As someone born in the United States I watch events over there with a mix of disbelief, sorrow, and growing dread. The land that once prided itself on freedom, innovation, and resilience, feels as though it is sliding into a dark place – politically, socially, and morally.
I grew up with the idea that America was not just a place, but a promise. A promise that hard work and fairness could overcome division, that democracy was not just a system but a shared belief. Yet today, what I see is a nation bitterly divided, where truth itself has become negotiable and loyalty to personalities often outweighs loyalty to principles.
It pains me to say it, but the America I once knew feels unrecognisable. Political leaders openly traffic in fear and resentment, stoking division rather than seeking unity. The media landscape is fractured beyond repair, with echo chambers feeding anger instead of understanding. Even the judiciary, once the backstop of American democracy, is now treated as a political weapon.
This climate has bred a culture where misinformation flourishes, where violence lurks just beneath the surface, and where compromise is equated with betrayal. The social contract – the invisible glue that binds a nation together – has frayed to the point of tearing.
From afar, Australians often ask me: how did it come to this? The answer, I think, lies in a slow erosion of trust. Trust in institutions, in leaders, in one another. When trust collapses, so too does the ability to govern effectively or to dream collectively. What replaces it is suspicion, grievance, and, tragically, hate.
For Australians, this is not just an American story to watch from the sidelines. America’s instability reverberates across the world. It weakens alliances, undermines global security, and erodes confidence in democracy itself. If America falters, the rest of us will feel the tremors.
I do not write this out of malice or detachment, but out of grief. The United States gave me my beginnings, and my sense of possibility. To see it unravel is heartbreaking.
And yet, I cling to a small sliver of hope. America has stumbled before and found ways to renew itself. But renewal is not guaranteed. It will take courage, humility, and a rediscovery of common purpose. Whether Americans can summon that remains the great unanswered question of our time.
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Yes.
When I think about what the US had to offer Australia and the world in the late 70’s / early 80’s and what it has to offer now, I am filled with sadness for the family and friends who live there.
And the vidictive childishness of the orange madman has definitely set the US onto the path of becoming a pariah state and laughingstock.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5478510-trump-admin-fires-epa-employees-over-letter-of-dissent/
to quote from above: “..For Australians, this is not just an American story to watch from the sidelines…”
Indeed, there has been a similar decline in quality of governance, quality of life and quality of equality for all Australians, a process that commenced during the Howard Government’s years. Neocapitalism has infected both major political parties and this is reflected in the loss of trust in politics that so many Australians now profess.
…”a slow erosion of trust…” has been commented upon by learned historians and others over time. But so many of the older pioneer types were untrusting and untrustworthy, scraps and castoffs who ran from law, debts, wives, taxes, prelates and popes and rulers, from military duty and civil requirements, a kind of sovereign citizen prototypical group. So, we have Trumpery, hints of a mental anarchy…all worse than here. Who can have faith and hope from now?
Roswell, your pain is obvious and understandable. Australians as you point out also need to be concerned about what is happening there but as this governments reluctance to step back, even cautiously, from the alliance shows, we need to be vigilant here. The unseemly haste with which we despatched the Iranian Ambassador on fairly flimsy evidence, but our continuing slavish support for Israel and its genocide, bode ill for our independence.
Bill Kristol of The Bulwark interviewed Anne Applebaum few days ago for a perspective of European leaders; she basically said out loud what they have been thinking about the US…
In one’s opinion the line in the sand was JD Vance’s tirade vs. Europe on free speech and his support for the far right eg. AfD… meanwhile Europe inc. Ukraine is dealing with players in Putin, Trump, Orban, Fico, Netanyahu et al
Indeed PP.
In a country as complex as America, founded by escapees and opportunists whose ventures were soaked in blood and fear, who adopted an anthem committed to it, its motivations for existence had a dark start. A start following Borgia’s decrees embedding ‘othering’ the unknown, and promoting conquest, subjugation, theft and supremacy.
Whilst Europe ‘assumed’ the machines and sciences of the East as their own, America maintained a piety to its beginnings.
As such, how could America not be affected through its pious active involvement in the 18th & 19th century wars along with the commissioning of its own territorial wars. Then, and even moreso as an industrial behemoth, WWI, and as self-righteous ‘world’s policeman’, WWII, Korean war, the ‘Cold Wars’, the Indo-China wars, Central American wars, Caribbean wars, Afghan wars, north African wars, NATO interventions and Gulf wars I & II.
After ousting Mexico, Spain, France and Britain, cleansing its territory and globally exercising its piety with plenty of polishing by Holywood, it could do no less than reach for the sky. And that it did via all comers, building fortresses, bastilles, menhirs and monuments to itself in the vain hope of staving off its bloody reality.
These are the traps of its only history. The traps from which there is no escape. The “You’re either with us or agin us” traps, the discombobulation of corruption, and the cancer of discontent for which there is no snake oil.
As it pustulates, it has sought to inoculate itself with the ‘White Knight’ T-Rump and his coterie of revisionist damaged souls. As they destroy its good people, and all the precious ingredients of survival, it rapidly crumbles behind its own barricades, dark clouds formed from its own fetid effluvium.
It appears they’re the masters and victims of their own designer Armageddon.
“It appears they’re the masters and victims of their own designer Armageddon.”
Armanigeddon?