…Haven’t heard much from the Maoists these last 35 years. That’s one hell of a Long March!

That was a lightbulb moment for me, Katz! “spoke for and understood the sensibility of the working class” as opposed to the “new Left” – this goes a long way to explaining, for me, how these rabid Lefties became the rabid Righties of Quadrant and the Oz. (Besides the fact that the further left you are, the further right you seem to swing as you get older, but that’s just my impression not a researched opinion!) The ideas you mention would morph seamlessly into the Roveian narrative of Joe Sixpack versus the Trendy Elites; now I see how it can happen.

I’ve just bought the latest Quadrant (I occasionally do for two reasons: know your enemy; and a genuine curiosity about whether or not it has become coherent). I haven’t been able to bear reading it yet, but the cover is a hoot. “The Politicisation of Climate Change”, without a hint of irony. “A Depressing New Agenda for Aboriginal Politics” by guess which former Maoist. Kevin Donnelly on education under Howard. Jesus. I don’t know how much of it I’ll get through.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Adele Horin, 2004:

Visitors from Europe have arrived and, after having marvelled at the winter sunshine and extolled the harbour, they ushered me into a cafe, ordered espressos all round, coughed politely, and asked me the question I had been dreading. Would I be so kind as to explain my country’s foreign policy? …

Australians struck them as a refreshingly irreverent lot. Yet as a nation we were America’s … They waved their hands about, grasping for the right word. “Lap-dog?” I suggested.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Adele Horin, 2006:

It is never easy to explain to the French, even when they wipe the smirk off their face, why Australia is involved in the Iraq quagmire. Australians strike them as an irreverent lot. So why, the French ask in that earnest manner born of too many years at university, does Australia act like America’s … ? They wave their hands about, in that Gallic style, seeking a word they never learnt at the lycee.

“Lap-dog,” I offer helpfully.

It’s partly because examples like this recur so frequently in the Australian media that I’m more than a little sceptical about them when they occur in reference to other nations, such as the US. (But I don’t mean to suggest that you endorse the views of Horin personally).

It’s easy, after all, to make generalisations about the country you live in and conclude that those who disagree with you are blind conformists. Hell, there are newspapers in Australia who basically churn out variations of this argument day after day after day. That doesn’t make it right. In the absence of some form of supporting evidence, after all, blanket statements about large nations become little more than bland cliches.

No coincidence. But certainly bullsh*t.

the vast majority of Confederate soldiery – who fought with as much spectacular bravery as their enemies – were not themselves slave-owners. To my mind that says a lot about the American soul. People who are not themselves beneficiaries of the system nonetheless will put their lives on the line to defend the privileges of the elite in the vain hope they or their children may one day get to join the club.

That’s a fair definition of aspirationalism that applies to any socio-economic system.

Howard’s aspirationals made the same bargain. This calculus doesn’t only reside in the american soul.

Another stray thought: the American reverence for the powers of the presidency hails from pre-Glorious Revolution conceptions of the monarchy. By the time of the American revolution, the British monarch had already become a figurehead. The colonists, having never been represented in Parliament, seem not to have realised the caravan had already moved on. Or perhaps they were nostalgic for the Stuarts, so many of them having been oppressed by the Cromwell dictatorship.

Yes. Many contemporary American accounts of the events leading to the Declaration of Independence asserted a central role to George III. This view of British governance was quite out of date. And it drove a conspiratorial view of history that is still strong in US political discourse. I guess this is difficult to avoid when their foundational document, the Declaration of Independence, is mostly concerned with conspiracy. The Stuarts represented to Puritan Americans all that was evil about monarchy. Revolutionary-era New England intellectuals tended to view Oliver Cromwell as a hero.

At any event, they seem to have remained stuck in constitutional infantilism, tempered only by their clever invention of constitutional separation of powers.

There was some talk of crowning George Washington as a king. It came to nothing.

Even this looks to be on its last legs, with a supine Congress and a stacked Supreme Court.

Congresses are changed regularly. Supreme Court Justices can linger for a long time. On the other hand, they are known for biting the hand that fed them.

My biggest US constitutional concern has been discussed before on LP, notably beginning here.

