howardesque manipulations and double-speak making the invasion, inevitably, a foregone conclusion? After all, that’s been John Howard’s style for 11 years. Is some sort of war-crimes trial required to get to the truth of what really happened? I think that the term “neo-conservatism” is misleading. I think that it should be renamed “Howard-conservatism” in order to establish not only its true origins, but also its character and its priorities.