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changelingI'm going to be defriended by every American on my friends list for this, aren't I...? <-- Whee, paranoia. Honestly, I love all you guys.
Speaking from a purely stereotypically Australian standpoint (rather than my own, which is more complex), we're proud of our country too. We're just more introverted about it, and we feel that Americans' love of their country is a little showy. We keeps ourselves to ourselves, sort of thing.[/okker] (Must be our British roots.)
Where America had the Amerindians to make their frontier lives hard, we had Kooris, most of whom our (white) population managed to murder, or kill by way of introduced diseases like the common cold, or further down the line, alcoholism. Both of our countries' white populations has blood on our hands, and there's nothing much either of us as individuals can do about it now. (Although John Howard saying Sorry would HELP improve relations.) Both of us have downtrodden native populations living on the fringes of society. You guys put Amerindians on Reservations, we had the Stolen Generation, where thousands of Koori kids were taken from their parents; some where put into schools and trained up as servants, some grew up in white houses, dislocated from their own pasts, families and sense of identity. Our governments could help improve lives for those not privileged, but our governments are run by privileged white men, and they're more interested in keeping the them downtrodden.
You may have built your country from the ground up, but so did Australia, essentially. The trip from England to the US is considerably shorter than that to Australia - such an uncivilised land, too! - and the help we have traditionally gotten from England has often been minimal at best. We didn't have France giving us even two fingers(1) because they knew it would piss off the British. We're always the younger sibling in world affairs - to England, and lately to the US. They'll accept our help, but it's rarely that we're taken seriously. We're just the tagalongs.
'On the evening of Sunday 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Menzies announced to Australians gathered anxiously around their wireless sets: "It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war." The British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, had broadcast Britain's declaration of war an hour earlier.' - War & Peace, Australia 1939-49.
You guys had difficulty with finding your own path, perhaps, but we also had it difficult in a different way - that of trying to be part of the UK and/or Europe from thousands of miles away. Within an hour of Chamberlain announcing WW2, we were right in their with them. We sent thousands of our young men, food and supplies to Europe to help fight a war that didn't have anything to do with us. In WW1, in an almost characteristically careless move by British officers, a group of soldiers consisting in large numbers of Australian troops landed on the beach at Gallipoli, a short way up the coast from where they should have been, and were more or less massacred.
When Pearl Harbour was bombed in December 1941, America was drawn into the war with more or less its full troops. Australia was drawn into a new war, with most of its armed forces in the Middle East, its navy scattered on the seas, and its airforce in training on their way to England. Once again we had to look to a larger country to look after us, and this time we turned to you. England was busy, and didn't have any forces to spare. When the Singapore fortress fell, the last bastion of British might we could rely on in Asia, 15,000 Australian troops were taken prisoner of war attacks. Darwin was bombed, and we had to face the fact of seemingly almost inevitable invasion.
In the end, Australia has the enormous problem of being large enough to qualify for the world stage in a way that New Zealand doesn't have to worry about (their far more sensible PM ignored the whole War-on-Iraq thing), but too small to really make enough of a splash. Around 50% (2) of our country is virtually unlivable, which means that any population growth almost inevitably takes over our arable land. Without some sort of utopian turning-the-desert-green future, Australia's population can't really expand large enough to be much of a competitor on the world stage the way the US is. You have a population of more than 281 million; we have a population of just under 20 million - and yet the actual land mass of our two countries is not all that different, it's just that our population is concentrated almost entirely on the east coast, with another couple small population bursts on the west coast around Perth, and the south coast around Adelaide. Perth can boast of the fact that it's the most isolated capital city in the world; cut off from the bustling east coast by expanse upon expanse of open desert.
We're still the younger siblings in world politics, and some of us rail bitterly against our older brothers and sisters, who have abandoned us repeatedly when they didn't need us. When Howard came over to the US to talk to one of your government bodies (I forget whether it was Congress or the Senate), most representatives didn't bother showing up.
It's very frustrating for me (for all of us) when Americans assume that you guys are the centre of our universe; I had some fuckknuckle on a community I was in saying that she measured intelligence as to whether the person she was speaking to knew about the McCarthy Trials. How about the Eureka Stockade? Gough Whitlam? Does anyone outside Australia know that we havefive six (3) states and two territories? Could they name them, and their capital cities? How about Burke and Wills, arguably our two most famous explorers? It seems very easy for Americans to assume the opposite, that we know all about you. I keep getting those two letter codes for American states thrown at me, and I can guess at a few of them, but that's about it. I never did American history at school (my sister did, because she had an ex-pat American for a teacher); I barely did Australian. All we learnt was about our involvement in the two world wars; obviously nothing Australia does that doesn't involve the outside world isn't important. You guys had Martin Luther King, but does anyone know about Eddie Mabo? (4) If we want to fit in with Americans, is the unspoken rule, we have to learn about your culture. We have to be assimilated with you, until (like in Jennifer Government) we are the United States of America (Australian territories). I know how long a foot is, and how long an inch is. I convert my measurements from metric to imperial for Americans, but the reverse is never true. It can be hard for us, perpetually playing catchup.
