Before the 2008 US election, I wondered how rightwing commentators, quick to hurl the charge of anti-Americanism against anyone who disagreed with the policies of the Bush Administration, would deal with the election of a Democratic President. I shouldn’t have worried. In this , Janet Albrechtsen makes it clear that she sees no need to change her views. An anti-American, according to Albrechtsen is someone who supports the current President of the United States, favors the policies of his Administration, and opposes demonstrators invoking revolutionary slogans against the current government.
All of this is summed up in the favorite slogan of the Tea Party crowd “I want my country back”. In the view of this overwhelmingly white and mostly upper-income group, which started operations within weeks of Obama’s inauguration, the only legitimate government is one that embodies their tribal values and hatreds. If the majority of Americans vote for a different government, then, as in Albrechtsen’s twisted logic, that just means most Americans are anti-American.
Update: Quite a few commentators seem to think I’m misrepresenting Albrechtsen here. I find this bizarre. The first use of the term “anti-American” in her article is para 3, which reads (with emphasis added, given that it seems to be needed)
Not just the sleep-inducing sound and sight of five voices all nodding and shaking their heads to the same anti-American melody. Yes, we all voted for Barack Obama , yes, we all want action on climate change, no to religion, nuclear power, the Tea Party movement, the Bush administration (“evil was being actively pursued every single day”),
John Quiggin 
I’m not sure I understand this obsession with smugness that the Right has.
“You may be correct, but you shouldn’t be so smug” may be a meaningful thing to say in the bedroom to one’s partner, but is of no substance in the political discourse.
I read article’s like Janet’s and I feel compelled to play a mournful tune on my 2cm violin.
It is interesting that the left version of “I want my country back” (not in my name during Bush 11) was castigated as anti-American.
The election of a modestly liberal President does expose the disingenuity of the claims by the right.
The favorite slogan of the Tea Party crowd “I want my country back”. They certainly do, but sadly for them that short lived adventure ended in 1865, and they live in the USA.
The election of Obama was a pleasant surprise following the mistakes of the previous eight years, but the activities of the birthers, Tea baggers and others, since, has been a nasty counterpoint. There are some large challenges facing the world this century and even larger ones facing the US. There is no real benefit for the rest of the world if the US is unable to meet these challenges, and becomes more and more unstable. The numbers of nuclear weapons that could become ‘loose’ during any significant internal strife, in itself, is a good reason for hoping the US will solve its many problems. Rabble rousers like Albrechtsen and her American brethren have no insight, because they don’t seem to recognise exactly where their form of exaggerated populism may lead.
What they really mean when they say “I want my country back” ….is “I want my republican president back”. What Janet Albrechtsen means when she agrees “they should have their country back” is that all good children vote republican in the United States and Liberal at federal level (I deliberately said federal because no-one should vote NSW Labor back in)
But for Janet there is only one way to vote, one way to use her shrill mouth, one side of politics and Janet, quite frankly is an empty vacuous bore…along with her silly sister who also makes a fortune from being part of the lunatic right…
Malcolm Fraser is so right – voting federal liberal in this country is a definite mark of shame and someone of substandard intelligence who is incapable of critical thought.
Janet Albrechtsen is a sideshow, a charicature – a cartoon.
“All of this is summed up in the favorite slogan of the Tea Party crowd “I want my country back”. In the view of this overwhelmingly white and mostly upper-income group”
I’m not sure that’s an especially correct characterization of them — I think the Tea Party members have similar demographic characteristics to other Americans, at least in terms of income, see e.g. here.
“I want my country back” is code for “I want the government to have no ability to regulate corporations”. The main task of the Right in opposition these days, in the English speaking world, seems to be to die in a ditch to preserve the right of corporations to screw the rest of us. It’s an utterly bankrupt notion, and the epitome of the “useful idiot” phenomenon in politics.
Also, the trashbag media stars of the Right (Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, etc, and their pale imitations here) have the whole thing figured out as a cracker scam. They have their hands on the pockets of millions.