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/10/the-nature-of-the-social-contract-involved-in-military-service/#comment-427339

Your comparison to building construction is a good one and is further evidenced in those bloody McMansions and units popping up all over Brisbane. For a time I lived in one of those estates (the ones with lines of identical little townhouses) on Brisbane’s northside, on land that had previously been a pig farm. Hastily thrown together, after less than five years the house was falling apart at the seams (literally). And despite being built in the early 2000s, it was utterly lacking in any insulation, meaning it was 32C throughout summer and 4C in winter. Further proof that the Howard years led to the little more than a spread of the ‘buy cheap now, pay forever’ attitude, a notion I am quite sure was copyrighted by right-wing America (with a Mickey Mouse copyright, natch). The Americanisation of Australia is perhaps the most depressing legacy of Howard’s reign.

Another stray thought: the American reverence for the powers of the presidency hails from pre-Glorious Revolution conceptions of the monarchy. By the time of the American revolution, the British monarch had already become a figurehead. The colonists, having never been represented in Parliament, seem not to have realised the caravan had already moved on. Or perhaps they were nostalgic for the Stuarts, so many of them having been oppressed by the Cromwell dictatorship. At any event, they seem to have remained stuck in constitutional infantilism, tempered only by their clever invention of constitutional separation of powers. Even this looks to be on its last legs, with a supine Congress and a stacked Supreme Court.

You mention the patriotic clap trap, I will add to my list of don’t likes.

I don’t like the beggars on corners, their life and limbs having been destroyed by war.

In John Buttons book there is a passage where he relates a conversation with a US senator. The senator’s view was that America was in terminal decline, and that conversation must have been had over 20 years ago. Things have got a lot worse since then.

I really think the difference is summed up in the construction of the shopping centers. Tap on one one of those solid looking pillars. Sound a bit hollow? Pine frame with rendered plywood, it will burn down in minutes, last 30 years max ( if you have been there 15 years I’m sure you have seen them built). In Australia it’s done with tilt slabs, they will be standing in 100 years. In Europe there built to last even longer.

The new USA is one unmitigated short term mess and the stuff their parents built in the 50s and 60s needs money spent on it.

I’m still rolling on the floor. How many Gettysburg’s has Australia had?

Gettysburgs what?

Townships — Zero. No one named Getty sufficiently famous, I guess.

Speeches — Zero. Name one Australian leader or spokesperson who has encapsulated the Australian mission in the world (whatever that may be) in fewer than 300 words.

Battles — Zero. Australia never enshrined slavery in its constitution. Australia has never faced the issue of whether to go to war to prevent a part of Australia wishing to cease to be a part of Australia.

Australia has never had to face the challenge of whether and how to combat an attempt to dissolve the Commonwealth by force of arms. Australians have never been invited to pay the extreme sacrifice in a civil war.

Australia has got lucky because the country has never faced this ultimate challenge.

Sometimes folks mistake this luck as a proof of virtue.

The Battle of Gettysburg preserved the American Union and paved the way for the acceptance of ex-slaves as equal citizens. If you don’t believe me, take a look at 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution.

I am not claiming that nowhere else in the world is there a slavish obedience to an ideological code (either spoken or unspoken). What I am saying is that despite repeated claims of a ‘melting pot’, for a certain period America followed a single ideological code of nationalism, with only a few (rare, very lonely, and possibly unemployed) dissenters. One quickly learnt any criticism or other dangerous sorts of intellectual diversity was to be neither seen or heard.

My reference to clapping during the State of the Union address was meant to indicate the presence of blind conformity, not prove it. How Americans exude said conformity is very difficulty to prove, especially in the comments section of a blog. I’m not trying to be patronising, nor am I trying to (as Katz perhaps alluded) indicate that America has not contributed anything to Australia or the world. I wouldn’t have resided in America for the past 15 years if that was not the case. But this country is, to use the words of a fellow American, ‘in a big fucking mess’. Americans have spent the past 30 years doing little more than saluting the flag and shopping — in unison, of course –, much to our detriment. All those so-called ‘liberal traditions’ have disintegrated over the last few decades, and the America of 2002 exhibited few of the characteristics that gave it such potential in 1776.

As I mentioned in my original post, however, lately Americans have shown that they are more than a 20%-off coupon at Macy*s. The passion present right now for ‘change’ (for want of a better word) is astounding, refreshing, and simply a delight to be around. The revolutionary genes supposedly present in national conscience, which lay dormant for years and years, have (hopefully) begun to wake up. Keeping in mind the fact that there are some of the most powerful idiots in the world presently running this country, I am cautiously optimistic.