(1) I've been reading my copy of The Annotated Alice recently, and this is an old (I think specifically British) custom, where a snobbish upper-class man would give you two fingers to shake rather than his whole hand, to show he was superior to you.
(2) Statistic shamelessly made up rather than look up the actual fact. The real facts are more complex, as our level of desert would be much, much lower than this, but then we have all this semi-arid region where the cattle/sheep stations are hundreds of square kilometres, with each cow needs a several-square-kilometre grazing area, as there's bugger-all vegetation. I asked my parents if they knew how much of our country was desert, and dad said maybe a third. I seem to remember the desert colours on my school maps as taking up most of the country.
(3) Well done me with this clever error. Let's not work out how many there are, let's rely on dubious primary school information!
When I was in PS, we got told about the large star on our flag, the one directly under the Union Jack. It has seven arms on it, and each one stands for a state or territory; one for each of the states, plus one to represent both territories. I just didn't remember that the territories shared a point.
(4) Note to self, don't ever assume Encarta has correct first name for Aboriginal leaders again. Stupid thing.
Ah yes, continuing a great me tradition by using my vague (rather than explicit) knowledge of a broad range of topics to rant from the rooftops, often overlooking several important facts or logic.
Speaking from a purely stereotypically Australian standpoint (rather than my own, which is more complex), we're proud of our country too. We're just more introverted about it, and we feel that Americans' love of their country is a little showy. We keeps ourselves to ourselves, sort of thing.[/okker] (Must be our British roots.)
Where America had the Amerindians to make their frontier lives hard, we had Kooris, most of whom our (white) population managed to murder, or kill by way of introduced diseases like the common cold, or further down the line, alcoholism. Both of our countries' white populations has blood on our hands, and there's nothing much either of us as individuals can do about it now. (Although John Howard saying Sorry would HELP improve relations.) Both of us have downtrodden native populations living on the fringes of society. You guys put Amerindians on Reservations, we had the Stolen Generation, where thousands of Koori kids were taken from their parents; some where put into schools and trained up as servants, some grew up in white houses, dislocated from their own pasts, families and sense of identity. Our governments could help improve lives for those not privileged, but our governments are run by privileged white men, and they're more interested in keeping the them downtrodden.
You may have built your country from the ground up, but so did Australia, essentially. The trip from England to the US is considerably shorter than that to Australia - such an uncivilised land, too! - and the help we have traditionally gotten from England has often been minimal at best. We didn't have France giving us even two fingers(1) because they knew it would piss off the British. We're always the younger sibling in world affairs - to England, and lately to the US. They'll accept our help, but it's rarely that we're taken seriously. We're just the tagalongs.
'On the evening of Sunday 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Menzies announced to Australians gathered anxiously around their wireless sets: "It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war." The British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, had broadcast Britain's declaration of war an hour earlier.' - War & Peace, Australia 1939-49.
You guys had difficulty with finding your own path, perhaps, but we also had it difficult in a different way - that of trying to be part of the UK and/or Europe from thousands of miles away. Within an hour of Chamberlain announcing WW2, we were right in their with them. We sent thousands of our young men, food and supplies to Europe to help fight a war that didn't have anything to do with us. In WW1, in an almost characteristically careless move by British officers, a group of soldiers consisting in large numbers of Australian troops landed on the beach at Gallipoli, a short way up the coast from where they should have been, and were more or less massacred.
When Pearl Harbour was bombed in December 1941, America was drawn into the war with more or less its full troops. Australia was drawn into a new war, with most of its armed forces in the Middle East, its navy scattered on the seas, and its airforce in training on their way to England. Once again we had to look to a larger country to look after us, and this time we turned to you. England was busy, and didn't have any forces to spare. When the Singapore fortress fell, the last bastion of British might we could rely on in Asia, 15,000 Australian troops were taken prisoner of war attacks. Darwin was bombed, and we had to face the fact of seemingly almost inevitable invasion.