@conrad
The survey supports richer. And although your survey doesn’t give data on race, Tea Partiers are overwhelmingly white.
http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m2d17-CNN-poll-of-Tea-Party-reveals-it-to-be-dominated-by-white-highly-educated-rich-males
And I want my country back too come to think of it…back to a more congenial way of life…instead of one where I am waiting for the next kinghit gouge from some large organisation (now lets see – who are these large organisations? BP…and oil, insurance (home contents car), AGL, Telstra and Optus, Woolies and Coles, the Mining industries, the banks as usual and their lousy interest rates on savings…but Id also like to add to this list…..
NSW Traffic fines and Public transport Fares and Toll fees Incorporated. Does anyone know if they are planning an IPO soon? Im sure they could get some fund managers interest up…
Yes Id like my country back from “Gougers inc”.
Freelander – tax em till their eyes bleed is about right. Thats what they have been unkindly doing to us. As for traitors like Albrechtsen (pure traitor) – if they were so fond of the Bush clan they could always move to Texas. They say everything is big in Texas. Bush showed that with his worship of out of control big business which also led to big global crisis.
The Australian newspaper should be classified as toxic waste. It’s crossed over into parody and makes the The Onion look like serious journalism.
In a word, “astroturfing”. The “I want my country back” is originally a working class impulse directed against the neoliberalist version of authoritarian government, but appropriated by the right, and misdirected against those who could or would help break the stranglehold of Big Capitalism on the US and the World.
@paul walter
Paul – if you read Janets piece – notice hown she conjures up an image of the supposed “left” audience who attended the Sydney Writer’s festival. Now this a prime piece of puerilism for the followinjg reasons;
a) people in culture or the arts in Australia are all apparently “lefties”
b) the audience wore sensible shoes, sensible cardigans and scarves (Janets subliminal message is that the audience who actually attended the Writers festival… are to a tee all boring and dowdy and quelle horreur – the worst of all – “old lefties”).
Whereas I supposed she tripped out down the stairs in her nine inch heels and dominatrix leather pretending to be young. Quelle horror of horrors. I hope at least she managed to learn something about the art of writing while she was there.
“The survey supports richer”
.
Yes, but there’s a big difference between richer, mostly upper income, and slightly more middle class than average (I guess it depends how you want to define upper income, but I’m thinking 100K plus for a rich place like the US as a figure pulled out of nowhere). I agree that they’re mainly white, which is probably where the very slightly richer than average comes in, which is why I’m happy with the Morgan Poll’s characterization of them (basically mainstream, at least in terms of income). This just shows that it’s quite possible to select reasonably large sized groups of people from the normal population that have extremely strange beliefs and no idea of history (including well educated ones), like that you can spend mind-boggling amounts on your military, still not pay tax, and not go broke.
Tea party … Astroturf, funded at least in part through FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, which are funded by the Koch brothers (one is cofounder of CATO, their father was cofounder of John Birch Society. Each, individually is one fo 10 richest people in USA.). They run 2nd largest private company in US, oil&gas, and they fund a *lot* of thintkanks and other folks … like VA Attorney General Cuccinelli.
Via Sourcewatch, see Tax Day Tea Party , and Koch Foundations.
The Tea Party folks are fighting hard … for the Kochs to move up a notch in the wealth rankings.
The Kochs fund a lot of climate anti-science, as can be seen in the money flows sections in Crescendo to Climategate Cacophony or in Koch Industries Secretly Funding….
If you haven’t heard of Cuccinelli, he shows that Oz has no monopoly on crazed politicians, although perhaps a shared attribute is good funding from coal, electric utilities. See Wikipedia, especially sections “Female ****** shown on Virginia State Seal” (in which he issued reworked pins that covered the lady) and “Environment”, in which he tries to emulate James Inhofe on a more local level.
I have a new slogan for the Tea baggers that is probably closer to the mark: “I want my President not black.”
