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| This water dragon asked me what the f*ck is wrong with America |
Coming back from the beach on the bus I had a conversation with an American who immigrated here from NYC about a year ago. She translated it for me into American English in a way my Aussie friends couldn't: "calm down, things work out, it's not worth getting upset over."
Australia is of course bigger than a single phrase, but this does kind of sum up one of it's main charms. I don't mean to cartoon caricature Australia, but so far I have met Crocodile Dundee about a dozen times. By that, I mean the warm charm mixed with fearless self-reliance in that character is fully present in many Australians. Smiles are everywhere, and being here has made me better appreciate what has changed in the US that bothers me so.
I have been struggling privately for a few days with finding a cup of coffee. Ordering "coffee" here is like going into a restaurant and ordering "food." You will get a quizzical look followed by a pause, waiting for you to finish your order.
At first, and this is one of the things that is thoroughly American about me, I would glance up at the menu in a panic and order something off the list rather than display my ignorance. I finally gave that up today on the ferry back from Moreton Island, a sand island 25 miles or so off the Brisbane coast that I will be blogging about soon. I walked up to the smiling woman about my age behind the counter and confessed "I want a coffee, but I'm an American and I don't know how to order it."
"Oh darling," she said as she reached out and patted my hand, "I know exactly what you mean. It took me almost a week before I was able to go out and order my husband's coffee correctly when we visited up there last year."
"What does he drink?" I asked.
"You call it 'Americano'." she said. "We call it a 'long black.'"
"Oh THAT'S what a long back is" I said. "What's a short black?"
"Less hot water, otherwise the same." she said with a big smile. She held up her hand, pinching her thumb and forefinger "A long black is this much water" then shortening the distance between her thumb and finger "and a short black is this much."
We had a good laugh as she made my coffee, she told me about some other funny things that happened during their visit to the States. I felt as though I made a new friend. The coffee was perfect.
Australians seem to love being asked for help. Rather than trying to figure out their coins, I've taken up holding a handful of them out in my hand when paying for something and saying to the cashier "I'm American, help me figure out which coins to give you."
They smile and pick the right change out of my hand.
The most valuable coins, $2 coins, are the smallest. Come 'on, Australia! Queen Elizabeth II's picture is on all the money.
I have had ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Company, what PBS could in the US if we funded it adequately) on constantly in my hotel room. South Australia is having a major election right now, so that's dominating the coverage. I'm afraid Australian politics seems to be following US politics down a dark road. I hear the same deceptive polemics about fracking, for example, that we heard in the US during the Bush years.
SA Best is a thinly-disguised Trump-like populist movement in South Australia, which is a state of the country of Australia, like Queensland or New South Wales. Adelaide is it's capital. You see the same shill politicians crowing the same BS about "growing the economy"when the real agenda is clearly stripping public services, serving big business and giving governmental resources to the wealthy.
There's also a hint of Southern US style racism in a recent proclamation about white South African farmers being more favored immigrants because "they're the kind of people we want here." Apparently, there's a problem with white South African farmers being forced off their land, or that's the story anyway. The SA Best politician compared them to Rohingya migrants from Myanmar, arguing they should be offered political asylum by a "civilized country."
Australian reporters don't cower to power. I watched a woman take apart one of the SA Best candidates while he tried to give Sarah Huckabee-Sanders-esque answers to her questions. "if you aren't going to answer me, why are you talking to me at all?" She asked sharply. "Yes or no questions deserve a yes or no answer" she advised the stammering blowhard in a suit as she turned away from him.
This gem is from their website:
Q. Who will you support to form government? Liberal or Labor?A. This is a very important question. Both major parties have shown scant regard for what is right for our state. And based on past history, their election promises are discarded or broken when it suits them. Any decision we make will depend on a range of factors, including the views of elected members and their electorates, which party receives the most votes and seats and above all which party can best deliver the SA-BEST agenda.
Q. Who are you preferencing?A. SA-BEST exists to give you, the voter, a genuine third option so that you don't have to vote for Labor or Liberal. We haven't preferenced any of the major parties, and are leaving it up to voters to allocate their own preferences.
The election is too close to call, something else that is unsettling familiar to US politics. These racist, civil disruption polemicists somehow get attention here too and they are believed to take votes more from one side (Liberal) than the other, although, like the US, no one really knows. Electricity rates and supply are a major issue in South Australia, SA Best's solution is privatization. Yeah, that's going to go well.
So, Australia is no utopian escape for me from Trumpism, but I don't hold that against it. I'm afraid this jingoism is infecting the entire planet.
As I will discuss in another post about a conversation I had with a riverboat captain here I have found that my suspicion about Australia is true. I fit here. This is a culture imbued with kindness and cooperation. There are so many examples of local governments stepping in to right a social wrong that I can't keep track of them all. It's messy, and they do fail, but the government here genuinely tries to help. That's very refreshing
I do genuinely feel that the Australian cultural zeitgeist suits me in a way that America's no longer does. This is only part of the information I need to make a decision about immigration, but it's that part that I had to visit Australia to find out.
Tick that box.