In the end, Australia has the enormous problem of being large enough to qualify for the world stage in a way that New Zealand doesn't have to worry about (their far more sensible PM ignored the whole War-on-Iraq thing), but too small to really make enough of a splash. Around 50% (2) of our country is virtually unlivable, which means that any population growth almost inevitably takes over our arable land. Without some sort of utopian turning-the-desert-green future, Australia's population can't really expand large enough to be much of a competitor on the world stage the way the US is. You have a population of more than 281 million; we have a population of just under 20 million - and yet the actual land mass of our two countries is not all that different, it's just that our population is concentrated almost entirely on the east coast, with another couple small population bursts on the west coast around Perth, and the south coast around Adelaide. Perth can boast of the fact that it's the most isolated capital city in the world; cut off from the bustling east coast by expanse upon expanse of open desert.
We're still the younger siblings in world politics, and some of us rail bitterly against our older brothers and sisters, who have abandoned us repeatedly when they didn't need us. When Howard came over to the US to talk to one of your government bodies (I forget whether it was Congress or the Senate), most representatives didn't bother showing up.
It's very frustrating for me (for all of us) when Americans assume that you guys are the centre of our universe; I had some fuckknuckle on a community I was in saying that she measured intelligence as to whether the person she was speaking to knew about the McCarthy Trials. How about the Eureka Stockade? Gough Whitlam? Does anyone outside Australia know that we have
(1) I've been reading my copy of The Annotated Alice recently, and this is an old (I think specifically British) custom, where a snobbish upper-class man would give you two fingers to shake rather than his whole hand, to show he was superior to you.
(2) Statistic shamelessly made up rather than look up the actual fact. The real facts are more complex, as our level of desert would be much, much lower than this, but then we have all this semi-arid region where the cattle/sheep stations are hundreds of square kilometres, with each cow needs a several-square-kilometre grazing area, as there's bugger-all vegetation. I asked my parents if they knew how much of our country was desert, and dad said maybe a third. I seem to remember the desert colours on my school maps as taking up most of the country.
(3) Well done me with this clever error. Let's not work out how many there are, let's rely on dubious primary school information!
When I was in PS, we got told about the large star on our flag, the one directly under the Union Jack. It has seven arms on it, and each one stands for a state or territory; one for each of the states, plus one to represent both territories. I just didn't remember that the territories shared a point.
(4) Note to self, don't ever assume Encarta has correct first name for Aboriginal leaders again. Stupid thing.
Ah yes, continuing a great me tradition by using my vague (rather than explicit) knowledge of a broad range of topics to rant from the rooftops, often overlooking several important facts or logic.
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Date: 2003-09-13 08:15 pm (UTC)I'll spare you the Canadian version of this. Just take yours, add in really lots of coldness, French people and Loyalist refugees.
Technically, the American Goverment owes me in excess of a trillion dollars.
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Date: 2003-09-13 09:06 pm (UTC)'Course, it helps that you gave us the wonder of Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie. *wanders off singing the Canada song*
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Date: 2003-09-13 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2003-09-13 08:37 pm (UTC)Umm - WA, SA, Vic, Qld, NSW, Tas = 6
But other than that *applause*
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Date: 2003-09-13 08:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2003-09-13 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-13 09:11 pm (UTC)I think it's less an argument than it is trying to be understood. I tend to be slightly more attacky than I mean to be sometimes. :)
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Date: 2003-09-13 09:37 pm (UTC)On the other hand, my grandfather was in PNG during World War Two, and when I can pick up his book and not feel waves of emotion which pretty much stop me from keeping on reading, I'll know more about everything from the Kokoda Trail to their company's almost lone success in using native assistance and guerrilla tactics to hold off the overwhelming Japanese forces... just as an aside to your WWII points.
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Date: 2003-09-13 09:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2003-09-13 09:40 pm (UTC)Actually we didn't ignore it. We actually said we wouldn't be involved. You can imagine the opposition (though how you are supposed to have an opposition with MMP I don't know....) had a field day.
ANd we'vew "paid". Though to be honest I don't think we would ever have the right trade talks even if we didn't oppose the war.
We did offer SAS I think.. for "intelligence" as opposed to brute force...
But that of course isn't good enough.
As a small western country we simply are not big enough to give what's expected and what we can is underappreciated in the current climate.
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Date: 2003-09-13 09:49 pm (UTC)I must admit to being terribly ignorant of NZ affairs, but then, I'm ignorant of world affairs in general.
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From:*waves flag*
Date: 2003-09-13 10:07 pm (UTC)Re: *waves flag*
Date: 2003-09-14 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-13 11:56 pm (UTC)Cool piece of writing. :-)
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Date: 2003-09-14 12:12 am (UTC)You're right, Eddie. Encarta is stupid. I didn't think it was Ernie...
