I am an independent researcher, affiliated with The University of Queensland as a former postdoctoral scholar, and a participatory member of the Australian and New Zealand Studies Association of North America (ANZSANA). I was also a former speechwriter for four Vice-Chancellors, so I understand these policy speeches.
In the following is the early transcript intersected with my thoughts from my work on Anglo-American major belief systems, and its practical expression in Australia and the United States. I cannot be expected to address all issues in the State of the Union speech, but I address a range of issues from a framework of philosophical compatibility and an Australian perspective.
The following are President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union remarks, as prepared for delivery, provided by the White House:
Good evening.
Mr. Speaker. Madam Vice President. Members of Congress. My Fellow Americans.
In January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation.
He said, “I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.”
Hitler was on the march. War was raging in Europe.
President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary moment.
Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world.
Tonight I come to the same chamber to address the nation.
Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union.
Historiography to which I and my colleagues apply is philosophical compatibility. It is achieved, I believe, in an Australian perspective of POLICE: Philosophically Ontology Logic Intersect Compatibility Education (POLICE). This is the background outlook to the history which Joe Biden has opened on in the State of the Union address. The practical expression in Australia are thinking and conversations on global culture-history war. This is the practical expression in the United States, which is then exported globally. The overwhelming numbers of Australians, politically, have a very low opinion of the American republican culture-history rhetorical warfare. In the United States it is estimated that support for the former President, Donald Trump, is one-fourth of the American population, estimated at the total in 341,814,420 persons.
And yes, my purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either.
Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today.
What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.
Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond.
If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not.
But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself. That is all Ukraine is asking. They are not asking for American soldiers.
In fact, there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine. And I am determined to keep it that way.
But now assistance for Ukraine is being blocked by those who want us to walk away from our leadership in the world.
Warfare breaks down the philosophical compatibility, so, if you want to dumb-down a population, have a war. This is what Joe Biden is attempting avoid for the United States. There is already warfare, a killing-field type of warfare in the Ukraine-Russia, Gaza-Israel, and in the Horn of Africa. There is also a trade war with China. The majority of a personal Australian perspective is to also avoid war. The practical expression in Australia is the bi-partisan policy towards both China and the United States. Our country is the middleman of the global Asia-Pacific trade, and peace in the region is sacred. The practical expression in the United States is less forthcoming in peace, but the foreign policy of the United States is in a bind: between Israel and its Middle East allies, and between China, to whom there is both suspicion and hope, and the Asia-Pacific allies; and, of course, Australia and New Zealand play a significant role to which many Americans are unaware of.
It wasn’t that long ago when a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, thundered, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
Now, my predecessor, a former Republican President, tells Putin, “Do whatever the hell you want.”
A former American President actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader.
America is a founding member of NATO the military alliance of democratic nations created after World War II to prevent war and keep the peace.
Today, we’ve made NATO stronger than ever.
We welcomed Finland to the Alliance last year, and just this morning, Sweden officially joined NATO, and their Prime Minister is here tonight.
Mr. Prime Minister, welcome to NATO, the strongest military alliance the world has ever known.
I say this to Congress: we must stand up to Putin. Send me the Bipartisan National Security Bill.
History is watching.
If the United States walks away now, it will put Ukraine at risk.
Europe at risk. The free world at risk, emboldening others who wish to do us harm.
My message to President Putin is simple.
We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.
Much of the philosophical compatibility arises from the consensus of historians on the Cold War. There has been a technical debate on the extent that the Cold War was a conflict between ideological blocs, and the extend it was rhetoric to mask national interest. The rise of Putin tends to give the interpretation of the latter. Nevertheless, ideology plays an important role. The practical expression in the United States is the way too-many Americans speak of social democracies, such as Australia, as “socialists” meaning “hidden communists”. The average Australian perspective, for this reason, sees Americans as dumb. The archetype description of an American is someone with very poor geographic knowledge. The criticism is not fair but it does refer to the anti-education trends in the United States, as well the literature expression of the “Ugly American”.
History is watching, just like history watched three years ago on January 6th.
Insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy.
Many of you were here on that darkest of days.
We all saw with our own eyes these insurrectionists were not patriots.
They had come to stop the peaceful transfer of power and to overturn the will of the people.
January 6th and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War.
But they failed. America stood strong and democracy prevailed.
But we must be honest the threat remains and democracy must be defended.
My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6th.
I will not do that.
This is a moment to speak the truth and bury the lies.
And here’s the simplest truth. You can’t love your country only when you win.
As I’ve done ever since being elected to office, I ask you all, without regard to party, to join together and defend our democracy!
Remember your oath of office to defend against all threats foreign and domestic.
Respect free and fair elections! Restore trust in our institutions! And make clear—political violence has absolutely no place in America!
History is watching.
However, from Joe Biden’s speech we can see a return to philosophical compatibility. Americans themselves have had enough of the truth and facts of the “Ugly American”: Insurrectionists. This is the tragedy and practical expression in the United States: the control of the Republican Party has been handed over to Donald Trump’s Insurrectionists. The average Australian perspective hates this type of American politics.
And history is watching another assault on freedom.
Joining us tonight is Latorya Beasley, a social worker from Birmingham, Alabama. 14 months ago tonight, she and her husband welcomed a baby girl thanks to the miracle of IVF.
She scheduled treatments to have a second child, but the Alabama Supreme Court shut down IVF treatments across the state, unleashed by the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
She was told her dream would have to wait.
What her family has gone through should never have happened. And unless Congress acts, it could happen again.
So tonight, let’s stand up for families like hers!
To my friends across the aisle, don’t keep families waiting any longer. Guarantee the right to IVF nationwide!
Like most Americans, I believe Roe v. Wade got it right. And I thank Vice President Harris for being an incredible leader, defending reproductive freedom and so much more.
But my predecessor came to office determined to see Roe v. Wade overturned.
He’s the reason it was overturned. In fact, he brags about it.
Look at the chaos that has resulted.
Joining us tonight is Kate Cox, a wife and mother from Dallas.
When she became pregnant again, the fetus had a fatal condition.
Her doctors told Kate that her own life and her ability to have children in the future were at risk if she didn’t act.
Because Texas law banned abortion, Kate and her husband had to leave the state to get the care she needed.
What her family has gone through should never have happened as well. But it is happening to so many others.
There are state laws banning the right to choose, criminalizing doctors, and forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states as well to get the care they need.
Many of you in this Chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom.
My God, what freedoms will you take away next?
In its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court majority wrote, “Women are not without electoral or political power.”
No kidding.
Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America.
They found out though when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again, in 2024.
If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you, I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again!
America cannot go back. I am here tonight to show the way forward. Because I know how far we’ve come.
Philosophical compatibility is hard to achieve in life-values politics. Biden is a Catholic who believes in abortion rights. He walks a fine line. Despite the way traditional Catholics and militant Evangelicals might see Roe v. Wade, it was a compromise, a difficult compatibility in life-values politics. Now, we are seeing the practical expression in the United States of unintended consequences of repealing the legislation. An Australian perspective is mixed but it is unlikely that the Australian legislation on abortion will be repealed.
Four years ago next week, before I came to office, our country was hit by the worst pandemic and the worst economic crisis in a century.
Remember the fear. Record job losses. Remember the spike in crime. And the murder rate.
A raging virus that would take more than 1 million American lives and leave millions of loved ones behind.
A mental health crisis of isolation and loneliness.
A president, my predecessor, who failed the most basic duty. Any President owes the American people the duty to care.
That is unforgivable.
I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history.
And we have. It doesn’t make the news but in thousands of cities and towns the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.
So let’s tell that story here and now.
America’s comeback is building a future of American possibilities, building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down, investing in all of America, in all Americans to make sure everyone has a fair shot and we leave no one behind!
The pandemic no longer controls our lives. The vaccines that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer.
Turning setback into comeback.
That’s America!
Philosophical compatibility for medical ethics is achieved by sidelining the margins at both ends of the debate spectrum. This might be unfortunate, but political decision making has the middle on the mainstream of expert opinion. Australian perspectives were mixed on the Covid pandemic and restrictive measures made, but the practical expression in Australia of Health Safety was for social intervention. The practical expression in the United States was not as good for safe outcomes because of the libertarian ideology. Liberaltarianism advocates higher risk-taking for the absolute value of the individual.
I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is the envy of the world!
15 million new jobs in just three years—that’s a record!
Unemployment at 50-year lows.
