The idea that those in control have special access and special privileges is feeding a populist backlash in both nations.
As the schlock horror show that is the 2024 US presidential election campaign reaches its perilous endgame, the world is on a knife edge, like Schrödinger’s cat in a state of contradictory realities that can only be resolved when the ballot box is opened. And maybe not even then.
At this moment the centre is both holding and collapsing; the sober appeal for unity and the angry call to pandemonium have both been answered; the integrity of American democracy is both retained and destroyed.
All we know right now is the state of the cat – feral, mangy, flea-ridden – with somewhere close to half the Americans who vote likely to embrace a failed leader for whom facts are currency, grievance is energy and democracy is sport.
Garbage has been flung, money splashed, bullets fired as the system settles at the maximum point of conflict where no consensus can exist and not even the facts of the count will go uncontested.
It’s a genuine shitshow. But as this week’s Guardian Essential Report shows, Australians shouldn’t be lulled into thinking this circus is just something that happens over there.
While these numbers suggest Kamala Harris would win the support of more Australian voters, the gender faultlines are striking, with Australian men more likely to support Donald Trump.
This matches the stark gender divide in the US, where Harris’s call for reproductive choice, respect and freedom has butted into Trump’s confected machismo, with late polls putting the gender gap at more than 30 percentage points.
The same information ecosystem that has bifurcated public discourse operates here.
While gender may help explain the parallel realities at play in the election, they are not the full story of Trump’s local appeal, with many younger people also embracing him, along with one in five progressive voters (Labor-Green voters).
Trump’s general Australian trendline has also been up over the decade. In 2016 Australians supported Hillary Clinton 59-19, in 2020 Biden was preferred 51-26; it seems familiarity has bred something more interesting than contempt.
Even Trump’s January 2021 assault on the Capital is not enough to sway people. In fact it might feed a deeper truth: the system his supporters attacked is what they are rejecting.
Rising inequality, the capture of the political process by corporate interests, industries laid waste at the altar of globalisation, the violence inherent in the US project: none of these are figments of Trump and his supporters’ wild imaginations.
Here again, Australians feel much the same.
On the core elements of Trump’s nihilistic populism, Australians are more likely to share his disdain for the system, and even the majority of those who would vote for Harris concur.
It is here where the Democrats may have missed the trick. Much of the energy in their campaign has been in eviscerating Trump rather than addressing this alienation he has so successfully, albeit fraudulently, tapped.
Caught between casting Trump as weird and fascist while he bros out with Joe Rogan, the Democrats have allowed themselves to occupy a lonely centre ground and defend a system that few voters find appealing.
It’s easy, entertaining and much more fun to dump on Trump’s foppery than explaining, and then addressing, the power imbalances of US technology, the military industrial complex and the economic model that supports them.
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese speaking in front of a Qantas plane
Guardian Essential poll: most Australians think politicians should not accept free concert tickets and flight upgrades
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Regardless of the US result, what does all this mean for Albanese’s Labor? Winning power at a time when people have lost faith in government is a poisoned chalice; in your success you become the problem.
This is why the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge allegations against the prime minister have had such salience; the idea that those in control have special access and special privileges feeds this populist backlash.
Regardless of whether the PM actively solicited upgrades – something he categorically denies – it confounds the broader sense of collective entitlement that has allowed these schemes to exist, allowing those who ascend the greasy pole to gain access to the exclusive club.
Voters roundly reject the conferring of these types of favours, be they tickets to the footy or those corporate boxes where the social bonds of the elites are tethered, oiling the wheels for the business sector that keeps even progressive governments in their lane.
All of which can be justified within the current set of laws and disclosures, but not without consequence because they embed the story of power being exercised on a higher echelon that is unavailable to most people.
It doesn’t matter if you grew up in social housing and were educated in the school of hard knocks, or whether you eschewed a share portfolio and a family trust – once you have drunk from the well you are part of the system.
And for any snake-oil salesman with enough chutzpah, this becomes an easy sell. The system is rigged. Look at them, they are laughing at you. It’s time to tear it all down. Just you watch. It’s going to be huge.
Maybe Schrödinger’s cat will emerge from the box unscathed, calm and resolved to rebuild faith in American democracy. But unlike 2016, it would be no shock if the cat is instead served up for dinner and we are on a new, darker course of history.
Written by Peter Lewis, originally published in The Guardian Australia, 5 Nov 2024