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Date: 2003-09-14 03:22 am (UTC)I sympathize. We're arrogant. We've been raised to be arrogant and most of us revel in the joy that is never having to consider anyone else's perspectives. The only history other than U.S. that I was taught was almost entirely in relation U.S. growth and issues. Hell, they only made a mediocre attempt to make sure I knew where the other major countries were.
Not thinking any of this is aimed at me, but I know I'm probably guilty of some of it. If I ever make an assumption or say something that needs explaining/clarifying, just let me know. I'll happily do the same in return.
I'd try for a better reply to this, but my brain thinks it's asleep at the moment.
And, random point of ignorance. Australia's flag has a seven pointed star? Awesome, I'll need to look that up. I love seven pointed stars. Don't see 'em often...
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Date: 2003-09-14 07:43 am (UTC)I can't always convert between metric and imperial (to this day, I have no idea how to convert Celcius to Fahrenheit [sp?]), but knowing that I have several American friends means that I'll usually make the effort. I think it helps that I grew up reading Clive Cusslers, and he always gave both measurements (metric first - and he's an American. :)
The seven pointed star ain't as cool as it could be. It's too chunky.
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Date: 2003-09-14 05:25 am (UTC)From a British (gah, I want to say now that absolutely NO-ONE born under the Union Jack uses the word "Brit" nor "British" really for that matter) PoV the world is enough to drive you mad. I long for some obscurity, while at the same time find my unreasonable British pride getting incredibly riled by American arrogance. It never ceases to amaze me how American knowledge of the world dries up the minuite they pass more than 3 feet form their coast lines.
And I'm past tired of England being dragged into becoming an America clone. Like yours, our PM is more like an American foreign minister than our leader. We alienate allies who are more useful, more sensible and more closely alligned with us to curry favour with the US (and believe me, that REALLY gripes our stupid pride).
And finally - Aus is caught on the world stage because of its size; we're dragged there because of our history, and the power we don't have anymore. Pretty soon, we're going to collapse trying to play the games we aren't powerful enough for. Games America keeps dragging us into playing.
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Date: 2003-09-15 04:18 am (UTC)I think that as well as size/history, there's a certain amount of pride involved in joining in with these things; wanting to have power over world events.
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Date: 2003-09-14 12:45 pm (UTC)Even though I'm American, I am frequently embarrassed by others of my nationality.
I know that I've unconciously been America-centric at times.
We're started at an early age being told how great of a country we live in, and many never grow up enough to ask the questions that need to be asked.
*shakes head*
Sorry 'bout that World. My apology doesn't count for much, but it IS offered up freely and earnestly.
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Date: 2003-09-14 09:11 pm (UTC)I'm frequently Australo-centric (is that even a word?) or Eurocentric in my outlook, I'm afraid. But as an ex-debater, I usually try to see the other perspective...
The thing is, prior to having any American friends (which has only happened in the last four years or so), I frequently didn't bother restraining my vitriol for the vast umbrella of American Influence. I still hate the way that your television programs permeate everywhere. There's a lot about your culture that I just don't like, and the whole "If you're not with us, you're AGAINST US!" that America (government foreign policy and ethos of films, particularly military ones--although these two things are increasingly interchangable: cf Private Jessica Lynch) spews forth tends to make me take the opposition. Ultimatums do that to me--make me Devil's Advocate, even if I agreed with the ultimatum-maker. When I was in year eight and still a Christian, I had a rabid Christian friend, and I took great delight in playing Devil's Advocate to her "You're all going to burn in HELL!" position.
I know
Date: 2003-09-14 03:14 pm (UTC)What I do have to say in reply is when I ask an Australian where they would visit in the US, they almost inevitably reply 'New York and LA.' Nobody wants to visit New Orleans, the jazz capital, or Atlanta or Dallas or St. Louis. I think it's sad that all Americans are jugdged on New Yorkers (most very evil, though definately not all) and LA (I lived there briefly and decided they were undeniably superficial to the extreme). We are not all evil. We do not all think America is the best country on earth, though we do have a beautiful diversity of climates. Most of us don't know about the rest of the world simply because we are never taught.
Oh, and I can quickly convert metric to imperial in my head because I'm here and because I'm an engineer. Everybody should live outside their native country for a while to grasp a bit of what the world is truly like.
Re: I know
Date: 2003-09-14 09:00 pm (UTC)I find it amusing that Neil Gaiman, in his book American Gods, talks about how America isn't just country--that New York isn't in the same country as Texas. (He explains it better...)
I agree. Right now I want to go and live in Scotland. I somehow have a feeling that this isn't going to happen for some time yet...