Poor ‘ol Janet better stay away from this event (Canberra);
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The Australia Institute convenes the next Politics in the Pub on Wednesday 9 June, 5.30pm for a 6pm start.
Don Russell will discuss ‘Is the US in decline? Is it time to reconsider our relationship with America?’
Don was Principal Adviser to Paul Keating during his time as Treasurer and Prime Minister and has served as Australia’s Ambassador to the US in Washington.
The event is free and will take place in The Lounge Bar, Level 3, @ The Uni Pub, 17 London Circuit.
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Never a dull day on Planet Janet. Never any warming either.
That is a delightful turn of phrase there, James.
That is a huge issue there, Chris W, with so many aspects. Particularly right now. I don’t think that it has really twigged with the debating world just how many “forces” are on collision course at this very zone in time. If you stop to think about it for a few moments, it is absolutely fascinating.
The ‘our country’ thing is surely just a bit of old-fashioned tribalism; it’s the same as juvenile surfers spraying ‘locals only’ at the beach car park. Translated, it means something like ‘a country where we are recognised as the ideal citizens, our values are the official values and “otherness” is dismissed as an unhealthy aberration’. It reflects all the pent-up resentment of years of forced tolerance, multi-culturalism and the entropy of American exceptionalism.
There is a huge chunk of that, Ken, but I recon that there is something much greater at play. I have been thinking about it and I’m prepared to suggest that WWIII has begun. It is not a war of weapons, but of cultures, resources, energy, technology, communication, minds and economics.
“It reflects all the pent-up resentment of years of forced tolerance, multi-culturalism and the entropy of American exceptionalism.”
At least for Australia it doesn’t. There was far more of the “our country” sort of BS at the start of multi-culturalism 30 years ago than now. Indeed, at least in Melbourne, for example, the sort of “Asians go home” type graffitti and other such things didn’t start disappearing until the mid 90s (which was replaced by similar things against the Arabs/Lebanese in Sydney and to a far lesser extent Melbourne). So the growth/reduction of these sorts of attitudes doesn’t seem especially strongly related to those factors you mention. Is the opposite true of the US? That is, did, say, the attitudes to Mexicans 30 years ago start off really positive and end up what it is today?
Conrad I was referring specifically to the US tea party mob. Their counterparts in Australia would be the One Nation supporters from the late 1990s, but nobody has managed to mobilise them here the way Fox News et al have done in the USA.
The overt expressions of racism that you mention are more likely to come from a different cohort altogether, mainly street kids. Not too many Pauline Hanson disciples went around spraying graffiti; in fact one of their pet whines is that they have no way of expressing their grievances. You can see this exploited brilliantly in the USA by the ‘liberal media’ meme that lets them all feel angry about being disenfranchised even as 9 of the top 10 rating cable TV shows belong to the Limbaughs and Hannitys and the like.
I think that the “we want our country back” is really “what has happened to the American Dream”, the hope that to work hard can lead to get rich quick. The sad thing is that the dream seekers don’t realise that the hope that made the dream has been corporatised, mergered, outsourced, and finally sold to over seas interests, principally China.
What did they think would be the final outcome of “we need to merge to be competitive”? Well monopoly of course. Isn’t Albrechtsen beholding to the key monopolist in here field? Well now any dream of making wealth in news serves only one man’s interests. Mineral, BHP Billiton. Oil? BP, well used to be BP. Consumer goods, WallMart. Entertainment? Time Warner. And so on.
And no longer is the dream for “great wealth”, it is for absolutely bizarely over the top unimaginable wealth. You don’t count if you are a simple multimillionaire, you’ve got to be a billionaire. So not only is the hope for dreamers drying up, the successful dreamers who have made it are going to trample down anyone else trying to climb out of the mud.
The American Dream has out done itself. It has run its course.
Albrechtsen should be lamenting that there is “no room for dreamers”. But, no. We’re gonna blame the Black Guy, he killed the dream.
Planet janet.
on the board of “our” ABC.
does this give a purely Oz meaning to “librul bias”?