A record 16 million Americans are starting small businesses and each one is an act of hope.
With historic job growth and small business growth for Black, Hispanic, and Asian-Americans.
800,000 new manufacturing jobs in America and counting.
More people have health insurance today than ever before.
The racial wealth gap is the smallest it’s been in 20 years.
Wages keep going up and inflation keeps coming down!
Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3%—the lowest in the world!
And trending lower.
And now instead of importing foreign products and exporting American jobs, we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs—right here in America where they belong!
And the American people are beginning to feel it.
Consumer studies show consumer confidence is soaring.
Buy American has been the law of the land since the 1930s.
Past administrations including my predecessor failed to Buy American.
Not any more.
On my watch, federal projects like helping to build American roads bridges and highways will be made with American products built by American workers creating good-paying American jobs!
Thanks to my Chips and Science Act the United States is investing more in research and development than ever before.
During the pandemic a shortage of semiconductor chips drove up prices for everything from cell phones to automobiles.
Well instead of having to import semiconductor chips, which America invented I might add, private companies are now investing billions of dollars to build new chip factories here in America!
Creating tens of thousands of jobs many of them paying over $100,000 a year and don’t require a college degree.
In fact my policies have attracted $650 Billion of private sector investments in clean energy and advanced manufacturing creating tens of thousands of jobs here in America!
Thanks to our Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, 46,000 new projects have been announced across your communities—modernizing our roads and bridges, ports and airports, and public transit systems.
Removing poisonous lead pipes so every child can drink clean water without risk of getting brain damage.
Providing affordable high speed internet for every American no matter where you live.
Urban, suburban, and rural communities—in red states and blue.
Record investments in tribal communities.
Because of my investments, family farms are better be able to stay in the family and children and grandchildren won’t have to leave home to make a living.
It’s transformative.
A great comeback story is Belvidere, Illinois. Home to an auto plant for nearly 60 years.
Before I came to office the plant was on its way to shutting down.
Thousands of workers feared for their livelihoods. Hope was fading.
Then I was elected to office and we raised Belvidere repeatedly with the auto company knowing unions make all the difference.
The UAW worked like hell to keep the plant open and get those jobs back. And together, we succeeded!
Instead of an auto factory shutting down an auto factory is re-opening and a new state-of-the art battery factory is being built to power those cars.
Instead of a town being left behind it’s a community moving forward again!
Because instead of watching auto jobs of the future go overseas 4,000 union workers with higher wages will be building that future, in Belvidere, here in America!
Here tonight is UAW President, Shawn Fain, a great friend, and a great labor leader.
And Dawn Simms, a third generation UAW worker in Belvidere.
Shawn, I was proud to be the first President in American history to walk a picket line.
And today Dawn has a job in her hometown providing stability for her family and pride and dignity.
Showing once again, Wall Street didn’t build this country!
The middle class built this country! And unions built the middle class!
When Americans get knocked down, we get back up!
We keep going!
That’s America! That’s you, the American people!
It’s because of you America is coming back!
It’s because of you, our future is brighter!
And it’s because of you that tonight we can proudly say the State of our Union is strong and getting stronger!
Sociologically achieving philosophical compatibility is also difficult: “Urban, suburban, and rural communities—in red states and blue.” But it clear from Joe Biden’s speech that the compatibility is the compatibility of “the Middle Class(es)”. In one part of the unscripted speech, Biden gave the unions credit for the modern rise of the Middle Class, and there is a truth in that statement. The organised working classes did become the middle classes, economically and politically. On the other hand, from the 1980s, there were sections of ‘white’ middle classes who took a downturn in their financial fortunes. We saw this, as a practical expression in the United States, in Falling Down, a 1993 American psychological thriller film. Hence, in the politics of the Republican party, there came a narrative of the social threats to ‘whiteness’, which fueled anti-immigrant policies, which had a long history in the American narrative. There is a practical expression in Australia of such hatred and resentment, but, whatever the happenings, the Australian perspective is that “we” are not as bad as Americans in their history on the accounts of excessive wealth, racism, and violence, which form a sociological pattern of interlocking factors.
Tonight I want to talk about the future of possibilities that we can build together.
A future where the days of trickle-down economics are over and the wealthy and biggest corporations no longer get all the breaks.
I grew up in a home where not a lot trickled down on my Dad’s kitchen table.
That’s why I’m determined to turn things around so the middle class does well the poor have a way up and the wealthy still does well.
We all do well.
And there’s more to do to make sure you’re feeling the benefits of all we’re doing.
Americans pay more for prescription drugs than anywhere else.
It’s wrong and I’m ending it.
With a law I proposed and signed and not one Republican voted for we finally beat Big Pharma!
Instead of paying $400 a month for insulin seniors with diabetes only have to pay $35 a month!
And now I want to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American who needs it!
For years people have talked about it but I finally got it done and gave Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs just like the VA does for our veterans.
That’s not just saving seniors money.
It’s saving taxpayers money cutting the federal deficit by $160 Billion because Medicare will no longer have to pay exorbitant prices to Big Pharma.
This year Medicare is negotiating lower prices for some of the costliest drugs on the market that treat everything from heart disease to arthritis.
Now it’s time to go further and give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for 500 drugs over the next decade.
That will not only save lives it will save taxpayers another $200 Billion!
Starting next year that same law caps total prescription drug costs for seniors on Medicare at $2,000 a year even for expensive cancer drugs that can cost $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 a year.
Now I want to cap prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year for everyone!
Folks Obamacare, known as the Affordable Care Act is still a very big deal.
Over one hundred million of you can no longer be denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions.
But my predecessor and many in this chamber want to take that protection away by repealing the Affordable Care Act.
I won’t let that happen!
We stopped you 50 times before and we will stop you again!
In fact I am protecting it and expanding it.
I enacted tax credits that save $800 per person per year reducing health care premiums for millions of working families.
Those tax credits expire next year.
I want to make those savings permanent!
Women are more than half of our population but research on women’s health has always been underfunded.
That’s why we’re launching the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, led by Jill who is doing an incredible job as First Lady.
Pass my plan for $12 Billion to transform women’s health research and benefit millions of lives across America!
I know the cost of housing is so important to you.
If inflation keeps coming down mortgage rates will come down as well.
But I’m not waiting.
I want to provide an annual tax credit that will give Americans $400 a month for the next two years as mortgage rates come down to put toward their mortgage when they buy a first home or trade up for a little more space.
My Administration is also eliminating title insurance fees for federally backed mortgages.
When you refinance your home this can save you $1,000 or more.
For millions of renters, we’re cracking down on big landlords who break antitrust laws by price-fixing and driving up rents.
I’ve cut red tape so more builders can get federal financing, which is already helping build a record 1.7 million housing units nationwide.
Now pass my plan to build and renovate 2 million affordable homes and bring those rents down!
Ideologically the challenge to philosophical compatibility are worldviews on capitalism and its economic alternatives, and on the principles of fairness, justice and liberty. Ideologies — major belief systems — prioritizes certain principles over other principles. This is the conflict. But what if there was not the system of partisan prioritization, but a system of balancing out the concerns of a democracy. Trumpism, although it is not seen by a quarter of Americans, is a choice against a system of compatibility. The practical expression in the United States is to see such a democrat hope for social compatible, or the ideal of a civil society, as an impractical ideal. Instead, the country has hyper-competitive “entrepreneurship”. But are the American money-markets that entrepreneurial? This is, ironically, the argument of many of Trump’s followers, trying to find riches in alternative currencies. Again, on the Left or Right, the uneducated masses follow the pipedream like lemmings leaping off a cliff. Get-Quick-Rich schemes have its practical expression in Australia. But it is off-set by an Australian national mythology of “fairness”.
To remain the strongest economy in the world we need the best education system in the world.
I want to give every child a good start by providing access to pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds.
Studies show that children who go to pre-school are nearly 50% more likely to finish high school and go on to earn a 2- or 4-year degree no matter their background.
I want to expand high-quality tutoring and summer learning time and see to it that every child learns to read by third grade.
I’m also connecting businesses and high schools so students get hands-on experience and a path to a good-paying job whether or not they go to college.
And I want to make college more affordable.
Let’s continue increasing Pell Grants for working- and middle-class families and increase our record investments in HBCUs and Hispanic and Minority-serving Institutions
I fixed student loan programs to reduce the burden of student debt for nearly 4 Million Americans including nurses firefighters and others in public service like Keenan Jones a public-school educator in Minnesota who’s here with us tonight.
