They're doing it on purpose

From 911 to the Trump ascendancy

And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea

—Paul Simon, American Tune

Watching a standing eight-count being applied to American democracy is a sobering experience. Whatever our views of the United States, of its acts and interventions, its intrigues and self-obsession, over however many years, its very existence has defined something important in how we understand the world and how we operate in it. But here it is, one more right hook away from falling to its knees and slapping its face into the canvas.

The moment doesn’t lack for metaphors, and I sway between anger and sadness.

Winter wildfires burn California to the ground

Other than the music, the writers, the TV shows and movies, and, you know, the whole World War II thing, what has America ever done for us?

In July 2001, Tanya got word that she was being posted to Washington DC to work at the Australian Embassy. We began the long process of packing up our belongings, getting our medical checks, filling out the paperwork, getting security clearances, researching schools for Noah—all the things that must be done.

In September 2001, on September 11 to be exact, we had just finished watching a video and were heading to bed when the phone rang. It was Tanya’s mum and she asked if we had the TV on.

“You should turn it on,” she said.

We sat there the rest of the night watching 911 unfold.

As it happened, Tanya was already rostered on for crisis duty to do with the Tampa matter and at 5am had to go into the Department of Foreign Affairs to work on that. When she got there, there was a sign on the door saying, Tampa has been moved down the corridor. This room is now being used for what is happening at the World Trade Centre. She began to help handle calls coming in from Australians with families in New York, as well as dealing with the fact that our major ally was under attack.

I stayed watching CNN and their journalist Aaron Brown and his crew who were on the roof of a tower block—the CNN building across town, I think—with their cameras pointed at the smoke billowing from both buildings. Brown was doing running commentary, calm and measured. No-one was clear at that point what was going on: and then the first of the Towers collapsed.

“There’s billowing smoke rising, and I can tell you, I can’t see that second tower,” Brown said.¹

We had all just watched the immense building concertina to the ground, but he simply couldn’t take in the fact that the tower had collapsed—he presumed it was still there behind the smoke.

In moments like that, like this, it can be hard to believe what you are seeing.

One of my oldest friends lived in New York at the time, maybe half a kilometre from the Trade Centre, and he stood on the street outside his apartment block with hundreds of others, looking up at the spot where the first plane had hit, wondering what was going on. When the second plane hit, a little girl standing next to him with her mother said, “They’re doing it on purpose.”

As the days unfolded, there was some talk about Tanya’s posting being cancelled, but in the end, it went ahead and we moved to DC in December, as planned, and lived there for nearly four years, and I think we saw the best and the worst of the country.

And now, two decades later, the worst has triumphed and the alleged best don’t seem too concerned about it.

🤮

I tell myself I can still see that first tower standing firm behind the smoke, but have you ever heard anything more deluded or pathetic than Biden and Harris hailing the transfer of power on January 6? Here’s Madam Vice President, the fearless prosecutor, dressing up capitulation as something noble:

“The peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy,” Harris said. “As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.

“Today at the United States Capitol, I will perform my constitutional duty as vice president of the United States to certify the results of the 2024 election. This duty is a sacred obligation, one I will uphold, guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution, and my unwavering faith in the American people.”

In what fucking universe is handing over the reins of power to someone you yourself have described as a fascist—who was responsible for a violent coup attempt four years earlier, and who, for the entirety of those four years, refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Biden-Harris Administration—in what universe is meekly acquiescing to his ascension to the Presidency a principle that distinguishes your system from monarchy of tyranny?

Nothing speaks more completely to the con that Trump had pulled off than hearing his marks and victims falling into line to give the con their imprimatur.

Did you see the other day the fight that erupted on Twitter between Elon Musk and Laura Loomer? Loomer, someone who, as she pointed out, was one of the founding members of Maga in all its racist glory, got into a public slanging match with Musk, the billionaire-come-lately to the fold. Their dispute was over the repeal of the H1B visa process, something that was a bedrock of the Trump promises to his racist base, and Loomer and Musk fought it out.

Some on the progressive left were gleeful, characterising this infighting as a sign that the Maga coalition was eating itself alive, but it was no such thing.

What the dispute really showed was that politics in America is now an argument between degrees and styles of rightwing extremism and that the liberal democratic heart of its institutions has concertinaed to the ground.

America was always a flawed standard bearer for international democracy and a hypocritical guardian of the postwar, post-Hitler, post-Holocaust settlement. But now, even the lip service has gone. As O’Brien says to Winston Smith in 1984, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever. ”

Or at least for the foreseeable future.

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1. Or words close to that, from memory.