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Americanisation

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You know, I see quite a few of these YouTube videos where Americans compare stuff to what happens in Australia. It is not these that peak my interest, but rather that the global Americanisation is so ubiquitous. Everything about modern life is largely the same in the western world. Have a think about the computer age and where that originated. The internet and social media are American inventions. Smart phones are a big part of this and they too are a US innovation. Beyond this, to more prosaic trends and think about working out, bigger muscles and tattoos. These too, are American cultural shifts, which occurred over the last couple of decades.Continue Reading

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Truth Social & Donald Trump

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Authoritarians and their regimes like to spell shit out for their subjects. Some of you older folk may remember that the USSR had a news organisation/newspaper called Pravda. This was the official platform of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Pravda meant truth and many of us in the west used to roll our eyes at what passed for truth and facts over there. Now, we have Truth Social and Donald Trump in America. The parallels are pretty frightening in this post-truth world. The thing is that people are getting dumber and that naming something like this is enough for the unquestioning among us. Irony is a rare commodity in the United States in the 21C, perhaps more so than these rare earths the Donald goes on about so often.Continue Reading

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flag of america

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In the wake of Trump 2.0 and the growing realisation that America is completely on the wrong track or, indeed, coming off the rails, do we need to de-Americanise Australia? Take a moment to consider how far down this Americanised route Australia has already travelled. In this Neoliberal Era, in which we live, it is big business running the show and Corporate Australia has imported most of their ideas and ways of doing things from the Yanks. Over decades, we have brought in American CEOs and many of our home grown business leaders have done their MBs at US higher learning institutions. Things like outsourcing jobs overseas to reduce labour costs and the rise of private equity investment are all American initiatives. Australian big business is very US orientated in the ways it goes about things.Continue Reading