He’s educated hundreds of students so they can go to college now he can help his own daughter pay for college.
Such relief is good for the economy because folks are now able to buy a home start a business even start a family.
While we’re at it I want to give public school teachers a raise!
The philosophical compatibility on Education was challenged by the culture-history wars. In both countries there grew a hatred and resentment towards educational processes and theories. It is not that there were not problems in the education systems. There are issues to work out, but the practical expression in the United States was one of outraged opinion along ideological lines. Henry Giroux illuminated this insight for the American education system:
Giroux, Henry (1983, co-edited with David E. Purpel). The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education: Deception or Discovery? Berkeley: McCutchan.
Giroux, Henry and Stanley Aronowitz (1985). Education Under Siege: The Conservative, Liberal, and Radical Debate Over Schooling, Westport: Bergin and Garvey Press.
Giroux, Henry (1988). Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Giroux, Henry and Stanley Aronowitz (1991). Postmodern Education: Politics, Culture, and Social Criticism, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
The Australian perspective is usually caught up in the rhetoric of the American culture-history warfare, which is explained by Giroux.
Now let me speak to a question of fundamental fairness for all Americans.
I’ve been delivering real results in a fiscally responsible way.
I’ve already cut the federal deficit by over one trillion dollars.
I signed a bipartisan budget deal that will cut another trillion dollars over the next decade.
And now it’s my goal to cut the federal deficit $3 trillion more by making big corporations and the very wealthy finally pay their fair share.
Look, I’m a capitalist.
If you want to make a million bucks—great!
Just pay your fair share in taxes.
A fair tax code is how we invest in the things that make a country great—health care, education, defense, and more.
But here’s the deal.
The last administration enacted a $2 Trillion tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the very wealthy and the biggest corporations and exploded the federal deficit.
They added more to the national debt than in any presidential term in American history.
For folks at home does anybody really think the tax code is fair?
Do you really think the wealthy and big corporations need another $2 trillion in tax breaks?
I sure don’t. I’m going to keep fighting like hell to make it fair!
Under my plan nobody earning less than $400,000 will pay an additional penny in federal taxes.
Nobody. Not one penny.
In fact the Child Tax Credit I passed during the pandemic cut taxes for millions of working families and cut child poverty in HALF.
Restore the Child Tax Credit because no child should go hungry in this country!
The way to make the tax code fair is to make big corporations and the very wealthy finally pay their share.
In 2020 55 of the biggest companies in America made $40 Billion in profits and paid zero in federal income taxes.
Not any more!
Thanks to the law I wrote and signed big companies now have to pay a minimum of 15%.
But that’s still less than working people pay in federal taxes.
It’s time to raise the corporate minimum tax to at least 21% so every big corporation finally begins to pay their fair share.
I also want to end the tax breaks for Big Pharma, Big Oil, private jets, and massive executive pay!
End it now!
There are 1,000 billionaires in America.
You know what the average federal tax rate for these billionaires is? 8.2 percent!
That’s far less than the vast majority of Americans pay.
No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, a nurse!
That’s why I’ve proposed a minimum tax of 25% for billionaires. Just 25%.
That would raise $500 Billion over the next 10 years.
Imagine what that could do for America. Imagine a future with affordable child care so millions of families can get the care they need and still go to work and help grow the economy.
Imagine a future with paid leave because no one should have to choose between working and taking care of yourself or a sick family member.
Imagine a future with home care and elder care so seniors and people living with disabilities can stay in their homes and family caregivers get paid what they deserve!
Tonight, let’s all agree once again to stand up for seniors!
Many of my Republican friends want to put Social Security on the chopping block.
If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age I will stop them!
Working people who built this country pay more into Social Security than millionaires and billionaires do. It’s not fair.
We have two ways to go on Social Security.
Republicans will cut Social Security and give more tax cuts to the wealthy.
I will protect and strengthen Social Security and make the wealthy pay their fair share!
Too many corporations raise their prices to pad their profits charging you more and more for less and less.
That’s why we’re cracking down on corporations that engage in price gouging or deceptive pricing from food to health care to housing.
In fact, snack companies think you won’t notice when they charge you just as much for the same size bag but with fewer chips in it.
Pass Senator Bob Casey’s bill to put a stop to shrinkflation!
I’m also getting rid of junk fees those hidden fees added at the end of your bills without your knowledge. My administration just announced we’re cutting credit card late fees from $32 to just $8.
The banks and credit card companies don’t like it.
Why?
I’m saving American families $20 billion a year with all of the junk fees I’m eliminating.
And I’m not stopping there.
My Administration has proposed rules to make cable travel utilities and online ticket sellers tell you the total price upfront so there are no surprises.
It matters.
And so does this.
The philosophical compatibility in economics is usually the global systems that economists “discover”, “map” or “construct”. We can have different economic systems, but there is only one planet. The trouble is that the practical expression in the United States is usually “Planet America”. And the practical expression in Australia can be as insular, but an Australian perspective, is, on average, less troubled by isolationism.
In November, my team began serious negotiations with a bipartisan group of Senators.
The result was a bipartisan bill with the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen in this country.
That bipartisan deal would hire 1,500 more border security agents and officers.
100 more immigration judges to help tackle a backload of 2 million cases.
4,300 more asylum officers and new policies so they can resolve cases in 6 months instead of 6 years.
100 more high-tech drug detection machines to significantly increase the ability to screen and stop vehicles from smuggling fentanyl into America.
This bill would save lives and bring order to the border.
It would also give me as President new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming.
The Border Patrol Union endorsed the bill.
The Chamber of Commerce endorsed the bill.
I believe that given the opportunity a majority of the House and Senate would endorse it as well.
But unfortunately, politics have derailed it so far.
I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill. He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him.
It’s not about him or me.
It’d be a winner for America!
My Republican friends you owe it to the American people to get this bill done.
We need to act.
And if my predecessor is watching instead of playing politics and pressuring members of Congress to block this bill, join me in telling Congress to pass it!
We can do it together. But here’s what I will not do.
I will not demonize immigrants saying they “poison the blood of our country” as he said in his own words.
I will not separate families.
I will not ban people from America because of their faith.
Unlike my predecessor, on my first day in office I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and so much more.
Because unlike my predecessor, I know who we are as Americans.
We are the only nation in the world with a heart and soul that draws from old and new.
Home to Native Americans whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years. Home to people from every place on Earth.
Some came freely.
Some chained by force.
Some when famine struck, like my ancestral family in Ireland.
Some to flee persecution.
Some to chase dreams that are impossible anywhere but here in America.
That’s America, where we all come from somewhere, but we are all Americans.
We can fight about the border, or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it.
Send me the border bill now!
Can we have philosophical compatibility for issues of global migration? For certain, nationalism gets in the road of compatibility for these complex issues. In the off-script moment, Joe Biden had to play “both sides of the fence”. The practical expression in the United States is, both, the country welcoming refugees as the national story, and the nativism. It is also there as an practical expression in Australia. In this regard, I do not think an Australian perspective is far from the American story.
A transformational moment in our history happened 59 years ago today in Selma, Alabama.
Hundreds of foot soldiers for justice marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named after a Grand Dragon of the KKK, to claim their fundamental right to vote.
They were beaten bloodied and left for dead.
Our late friend and former colleague John Lewis was at the march.
We miss him.
Joining us tonight are other marchers who were there including Betty May Fikes, known as the “Voice of Selma.”
A daughter of gospel singers and preachers, she sang songs of prayer and protest on that Bloody Sunday, to help shake the nation’s conscience. Five months later, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law.
But 59 years later, there are forces taking us back in time.
Voter suppression. Election subversion. Unlimited dark money. Extreme gerrymandering.
John Lewis was a great friend to many of us here. But if you truly want to honor him and all the heroes who marched with him, then it’s time for more than just talk.
Pass and send me the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act!
And stop denying another core value of America our diversity across American life.
Banning books.
It’s wrong!
Instead of erasing history, let’s make history!
I want to protect other fundamental rights!
Pass the Equality Act, and my message to transgender Americans: I have your back!
Pass the PRO Act for workers rights! And raise the federal minimum wage because every worker has the right to earn a decent living!
The philosophical compatibility for civil rights is difficult to achieve. Some philosophers will argue that is because of the “civil rights” narrative, and a better narrative is not about constitutional rights at all, but on human nature and the respect for all life forms. There are political truths in this counter-argument, but the history has gone too far to reject the “civil rights” narrative, which is, in fact, the practical expression in the United States. Much less so, it is the practical expression in Australia, which nostalgically looks to the British common law tradition. Rather than judicious rights, an Australian perspective is to fairness in common sense.