Seems Janet has always depended on the kindness of strangers, and friends. Stacking the ABC seems to have been very successful for the Libs. No one can credibly claim now that there is any Labor bias there.
Is she still on the board of ‘our’ ABC.
Perhaps that explains their editorial list to the Right
Democracy can be surprisingly raucous as previous posts obliquely note.
In the 1990s, the American Right suffered from Clinton derangement syndrome.
In the 2000s, the American Left suffered from George Bush derangement syndrome.
The American Right is now denouncing elitism.
The danger of responding with derision and counter-insults is that these responses appeal only to the people who will vote for you anyway. They do not reach out to the discontented that are interested but are undecided and not yet persuaded by the ideas of the emergent movement because you are not answering what troubles them so much.
As an example, the Left spent a lot of time belittling Reagan as an ill-educated conservative well outside of the mainstream, as defined by them.
So busy was the Left with their insults that it did not notice that Reagan, a first time political novice, unseated a two-term sitting governor in 1966. In 1976, he got within a 100 delegates of taking his party’s nomination away from a sitting president. Four years later, Reagan unseated a sitting president and was re-elected in a landslide. Winning elections against the odds is a good criterion for political effectiveness.
Underestimating your opponents because they lack education and refinement risks condemning your-self to long spells on the opposition benches. They still have the vote. Crude insults gives them free publicity and will mobilise their support base and will shift the undecided in their favour because the issues that troubled them were dismissed with personal insults. Grievances can be resolved, grievances can be resolved, but slight someone and they will fight you forever.
Yes, you are quite right Jim.
Regan and G W Bush show by their example, that widespread recognition of how totally defective a candidate is, is far from any guarantee that the knuckledraggers of this world won’t vote them in anyway.
Abbott and the other rabble, despite their obvious failings, cannot be dismissed as having no chance in the coming election.
At least some of us can always move to another country. In my case, given that NZ is a basket case and anywhere in Africa even worse, it may be Northern Hemisphere here I come.
Freelander,
Elitism is another reason why the Left is condemned by its own actions to the opposition benches.
Hawke, Keating and Rudd won office by firmly camping themselves over the centre of politics and keeping the Left well in check.
All three knew that the policies of the Left of their party fail at the ballot box because they are deeply unpopular, always have been, and always will be.
1972 to 1975 was an aberration due to having to face a government of 23 years vintage and even then Bill McMahon was beaten narrowly on points. Nine seats, as I recall.
The collapse of public support for Rudd in about 2 months defies explanation. The fastest I have ever seen.
@BilB
The American Dream was mostly just that, a dream. It was a mass delusion that anyone could get rich. There was a time when someone, with luck and exceptional talents, from most any social strata could get rich, could ‘make it’ in some way or other, and that time has not passed. They still can today. Obama is but a recent example. But Americans in general brought a fiction that that possibility was really there for everyone, regardless. And like the soldier who believes they have a field marshal’s baton in their knapsack, many Americans imagine themselves ending up on top of the tree.
I think that is the reason the US has less social cohesion and less concern for their fellow citizen, as exemplified in their reluctance to create an adequate medical system. If almost everyone is under the delusion that they are going to be top dog, the type of society they tend to choose is one that only satisfies the winner in a winner take all society.
@Jim Rose
Elitism is a problem of the right as well as the centre and the left, and Albrechtsen and various other Aus opinion writers demonstrate. That said, in the case of the right (and the left) it is a faux kind of elitism as exemplified by that cult comic Quadrant. The occasional perusal of Quadrant is always good for a hearty laugh.
I found the high initial level of support for Rudd in even greater need of an explanation.
@may
Planet Janet and the others of their obvious capital O obvious) bias on the ABC makes it a libully bias. Such an obvious stack by Howard….rather disappointed Rudd still hasnt reversed it.
@Freelander
Quip of the day to Freelander!
