Member-only story
America: A beautiful slow moving trainwreck
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature
Land of the brave
I’m not American which may make some of you bristle with this article. Still, we have a saying in Australia “When America sneezes, Australia catches a cold.”
Fact is, that country of yours of 300 million souls and as many guns, matters. Take a bow, America. Your dollar is the world’s reserve currency, much to the chagrin of others. Your movies, music and culture permeate all aspects of our lives. Some love you, some hate you, but few are indifferent towards you.
When I was a child, in both the UK and Australia, we learned about you in school. We learned of Colombus, the Mayflower, the pigrims and Thanksgiving. Our history lessons jumped around a bit, covering Custer’s last stand, the Dakota and California gold rushes, Boston Tea party, the American revolution and the American Civil war.
So we got a good dose of American history, perhaps not anything like a highly educated American, but I suspect better than some Americans. What’s more, thanks to the prevalence of your culture, we have people in Australia and elsewhere showing up in court trying to plead the 5th, or to talk about their 1st and 2nd Amendment rights. It’s funny but also a bit tragic.