We are also making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it.
I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world.
I am cutting our carbon emissions in half by 2030.
Creating tens of thousands of clean-energy jobs, like the IBEW workers building and installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations.
Conserving 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030.
Taking historic action on environmental justice for fence-line communities smothered by the legacy of pollution.
And patterned after the Peace Corps and Ameri Corps, I’ve launched a Climate Corps to put 20,000 young people to work at the forefront of our clean energy future.
I’ll triple that number this decade.
The rise of the global culture-history wars coincided with the denial of climate change. After the mid-century narratives about mainstream “facts” and truth-telling, the non-expert outliers got their “day in court” of public opinion. But it all flies in the face of philosophical compatibility. In the practical expression in the United States, it simply does not work. The practical expression in Australia is more reliant on “authority” as vocalized “trust”. But in recent times, there has been an Americanism, coinciding with an Australian perspective and narrative of distrusting authority (the history of the Australian ‘rebelling’ outlaw). American radical schools of thought in anarchism have carried through on the streets of Melbourne. That has been primarily on the issue of health authority, but it also aligns well with the same suspicion of authority in relation to climate change solutions.
All Americans deserve the freedom to be safe, and America is safer today than when I took office.
The year before I took office, murders went up 30% nationwide the biggest increase in history.
That was then.
Now, through my American Rescue Plan, which every Republican voted against, I’ve made the largest investment in public safety ever.
Last year, the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history, and violent crime fell to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years.
But we have more to do.
Help cities and towns invest in more community police officers, more mental health workers, and more community violence intervention.
Give communities the tools to crack down on gun crime, retail crime, and carjacking.
Keep building public trust, as I’ve been doing by taking executive action on police reform, and calling for it to be the law of the land, directing my Cabinet to review the federal classification of marijuana, and expunging thousands of convictions for mere possession, because no one should be jailed for using or possessing marijuana!
To take on crimes of domestic violence, I am ramping up federal enforcement of the Violence Against Women Act, that I proudly wrote, so we can finally end the scourge of violence against women in America!
And there’s another kind of violence I want to stop.
With us tonight is Jasmine, whose 9-year-old sister Jackie was murdered with 21 classmates and teachers at her elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Soon after it happened, Jill and I went to Uvalde and spent hours with the families.
We heard their message, and so should everyone in this chamber do something.
I did do something by establishing the first-ever Office of Gun Violence Prevention in the White House that Vice President Harris is leading.
Meanwhile, my predecessor told the NRA he’s proud he did nothing on guns when he was President.
After another school shooting in Iowa he said we should just “get over it.”
I say we must stop it.
I’m proud we beat the NRA when I signed the most significant gun safety law in nearly 30 years!
Now we must beat the NRA again!
I’m demanding a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines!
Pass universal background checks!
None of this violates the Second Amendment or vilifies responsible gun owners.
Guns and crime has become the global archetypal image of the United States. And yet, as the rest of the world understands, there is philosophical compatibility, even as imperfect and fallible, in tackling crime and gun-racketting. The practical expression in Australia was Howard’s restriction of gun-ownership. The overwhelming Australian perspective is that Howard help to prevent the madness of the NRA-type influence in our country.
As we manage challenges at home, we’re also managing crises abroad including in the Middle East.
I know the last five months have been gut-wrenching for so many people, for the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, and so many here in America.
This crisis began on October 7th with a massacre by the terrorist group Hamas.
1,200 innocent people women and girls men and boys slaughtered, many enduring sexual violence.
The deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
250 hostages taken.
Here in the chamber tonight are American families whose loved ones are still being held by Hamas.
I pledge to all the families that we will not rest until we bring their loved ones home.
We will also work around the clock to bring home Evan and Paul, Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.
Israel has a right to go after Hamas.
Hamas could end this conflict today by releasing the hostages, laying down arms, and surrendering those responsible for October 7th.
Israel has an added burden because Hamas hides and operates among the civilian population. But Israel also has a fundamental responsibility to protect innocent civilians in Gaza.
This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Most of whom are not Hamas.
Thousands and thousands are innocent women and children.
Girls and boys also orphaned.
Nearly 2 million more Palestinians under bombardment or displaced.
Homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin.
Families without food, water, medicine.
It’s heartbreaking.
We’ve been working non-stop to establish an immediate ceasefire that would last for at least six weeks.
It would get the hostages home, ease the intolerable humanitarian crisis, and build toward something more enduring.
The United States has been leading international efforts to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
Tonight, I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters.
No U.S. boots will be on the ground.
This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.
But Israel must also do its part.
Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and ensure that humanitarian workers aren’t caught in the cross fire.
To the leadership of Israel I say this.
Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.
Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.
As we look to the future, the only real solution is a two-state solution.
I say this as a lifelong supporter of Israel and the only American president to visit Israel in wartime.
There is no other path that guarantees Israel’s security and democracy.
There is no other path that guarantees Palestinians can live with peace and dignity.
There is no other path that guarantees peace between Israel and all of its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia.
Creating stability in the Middle East also means containing the threat posed by Iran.
That’s why I built a coalition of more than a dozen countries to defend international shipping and freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.
I’ve ordered strikes to degrade Houthi capabilities and defend U.S. Forces in the region.
As Commander in Chief, I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and military personnel.
The philosophical compatibility in geo-politics is very difficult. The solution is undoing militarism. This is not the same as the military in the United States. Although there are practical expression of militarism, there are many in decision-making of the military who are aware of the issue and are more committed to “peace-enforcement” than wanting to open war fronts. This is true in Australia as in the United States. The difference, though, is that United States has had a history in violent covert military operations (to avoid a war) and undermining democratic governments through covert spy operations. Australians, in recent years, are asking for perspective on whether we have similar practical expression in Australia
For years, all I’ve heard from my Republican friends and so many others is China’s on the rise and America is falling behind.
They’ve got it backward.
America is rising.
We have the best economy in the world.
Since I’ve come to office, our GDP is up.
And our trade deficit with China is down to the lowest point in over a decade.
We’re standing up against China’s unfair economic practices.
And standing up for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
I’ve revitalized our partnerships and alliances in the Pacific.
I’ve made sure that the most advanced American technologies can’t be used in China’s weapons.
Frankly for all his tough talk on China, it never occurred to my predecessor to do that.
We want competition with China, but not conflict.
And we’re in a stronger position to win the competition for the 21st Century against China or anyone else for that matter.
Whether East-West can find philosophical compatibility is an open question. Since the mid-century there have been fruitful East-West dialogue for mutual understanding. Both Australian and American perspective is not homogeneous. There are those who fear the loss of an European narrative and outlook, and those who believe that the world would be better place if we enlarged our worldview.
Here at home I’ve signed over 400 bipartisan bills.
But there’s more to do to pass my Unity Agenda.
Strengthen penalties on fentanyl trafficking.
Pass bipartisan privacy legislation to protect our children online.
Harness the promise of A.I. and protect us from its peril.
Ban A.I. voice impersonation and more!
And keep our one truly sacred obligation, to train and equip those we send into harm’s way and care for them and their families when they come home, and when they don’t.
That’s why I signed the PACT Act, one of the most significant laws ever, helping millions of veterans who were exposed to toxins and who now are battling more than 100 cancers.
Many of them didn’t come home.
We owe them and their families.
And we owe it to ourselves to keep supporting our new health research agency called ARPA-H and remind us that we can do big things like end cancer as we know it!
Let me close with this.
I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while.
And when you get to my age certain things become clearer than ever before.
The habit not to think but take the easy way out is what ties together all of these issues in this section of the speech. The unity is the philosophical compatibility. It has less to do with Australian or American perspective, or even practical expression in Australia or in the United States. It has to with learning together.
I know the American story.
Again and again I’ve seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation.
Between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future.
My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy.
A future based on the core values that have defined America.
Honesty. Decency. Dignity. Equality.
To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor.
Now some other people my age see a different story.
An American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution.
That’s not me.
I was born amid World War II when America stood for freedom in the world.
I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, among working people who built this country.
I watched in horror as two of my heroes, Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, were assassinated and their legacies inspired me to pursue a career in service.
A public defender, county councilman, elected United States Senator at 29, then Vice President, to our first Black President, now President, with our first woman Vice President.