@BilB
The American dream grew conquered expanded and is now weakening the umbilical cord to its own people…reminds me of the Roman Empire. They have forgotten what made them great and simply spread too thin in their quest for greater greatness. The weakness of the supply chain becoming too remote from its main markets.
Freelander,
On your comments on the inexplicable rise of Rudd to office, are you able to explain or provide some initial reasons for anything that happens in politics and world affairs? For example, why elections are won and lost, and why ideas and wars are popular or not?
Rudd won because he seemed a safe alternative to a tired and smelly government that outreached itself after it won control of the Senate.
Rudd is on the nose because he has been discovered to be a phoney. You are on the way out as PM as soon as people perceive you to be weak. Howard, Hawke, Keating, and a far back as Menzies knew that you can be popular or unpopular, but it is more important that most people respect you even if many of them disagree with you.
Rudd has been exposed as having no convictions; he does not stand for anything, and he will happily swap talking points to take the other side of almost any public debate if it wins him the next news cycle. Rudd seems unable to risk unpopularity and know how to fight back to win people back over again and to forgive him.
In 2007, Rudd was the safe default option rather than a street fighter coming back from behind. Howard spent most of his career fighting back from behind and even from the political graveyard. That taught Howard how to stay calm, set goals, sell initially unpopular policies and win back respect.
Rudd could have been somebody, he could have been a contender, but he has just got no respect.
@Jim Rose
Jim Rose – I suppose you think the vacuous big ears big triceps no policy is the answer? Youve been here before harping on the same tune. You are a tribal.
@Jim Rose
I might add at this point your hero sides with big business against the majority of businesses, he sides with kicking the youth of Australia with workchoices and now he wants to kick retirees by denying them access to their super. Make no mistake…your hero is a sell out to big business donations to the liberal party….and it makes me sick that some of the brainless will vote for him.
Even Malcolm Fraser thinks he was an insult to “liberalism” and Abbott is…just that – an insult to conservatism and liberalism. Jim you are so far behind you cant see your own way out of your narrow (one vote one party) ethos. The worry is there are plenty more like you and youll get what you deserve.
Spot on Freelander, and Alice.
@Jim Rose
And Jim Rose…..you have no respect. The people of Australia voted Howard out and his attack dog Abbott out. Abbott is a relic and could never have been a contender and never will be a contender. He wants to say a few words now about how “the Howard government is over”…but he only wants to say those words because he knows how much Australians hate the word Howard now. But Abbott hasnt changed and he cant change. Abbott was Howards deputy.
Alice,
You yourself have supported work choices style laws when they suited your political agenda and growing thirst for show trials.
In a posting a few weeks ago on Enron, you supported marching the executives out the door and firing on the spot anyone left behind who was unwilling to work for public wages.
Forcing workers to accept pay cuts under threat of instant dismissal, as you longed for, requires that there be no laws against unfair dismissal, bad faith and abuse of employer power. You cannot have your show trials, public denunciations and general bullying at Enron without work choices style employment laws in the legal background.
It is just so easy to support the rights of people you like. It is a lot harder to accept that equality under the law requires that those rights extend to people you hate.
Remember that one day the always fleeting and sometimes impassioned majority might define the unpopular and unpleasant to include you and yours. Of course, the careerists and Chardonnay socialists that make up most of the ALP these days will run to your defence, but only if doing so wins the next news cycle.
@Jim Rose
Hello?
Jim do you resort to lies also? You say
“You yourself have supported work choices style laws when they suited your political agenda and growing thirst for show trials.”
I have never ever supported Workchoices style laws. I always knew it would end up in tears before bedtime unlike you.
And you have it all wrong on Enron. What I really would have supported was the frogmarching of the executives to the nearest jail (where they should have gone) and nationalisation and the offer to existing employees not implicated in the fraud thye chance to accept puclic sector wages (or not job at all).
That is not the same and no amount of twisting makes it the same. I would have supported government takeover of Enron – apparently you cant tell the difference between public sector wages and workchoices wages Jim….slightly better I would think (unless you were one of the criminal directors).