Since I’ve spent the last four paragraphs attempting not to be patronising (although not necessarily succeeding), I’m going to go right ahead and patronise: visiting America for a quick holiday in LA and NYC is not the same as living here. No amount of book-reading and Bill of Rights-analysing can ever make up for the actual experience of living here. There is a difference between America the concept and Americans the people, and the distinction can never be made in any book or on any holiday brochure. I know lots and lots of really important old white men wrote some big fancy books about liberalism and independence in the US in the 1700s. That doesn’t make it fact.

– Colin Meloy, sensible Portland feller

Now there’s some quality rhymin’ for ya. You know, I keep *telling* people not to stay at the Chateau Marmont, but they never seem to listen…

… … …

FWIW, I can well appreciate the dismay some people here have expressed at the disturbing scope of the homeless situation in large US cities. You should realize, however, that historically speaking it’s a relatively recent phenomenon (well I guess it depends on your sense of historical reach, Five Points for instance was another kettle of fish entirely). For instance it didn’t really exist in the same calamitous manner in NYC when I was a kid in the 70s and early 80s, then it peaked catastrophically in NY ca. 1987-96, and has now settled into a lesser but still disturbingly routinized phenomenon. In places like LA (and SF too, at least last time I checked which was a while ago) it’s utter madness.

The history is quite complex, but it has to do with such things as the Reagan administration, urban vs. suburban electoral politics, the unprecedented spike caused simultaneously by the crack wars and the AIDS epidemic, the cultural hangover from the 60s, the public’s sheer exhaustion circa 1989-91, and a typically well-meaning but idiotic leftist crusade against state policies w/r/t public mental hospitals. One big problem (as I see it anyway) was the insidious combination of creeping onset and peculiar spikes that characterized its growth and made it difficult to analyze accurately; since it was somehow both chronic and acute in developing, it somehow became absorbed perceptually into the accepted nature of reality. Homeless activists in my opinion frequently aren’t helping (and I say this from a modicum of experience) because they have a tendency to frame the issue in a manner that is simultaneously inaccurate, unrealistic, and politically unpersuasive. I don’t mean the ones who do the actual F2F work, God love ‘em; I’m talking about the way this is discussed politically. The old game of ought versus is. Pick the subjunctive instead of the indicative, and you’ll lose it every time.

I’m still rolling on the floor. How many Gettysburg’s has Australia had?

If I went to America I’d probably visit SF. Memories of Tales of the City, cable cars, the Golden Gate bridge, great view, Chinatown, have an ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s in Haight-Ashbury. Have another for Magnolia Thunderpussy. Spend ages digging thru the book & music shops there too.

I’d avoid The Presidio. And the Transamerica Pyramid…is that possible? And not go during earthquake season.

And then go visit some email mates in California…and my step-mum in Colorado. Hear some jazz in New Orleans…& then sleep in some seedy hotel & motel rooms for a few mths, drink heaps of piss, write a book of poetry…& then make my way up to Chicago for a hockey game or two. Then I’d like to spend a few nights in a cottage w/ a log fire & a bowl of fruit. And hopefully my wife would enjoy doing most of the same stuff…but she just might convince me to cut out the seedy hotel/motel bit & opt for the over the border to Canada bit to see the rest of my family. She’s sensible.

Hillary lost partially because of sexism…& Obama won partially because he is half-black. Or so some say. A curious country.

Maybe QLD can vote in Anna Bligh next election & Aussies can elect Julia Gillard down the road as PM, followed by a full-blooded Aboriginal politician as PM from the United Democrat Alliance (hey, can’t a guy dream?). Now wouldn’t that put the Yanks to shame?

Quadrant must have change a lot since I last read it.”

Once an extremist, always an extremist. Only the colours have been changed to protect the bank balance. It’s a pathology not a political attitude.

I love using public transport, you get to sit and observe, and sometimes meet interesting people ( for example a philosophy phd driving a bus). Well I was in LA on a train to Beverly Hills aiming to pick up drum sticks for my daughter. I now understand why women don’t like strange men trying to pick them up. He informed me it was my large hands he admired. I informed him I was married, he assured me it didn’t matter.

Liked the station, it’s decorated with old film canisters.

After the train came the bus, lined up to get on, in front was a negro man badly dressed as a women.

Very strange place.

Come on baby take a chance with us.
Come on baby take a chance with us,
Meet me in the back of the Blue Bus…

The Blue Bus
is caaalllling us…