In my career I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old.
Whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures.
Our North Star.
The very idea of America, that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.
We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either.
And I won’t walk away from it now.
Nationalism does bring a type of philosophical compatibility, but there is a necessity to challenge, in reconsidering the idea of our country. It is necessary to have an idea of national citizenship, but the dangers and misunderstanding stems from the filters of our own perception: ‘culture’, ‘religion’, ‘secularity’ and they are often themes that the average Australian or American misunderstands.
My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old our ideas are.
Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas.
But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.
To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future of what America can and should be.
Tonight you’ve heard mine.
I see a future where we defend democracy not diminish it.
I see a future where we restore the right to choose and protect other freedoms not take them away.
I see a future where the middle class finally has a fair shot and the wealthy finally have to pay their fair share in taxes.
I see a future where we save the planet from the climate crisis and our country from gun violence.
Above all, I see a future for all Americans!
I see a country for all Americans!
And I will always be a president for all Americans!
Because I believe in America!
I believe in you the American people.
You’re the reason I’ve never been more optimistic about our future!
So let’s build that future together!
Let’s remember who we are!
We are the United States of America.
There is nothing beyond our capacity when we act together!
May God bless you all.
May God protect our troops.
For Joe Biden the philosophical compatibility is believing in America with the framework of ‘the Democrat’ national story. As an Australian perspective, we say “Fair enough”. Republicans will mostly likely not believe Joe Biden. The problem for the Republicans is that the majority of Americans — both centralists and the leftwing — believe the mythological story of Joe Biden, and the Republicans do not have any other story than Donald Trump’s MAGA narrative. Globally, the MAGA is too thin, and is itself the story of American decline: to tell a successful political lie, you tell a big one. But Americans today, in the majority, no longer see any benefit in the lying. The crux of matter is whether they will come out and vote accordingly.
Note: There were impromptu sections which were added and developed before the publication of the transcript. They also add value in a grand State of Union speech.
I have been a cultural and social historian in relation to the ‘American challenges’ for many years. While I appreciate your moderating commentary, I felt that you keep missing the bigger picture for the capacity to educate people on their own belief systems, and why they become so wrong in their judgements on the political environment without that capacity. Here is my argument about your recent piece entitled, “The sick politics at the heart of this week’s US crisis go deeper than Donald Trump”.
“America has always teetered on the edge of collapse” — journalistic phrasing which does not make sense when you think about it, somewhat deeper. The historiography is true as only as the narrative of “maelstrom”, a violent whirlpool of disorder, is true; but being overplayed, with good or bad intent (either way), it is false. Does anyone pause to consider that it is the naïve shock which feeds this exaggerated alarm. Shock at a half-hearted insurrection, where the politically astute — those who were not shocked — could see it coming. If I am shocked at anything, it is the lack of bloodshed, and I am glad for the lack of determination within the madness.
I have noticed a certain ideological conservatism in recent journalistic reactions to the mayhem. It is a tendency to blame uncomfortable agendas from the Left, back to “1968” (but agendas also had certain conservative roots). Of course, “radical” violence on both sides should be condemned, but why refer to “black civil rights, gay equality, family values, gun laws, abortion or feminism” and conclude that there is a perpetual culture war. That there is a culture war, yes, that is true, but who is perpetuating the alarm?
If you want to get out of the war, then it is important to understand one’s own self-hidden ideology and stop using the term as the problem for ‘the other’. The problem is that so-called conservatives do not understand conservatism, in the same way that progressivists do not understand progressivism. The capacity to truly understand one’s own big beliefs is the very reason why you had dissenters like Mitt Romney who were able to stand against the stupidity of his own party in a timely manner.
Kind regards,
Neville.
Stan Grant Article on 10 January 2021 at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-10/us-toxic-politics-started-long-before-donald-trump-arrived/13042856
Still half tank (much downhill breaking – makes more use of the electric engine). Fill tank at Newcastle.
Hours on road: 8.5 (0830 AEDT-1500 AEDT)
Music Album Road CD:
Moby’s Reprise.
Robert Plant’s Digging Deep: Subterranea
Steve Hackett’s The Tokyo Tapes
This road trip was a twelve-day business-leisure journey of cathartic-therapeutic-life accounting experience, with seven actual days on the road in the vehicle, 2016 TOYOTA CAMRY ATARA S AVV50R SEDAN 421AA2, owned by the driver, fully insured and no debts.
The business purpose was the delivery of a paper at the 2022 Evangelical History Association (EHA) Conference, at Alphacrucis College, Paramatta NSW, called, “Evangelicals & Nation-Building: Radical and Transformational Criticism from Across Christian Traditions in Queensland History.” Associated with that purpose was an opportunity for further research while staying in Parramatta for six days.
The age of the vehicle is the number of years since my lover, wife, and life companion, Ruth Elizabeth Buch (nee Lohmann) has been dead, passing from a brain cancer, Glioblastoma. The Road Trip was a Memento mori (Latin for ‘remember that you [have to] die’). The absence of Ruth was, for me, Memento mori in particular sense, the sense that death is part of the living in the absence of lost love and expecting to pass into non-existence at any moment of the journey. Road trips are dangerous, and it was in my mind continuingly, although not constantly, that I would not make it home.
The ‘Great Journey we Wanted’ was the anticipation Ruth and I had, as a couple, that when the girls grew up, we would have our grey nomad moment of time, travelling on our senior road trips. This was well before Ruth knew she was going to die in 2016. Some years before in the early diagnosis, we had thoughts of international or interstate travel, but being dirt poor, we settled for local-regional holidays instead. The awful twist in the tale is that it was the death of our loved ones – Ruth and my parents – which put me on the financial footing over the last five years, which allowed me to afford this road trip. It is the road trip that Ruth never knew, but the one when she haunted me in her absence, yet still hearing her voice.
THE STORY CONTINUES…
About Ruth.
I woke, as expected, in a strange bedroom, not of a lover next to me, but where I was the night before. I was hungry in more ways than one. Like a dog chasing cars.
The Snow Patrol song was a favour of Ruth’s. Sometime in her late 40s, when we were at Mill Park, I recall Ruth’s delight at being presented with a couple of Snow Patrol CDs. It was odd, this musically turn of Ruth’s. It was usually me who preferred a piece that was heavy and profound, with Ruth it was something more popular. At this stage of life, Ruth’s musical insights were more seriously and niche. I found it too ‘heavy’ at the time. In another blog, I’ll comment on Ruth’s love of opera in her dying days. But these days were all well past, and here I laid in the bed of the Country Comfort Armidale, at 0730 AEDT. To satisfy something of my hunger, I walked down Faulkner Street for breakfast at Seesaw Coffee: eggs, bacon, and toast, with strong coffee for the day ahead ($10.50).
By 0900 AEDT I was back on the road south. The climb out of the Armidale township, semi-circling the one or several of the contours until the top of the range was fascinating, as I passed the elite schools at 40 km per hour. Homage to another spoilt generation who become no friends to ‘higher education’ and lifelong learning, whether one is inside or outside the universities. It is appropriate that New England University is located at the top of the range, with the township well below in the valley, at times hidden in mist and clouds. You get the picture, but it is not a comment about the nature of higher education but of the condition of Australian universities in the arts and humanities, and even the social sciences. To be sure, there are those of us, inside and outside of the university, scholars first and employed/contracted workers second, who are achieving great things in the mystical land of higher education. It is only that, as Hegel stated about the Owl of Minerva.
The scene is brighter, speeding hedonistically down the New England (A15) highway. The fresh morning, the strong sunlight bringing out the colours of green and a goldish yellow, the national colours, and also bringing out a sunburnt face late in the day. I hear Ruth’s voice.
I feel happy and yet so sad, a tear in my eye as I write this entry, many days later. Today, 1 April 2022, April Fool’s Day, is Ruth’s day of birth in 1961. 55 years of birthdays, and no more.
And yet, what the Owl will reveal to the ignorant is that the tragic-at-heart do know joy. Those who too readily dismiss Schopenhauer and Hegel for the sense of the tragic fail to comprehend the joy of learning the deeper truths in life. Fools, who simply just want to live in the surface of it all. And the journey has only just began for this old fool.