@Jim Rose
Jim really – I cant help myself…I have to make the call…. “chardonnay socialists’ is so passe – yesterday’s expression.. you know ..just out of date.
You are really showing your vintage with this one…
Yes, Jimbo. I have to agree with Alice. You are starting to become particularly clichéd, trotting out the trite repeatitive nonsense those faux intellectuals on the extreme right (and left) seem to mistake as providing evidence of insightful thought. Consequently, in search of a source of greater stimulation, I am going to see if I can find some repeat to watch on TV.
Jim Rose, you say ‘Rudd could have been somebody’. Well the last time I saw him on TV he was still the Prime Minister of Australia. Try a little harder next time.
Alice,
We agree: you support work choices style laws when its suits you.
When a company is nationalised, the government becomes the owner.
As owner of the company, you admit that you would want the government to make the remaining honest employees accept public sector wages under threat of dismissal.
To be fair to you, you are the right of work choices.
Work choices is more generous than you when businesses change hands.
The transmission of business rules under Work Choices protects existing awards and agreements for 12 months. Maybe you would sneak behind this and other protections with a bogus claim that all who rejected public sector wages are, by sheer coincidence, redundant and have no protections of their contractual rights at all.
What you want for wages at the nationalised Enron cannot happen unless work choice style laws are in place to prevent the employees from suing for unfair dismissal.
You made a momentary lapse into left-wing popularism.
p.s. The term chardonnay socialist appeared in Australia and NZ in about 1989 and is regularly used by people from throughout the political spectrum to criticise opponents. For example, Australian left-wing true believers levelled it at the supporters of the failed republic referendum of 1999.
@Freelander
Better look for a repeat of Mr Ed Freelander in keeping with the current level of repartee on offer….
@Jim Rose
Jim – “chardonnay socialists” was a term the sad right used to pillory “any one” who didnt subscribe to the free market agenda that has totally stuffed everything up.
The bell has tolled, the crisis is upon us, the world gave your ideas a run but the referee has signalled and its game over…you lose (even with your out of date expressions).
Kind of sad Jim but maybe its time you changed because the world is changing, with or without you…and its not going “left” or “right” – its just trying to clean up the unholy mess the right made. Ever heard of moderation Jim. Ever heard of being “bipartisan”. Ever heard of political parties working together? Well neither have I for quite some decades bit its about time it happened and everyone got over their phobias, ambitions and petty political aspirations to actually work for the majority in this country.
Now tell me Jim you dont have a problem with that? (And if you do you are part of the problem …not the solution…and I will respond accordingly).
@Jim Rose
I also object to people who claim I agree with them or rather then “its settled – we agree then”.
We do? We actually didnt….quite the opposite… and your views are views I dont agree with as should be obvious to you and everyone (except for your apparent insensivity in the interpretation).
Ill make it plain Jim Rose. Its all settled. I dont agree with your views. I havent in the past. I dont in the present. If you come up with something in the future I actually do agree with…Ill be happy to let you know about my agreeement.
I dont want to be unkind but there it is…
Alice,
I see you have accepted that you made a lapse.
You seem to agree that employers cannot legally cut employee’s wages unless they get prior agreement? No contract is open to unilateral variation.
Do you agree that redundancy provisions must be observed in good faith with any payouts in accordance with the rates in the existing employment agreement?
Chardonnay socialist is regularly used by people throughout the political spectrum. Australian left-wing true believers denounced the supporters of the failed republic referendum of 1999 as chardonnay socialists.
Chardonnay socialist is derivative of champagne socialist which is a pejorative political term originating in the United Kingdom dating from 1855.
Champagne socialists may claim to be against the Capitalist system but will still happily function in it and prosper from it. Marx was a champagne socialist, a glutton and letch. His fellow letch super rich Friedrich Engels was a most bourgeois of a creature – a wine snob and a regular participant in the Cheshire fox hunt.
Champagne socialist came into more use as a different sort of sneer from different quarters when New Labour won power in 1997 and dumped its socialist past.