My pace is slowing down from what was the day before. We get into habits of driving ourselves, and I realised that we do not need to be at the top speed, at every moment pushing the limit. There is a pace to life, and a different pace in different stages, and different contexts. At a slower speed you can take in the landscape, naturally, culturally, and intellectually. You notice ribboning of the hills, the stark mountain vista, the depth of the creeks and gullies, outcrops of boulders and other shaping’s which mark the landscape. And yet when we are relaxed enough to do so, there is the pressing need to get to the next town, the next toilet stop, and the next stop to satisfy one’s hunger and thirst.
So, I am again at the Tamworth Regional Playground, driving into the carpark at 1000 AEDT. The last time I was here, was with the family in 1998 when the landscape was completely strange to us. We were on our second day on the journey to our new life in Melbourne, and where Margs would be born to complete the family grouping. We had never been this far south off the coast (‘sub-coastal’ was term used in the last blog piece). The Peel River flows about 420 km (260 mi) north of Sydney on the New England Highway, and 280 km (170 mi) inland on the Oxley Highway.
Tamworth is situated at a narrow point on the Peel River floodplain, nestled at the base of the Wentworth Mounds, a spur of the Moonbi Range, where the Northwest Slopes rise to the Northern Tablelands. The elevation is around 400 m (1,300 ft) AHD. The Peel River runs southeast to northwest through Tamworth. The main city centre is on the northeast bank, between the river and the Wentworth Mounds, which rise to heights of 800 m (2,600 ft), towering over the city. This is the location of the rest stop.
The Kamilaroi people, from whose language comes the word ‘budgerigar,’ were there in a ‘natural’ state, when in 1818, John Oxley passed through the Peel Valley. In 1831, the first sheep stations and cattle stations were formed, and was soon followed by the Australian Agricultural Company which was granted a lease of 127,000 hectares (310,000 acres) of land at Goonoo Goonoo, south of the present location of Tamworth, extending to present-day Calala.
We need to escape to strange lands, and where the emotion floods in waves. White soul loss and Aboriginal deaths. In the 1830s, a company town began to develop on the Peel’s southwest bank, the present site of West Tamworth. In 1850, a public town was gazetted on the opposite side of the river from the existing settlement. This town became the main town, called ‘Tamworth’ after Tamworth, Staffordshire, represented at the time in parliament by the famous Robert Peel, founder of the UK Metropolitan Police Service. On 9 November 1888, Tamworth became the first location in Australia to have electric street lighting powered by a municipally owned power station, giving the town the title of “First Town of Light”. With Peel as one of the global founders of the modern Conservative Party, in this location you have the combination of innovation and nationalistic nostalgia. Tamworth is famous as the “Country Music Capital of Australia”, annually hosting the Tamworth Country Music Festival in late January; the second-biggest country music festival in the world (after Nashville). Perhaps, the beauty of country music is how the sentiment of the sound captures the emerging of innovation and nostalgia.
Tamworth is the administrative centre of the North-Western region of New South Wales, Australia. It is the largest and most populated city in the North-Western region, with a population of 42,872 in June 2018, making it the second largest inland city in New South Wales. Tamworth is 318 km (198 mi) from the Queensland border, and it is located almost midway between Brisbane and Sydney.
Image: Tamworth Bicentennial Park
Memorial to the Australian Light Horse, Tamworth, NSW. This bronze statue was sculpted by Tanya Bartlett of Newcastle. Constructed at a cost of $150,000 it was funded by grants from Federal and State Governments, Tamworth Regional Council, Joblink Plus and donations from business houses, property owners, RSL Sub-Branches and the community.
Source: Cgoodwin – Own work
Ruth is quiet this morning, as I returned to the road, and in spite of the flood of memories. There are sounds of silence in the breaks between the road trip CDs playing at various volumes, depending on my mood. It combines thoughts of Ruth, the City that shaped me, and the strange land of ‘the country.’
Racing through the outcrops of towns, although at 40-50 km per hour, I was growing hungry again, but more to the point, travel was being weary, even in the second day. I decided to stop earlier than planned, now at 1130 AEDT. At the Post Office (LPO) in Wallabadah, I walked into the delightful ‘Best Coffee Outside of Italy’ (yes, that is the name of the establishment). I was reinvigorated with good coffee (‘best’ is pushing the claim). I savoured a tasty beef & chutney sandwich.
Wallabadah is located 55 kilometres south of Tamworth on the New England Highway and is in the Liverpool Plains Shire. It was originally known as “Thalababuri” by the Kamilaroi Aboriginal people. Wallabadah’s name was derived from an aboriginal word meaning ‘stone.’
The first European squatters arrived in the region in about 1830 and Wallabadah Station was established in 1835 on 44,000 acres (180 km2) of land. Australia’s first country racing club was established at Wallabadah in 1852 and the Wallabadah Cup is still held on New Year’s Day (the current racecourse was built in 1898). The Wallabadah Post Office opened on 1 October 1856.
Image: The church on the New England Highway, Wallabadah, NSW.
Source: Cgoodwin – Own work
A common attraction in these Australian country townships are totems to invasion-settlement. In 2005 the First Fleet Garden was created on the banks of Quirindi Creek. Near the historic Wallabadah Cemetery is one of the largest undisturbed whitebox woodlands remaining in Australia, along with the indigenous trees and grasses that are peculiar to these woodlands.
At the 2006 census, Wallabadah had a population of 746.
My original plan was to drive and stop in Wingen, a village in the Upper Hunter Shire, in the Hunter Region. You know that you are in the famous Hunter valley. Wingen comes from the local Aboriginal language, and means ‘fire.’
Image: Ol Church, Wingen, Upper Hunter, NSW, New England Highway, Wingen
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Source: SeanMack at English Wikipedia
I did pause on the road in the area, at the Burning Mountain Rest Area. The Burning Mountain, according to scientists, is the world’s oldest known coal fire, and has been burning for approximately 6,000 years.
On the other side of the road is The Wingen Maid, a rock formation in the local Wingen Maid Nature Reserve which is said to resemble a woman when viewed from a particular direction. I did not see it. There are a few ‘hit and miss’ face pareidolia across the country. In my region, Tibrogargan, beside the Steve Irwin Way (old Pacific highway) looks like a gorilla in a particular direction, the eyes as deep gorges in the rock. Those eyes haunted me as a child on family road trips coming homeward.
Time is slipping away. The sun does look at me as it burns my face. The beauty of a navigation system is that bears time in the space of the landscape as one travels. You plan stops on the map, but time slips away, and you do not stop and just travel-by. All you have is the scenery and a direction of travel.
Scone today is one such place; north of Muswellbrook about 270 kilometres north of Sydney. Pronounced as in ‘stone,’ and not as the English afternoon tea, Scone is in a farming area and also noted for breeding Thoroughbred racehorses. It is known as the ‘Horse capital of Australia.’ The annual Scone Horse Festival is a celebration of Scone’s cultural links to equines.
First inhabitants of the region were the Wonnarua & Gamilaroi Aboriginal Peoples. Allan Cunningham was the first recorded European person to travel into the Scone area, reaching the Upper Dartbrook and Murrurundi areas in 1823. Surveyor Henry Dangar travelled through the area, prior to passing over the Liverpool Range above Murrurundi in 1824. The town initially started as the village of Redbank in 1826, and in 1831 Hugh Cameron, a Scottish descendant put forward the name of Scone, gazetted in 1837.
Image: St Luke’s Anglican Church, Scone, NSW
Source: Cgoodwin – Own work
The town is home to very old pony clubs and a polo club, as well as the region for dairies and wineries. Scone was not all hedonist culture. One of the first educational groups to be established in New South Wales was a reading society called, The Scone Book Society, formed in 1841. Like many country towns in Australia, the reading society became the School of Arts, a Mechanics’ Institute, and library, which, in the case of Scone, occupied buildings in Kingdon Street (1873-1917) and Kelly Street (1924-1954). On my journey, these buildings still stand across the towns, and the cities, as a mausoleum to the fact that Australia was once a great educative nation.
Scone is the Terminus on the Main North railway line, and is served by the Hunter Line passenger service from Sydney. Roads northward into the valley and the range now serve where the old rail once took the journey to the Queensland border (further story in the last road trip blog). The town is connected to nearby Gloucester via Scone Road, which traverses the Barrington Tops, and is an important fact on my return journey.
At the 2006 census, Scone had a population of 4,624 people.
About Landscape.
Although the passage takes me through many townships and time is slipping-by, the landscape stretches out with time to spare. You are met with wonder as you drive at 100 km per hour over the crests and through rolling hills. The view from the end of the range, and looking deep into the Hunter Valley is spectacular as it is dangerous on road precipice. It is like coming off Cunninghams Gap eastward but much longer. Indeed, the valley feels as if it continually descending towards Newcastle. Muswellbrook is 127 km (79 mi) north-west of Newcastle, and its seems to be familiar, even through I probably travelled through a few times. The reason is Donald Horne spent his early childhood in Muswellbrook and who wrote the first volume of his autobiography, The Education of Young Donald, which features an extensive description of life in the town in the 1920s and early 1930s. Over the past month I have been reading the voluminous Horne memoir.
The Wonnarua and Gamilaroi peoples occupied the land, which is now been given over to coal mining and horse breeding. The first European to explore the area was Chief Constable John Howe in 1819, with the first white settlement occurring in the 1820s. The township of Muswellbrook was gazetted on 23 October 1833. To the south, “Forbestown” was established by the sons of Francis Forbes in 1842; the name was changed in 1848 to “South Muswellbrook” to prevent confusion with the town of Forbes.
The present spelling of Muswellbrook has a disputed etymology. ‘Mussel Creek’ (now called ‘Muscle Creek’) was first named by a party of surveyors who found mussels in the small stream while camping along its banks in the early 19th century. There are two theories. The name derived from the Muswell Hill area of London, due to the influence of Sir Francis Forbes whose wife, Amelia, was born and schooled in that town; or that the name is a gradual corruption of the original gazetted name “Musclebrook”, eventually adopted as the official spelling due to common use.
Today, along with the black dust pollution, the region has developed a reputation for gourmet food and wine production. However, the Australian psyche is still entranced by the old technology. South of the Muswellbrook township are two coal fuelled power stations, Liddell and Bayswater. They were commissioned in 1973 and mid 1980s respectively and employ approximately 500 people from the area. There is something sad and black about the place under the hedonist veneer. The Steely Dan song ‘Black Friday’ from the 1975 album Katy Lied contains the lyrics of this disposition:
When Black Friday comes
I’ll fly down to Muswellbrook
Gonna strike all the big red words
From my little black book
Gonna do just what I please
Gonna wear no socks and shoes
With nothing to do but feed
All the kangaroos
When Black Friday comes
I’m gonna dig myself a hole
Gonna lay down in it
’til I satisfy my soul
Gonna let the world pass by me
The Archbishop’s gonna sanctify me
And if he don’t come across
I’m gonna let it roll
Songwriter Donald Fagen explained the lyrics in an interview with Paul Cashmere of Undercover Music; “I think we had a map and put our finger down at the place that we thought would be the furthest away from New York or wherever we were at the time”. For such flippant and sad references, the town has had several important cultural references. Tommy Emmanuel (born 1955), the virtuoso guitarist, was born in Muswellbrook, and Muswellbrook is also mentioned in Thomas Keneally’s bookThe Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.
According to the 2016 census of Population, there were 12,075 people in Muswellbrook. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 9.3% of the population.
Throughout the New England and Hunter Valley journey, the faint yellowish Clive Palmer’s billboards of the United Australia Party (UAP; formerly known as Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and the Palmer United Party, PUP) align the road periodically. It symptomatic of Australian politics in the Covid-19 years and its aftermath, and would be a mystery for the international readers. I have to explain that Clive Palmer is an Australian wannabee for Donald Trump, but not as politically successful. The big similarity to Trump, is that Palmer wastes his own millions on political lies, rallying to his billboard slogan, “Freedom, Freedom.” Unlike Trump to the American Republican Party, Palmer’s groundswell is limited to the neo-conservative hillbillies of the Australian political tradition. Even the traditional conservative force of the Nationalist Party finds Palmer’s politics idiocy, and it is for everyone except those obnoxious, hardhead, and uncaring libertarians. Its minority popularity is the seethe-ness of pet hates. It is the nastiness of ratbag talkback radio which can be heard flying down country and city roads.
On Charlie Patton Highway, the mist, the rain, the mud
Somewhere east of Tunica and I’m close to givin’ up
This car goes ’round in circles, the road remains the same
For help and consolation, I’ll hit that dial again
Turn it up
…I’m lost inside America, I’m turnin’ inside out
I’m turnin’ into someone else I heard so much about
I’m blinded by the neon, the righteous and the might
I’m stuck inside the radio, turn it on or let me out
Turn it up
Alone with disconnection and not a lonesome word
I reach out to the radio and the clinically disturbed
“Give it up” the man says, “Surrender and be saved”
He’ll drive away my demons, his help is on the way
So, turn it up
Turn it up
Oh, turn it up
A touch of serendipity, a little stroke of luck
The radio inside this car brings guidance from above
The smallest contribution will keep me in safe hands
I’m callin’ 1-800, I ain’t leavin’ it to chance
Turn it up
Songwriters: Robert Plant / Miller / Giovino
There is, however, in the UAP party name is a historical connection here between rabid Australian Far Right (although in the bubble denying the label) and the moderate conservative ethos in Australian culture. Originally, The United Australia Party (UAP) was an Australian political party that was founded in 1931 and dissolved in 1945, led by two Prime Ministers: Joseph Lyons (1932–1939) and Robert Menzies (1939–1941). At the time radicals, and the social liberals who did not share the nationalistic ideology of the UAP (and its emerged previous entities of the Nationalist and Australian parties), found the politics very old fashioned. However, at least, the very Catholic Lyons and very British Menzies, were for ‘The Forgotten People,’ a reference to the famous 1942 speech by Menzies, which hallmarked the end of the UAP and the founding of the Liberal Party. Palmer, in the last four years has been able to tap into that honourable nostalgia from the days of Lyon’s and Menzies’. However, Palmer represents the struggling industries of past – he is a businessman of iron ore, nickel, and coal holdings. The sentiments bite into Labor’s Hunter heartland of coal mining and the export industry. There are those in the Hunter Valley and the industry who can see ‘the writing on the wall’ and are attempting to turn the tide towards the prophetic innovation. Nevertheless, there are those in the Valley gullible enough to sallow Palmer’s Trumpian politics.
The traditional landowners of the land around what is now the town of Singleton are the Wonnarua / Wanaruah people. Singleton was established as a township in the 1820s. In its early years, it was also called Patrick’s Plains. The Main Northern railway line reached Singleton in 1863 and was the end of the line until 1869.
Singleton was subject to the major flooding of the Hunter River in 1955, causing extensive damage to the town. There was an alternative town at Whittingham in a flood-free area, but the habitual actions continued in the conservative mind (mentioned in the previous blog piece).
In June 2018, Singleton had an urban population of 16,346 person in the Singleton urban area. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 6.2% of the population.
Grizzley stories usually follow the highway. There are bushrangers, who stories will picked up in the last blog piece. The roots of the brutality traditionally have seen to go back to the nation’s ‘convict stain.’ It has been a controversial thesis among Australian historians, but cruelty and violence of penal convictism cannot be denied. What international readers often do not realise is that convicts were spread across the regions from Sydney Cove, Coal River, Port Arthur, and Moreton Bay. It was the start of the Australian tradition in cheap labour. In November 1833 six local convicts decided to revolt based on poor treatment with little provisions and floggings. The overseers were away from one of the Singleton properties at the time washing sheep, and the rebels took the opportunity to steal clothes, guns, food, and horses. The repercussions were devilish harsh in comparison to the evil deeds done. Five of six men involved the riots were sentenced to death. Flogging was routine in the absence of the death sentence handed out. God have mercy!
Image: Convent of the Sisters of Mercy
Source: Sardaka (talk) 08:58, 19 September 2011 (UTC) – Own work
By the time you reach the town of Maitland you have reached the Lower Hunter Valley of New South Wales. The river has been flowing with me down into the deep valley since Singleton.
The Wonnarua People were the first known people of the area with the land by the name ‘Bo-un’ after a species of bird. From around 1816, cedar logging parties from the convict settlement of Newcastle (Coal River) were the first Europeans to stay on the site. Governor Lachlan Macquarie visited the area in 1818, naming it Wallis Plains after Captain James Wallis who was commandant of the Newcastle penal colony at the time. In 1819, convict farmers were allowed to select land at Wallis Plains, the most notable of which was Molly Morgan. By 1821 the first British government buildings, consisting of a cottage and barracks, were constructed, and in 1823 James Mudie financed the construction of a wharf. Two years later William Powditch opened the first general store at Wallis Plains.
In 1829, assistant surveyor George Boyle White, officially laid out a township on the site of Wallis Plains. The village was called Maitland possibly in honour of Frederick Lewis Maitland. Due to population growth, Maitland was partitioned in 1835 into West Maitland (which was the original Wallis Plains settlement) and East Maitland. The nearby town of Morpeth developed at the same time from the Green Hills land grant given to Lieutenant Edward Charles Close, a Peninsular War veteran. Morpeth served as the head of navigation for larger ships (later, steamships), and goods were transhipped upriver to West Maitland on barges and smaller vessels. Originally the river route between Morpeth and West Maitland was 26 kilometres (16 mi), today after various floods and river course changes this has reduced to just 9 kilometres (5.6 mi).
There have been a few cultural history references, in the 20th century, which highlight the name ‘Maitland.’ The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934), based on Maxwell Gray’s 1886 novel of the same name. Although the film was shot on location in Camden and at Cinesound’s studios in Bondi, the plot associated with the country town behaviour as has come to be discussed in the last quarter of the century. In the day, though, discussion of the plot was not welcomed in the open. Cyril Maitland is a clergyman living in a small seaside town, who impregnates the beautiful Alma Lee despite being engaged to another woman. When Alma’s father Ben finds out about the pregnancy, he attacks Maitland and is killed in a fall. Mailtand’s best friend, Doctor Henry Everard, gets the blame, and spends twenty years in jail while Maitland’s career thrives. The director came into trouble with the censor but was able to overcome objections. The tide of social attitudes was turning and the film received second place in a 1935 Commonwealth film competition, winning £1,250. Another association in my work is that Michael Scott Fletcher (1868–1947), Methodist minister, foundation master of Wesley College, University of Sydney, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, was once a notable resident.
Less fleeting for cultural connections is a few locations. The Maitland Jewish Cemetery in Louth Park, one of only two provincial Jewish cemeteries in New South Wales, is testament to the Jewish community that was active in Maitland up until the 1930s. The Immigrants Home was founded by Caroline Chisholm in East Maitland and was the first public building that was used to treat the sick. The site eventually became known as Maitland Benevolent Asylum.
Maitland’s proximity to the Hunter River has resulted in a succession of floods. Over 200 floods have occurred on the Hunter River since settlement, 13 of those higher than the river’s normal peak limit of 10.7 metres (35.1 ft). Of these 13, all have had a direct effect on the city of Maitland. Between 1830 and 1834 Maitland experienced five floods. The 1832 flood was severe with water reaching about 8.84 m (29 ft) and killing seven people. The 1834 flood water reached the same height. In the winter of 1857, the Hunter River rose again to record heights, reaching 9.2 m (30 ft). Flooding continued for the next 30 years with the floods of the 1890s being the most disastrous. Much of the riverbank collapsed and many people were left without homes or personal possessions.
Image: Maitland railway station in Flood, 1930
Source: Not Stated.
The 1955 Hunter Valley floods, also commonly known as ‘The Maitland Flood’, was the first Australian natural disaster to be broadcast by the media on an international scale. This flood is considered to be one of Australia’s worst floods. The waters reached 12.5 m (41 ft) and caused catastrophic damage. The volume of flood water was approximately 3,750,000 megalitres (8.2×1011 imp gal) and the cost of damage, in today’s currency, would have been over A$2 billion. Seven thousand buildings and homes were damaged, and the flood claimed the lives of 14 people.
According to the 2016 census, there were 78,015 people in Maitland. Maitland has an assault rate of 1,110.4 per 100,000 population, which is significantly higher than the NSW state average of 823.4 per 100,000 population. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 5.4% of the population. There are no statistical correlations which can be factually put, however, from the days of Coal River, violence has badly marked the landscape of the Hunter Valley.
Life and Death and Recreation
Time shifts as I come onto the newish Hunter Expressway (opened 2014), a 39.5-kilometre (24.5 mi) long dual carriageway freeway from the Pacific Motorway at the Newcastle Link Road. It puts me back to the large city environment. As a mark of the occasion, I fill up my tank at the Coles Express in the Newcastle suburb of Wallsend. Getting into the inner city area of Newcastle is a challenge. Unlike the Pacific Motorway (M3) which leads into Brisbane City, the Newcastle Road (A15) appears to twist and turn in the driving experience, even though the maps show something straighter. There is also a sense of coming to the end of the day’s journey, and this plays on my mind.
My Newcastle Stayover is at the Lucky Hotel in the famous Hunter Street, now with the featured modern light rail (tram) system. Very flashy and impressive ‘snakes’ with commercial colours, but as I leave Newcastle Road at 1640 AEDT, I struggle with the build-in navigation system, which has made no allowance for the tramway preventing me crossing the road to the Hotel on the other side. For the four years I have had my vehicle, I have had to put up with that voice that declares ‘re-calculation.’ “You can re-calculate, love, all you want,” I say, “but you will never get me to where I need to be.” As it was, there is no secure parking around the city hotel, so after I offload my packs in room ‘205,’ I secured the vehicle at First Parking in Argyle Street for overnight parking ($34.00).
Newcastle is the second most populated city in the state of New South Wales. It includes the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie local government areas, and is the hub of the Greater Newcastle area, which includes most parts of the local government areas of City of Newcastle, City of Lake Macquarie, City of Cessnock, City of Maitland and Port Stephens Council.
Located at the mouth of the Hunter River, it is the predominant city within the Hunter Region. Famous for its coal, Newcastle is the largest coal exporting harbour in the world, exporting 159.9 million tonnes of coal in 2017. Beyond the city, the Hunter Region possesses large coal deposits. Geologically, the area is located in the central-eastern part of the Sydney Basin.
Newcastle is on the southern bank of the Hunter River mouth. The northern side is dominated by sand dunes, swamps and multiple river channels. A ‘green belt’ protecting plant and wildlife flanks the city from the west (Watagan mountains) around to the north where it meets the coast just north of Stockton.
Newcastle and the lower Hunter Region were traditionally occupied by the Awabakal and Worimi Aboriginal people, who called the area Malubimba. The NSW Geographic Names Board have the traditional Aboriginal names, which include Nobbys Head also known as Whibayganba; Flagstaff Hill also known as Tahlbihn; Pirate Point also known as Burrabihngarn; Port Hunter also known as Yohaaba; Hunter River (South Channel) also known as Coquun; Shepherds Hill also known as Khanterin; Ironbark Creek also known as Toohrnbing and Hexham Swamp also known as Burraghihnbihng.
Image: Corroboree at Newcastle, ca. 1818 / oil painting by Joseph Lycett. Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales.
Source: Joseph Lycett (1775-1828) – State Library of New South Wales DG 228
In September 1797, Lieutenant John Shortland became the first European settler to explore the area. He had been sent north in search of a number of convicts who had seized a locally-built vessel called Cumberland as she was sailing from Sydney Cove. While returning, Lt. Shortland entered what he later described as ‘a very fine river,’ which he named after New South Wales’ Governor John Hunter. Over the next two years, coal mined from the area was the New South Wales colony’s first export.
Newcastle gained a hellhole reputation being the place where the most dangerous convicts were sent to dig in the coal mines as harsh punishment for their crimes. In 1801, a convict camp called King’s Town (named after Governor King) was established to mine coal and cut timber. In the same year, the first shipment of coal was dispatched to Sydney. This settlement closed less than a year later.
A settlement was again attempted in 1804, as a place of secondary punishment for unruly convicts. The settlement was named Coal River, also Kingstown and then renamed Newcastle, after England’s famous coal port. Newcastle remained a penal settlement until 1822, when the settlement was opened up to farming.
The formation during the nineteenth century of the Newcastle and Hunter River Steamship Company saw the establishment of regular steamship services from Morpeth and Newcastle with Sydney.
The Port of Newcastle remains the economic and trade centre for the resource rich Hunter Valley and for much of the north and northwest of New South Wales. Newcastle is the world’s largest coal export port and Australia’s oldest and second largest tonnage throughput port, with over 3,000 shipping movements handling cargo of 95.8 Mt per annum, of which coal exports represented 90.8 Mt in 2008–09. The volume of coal exported, and attempts to increase coal exports, are opposed by environmental groups.
In the 2016 census it had a population of 322,278. The population of the city of Newcastle itself was 155,411 while Lake Macquarie was actually larger with a population of 197,371. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 3.8% of the population.
Ruth and I were married only a year and half when the infamous Newcastle earthquake happened. It is infamous because Australia regularly experience natural disasters of bushfires, floods, and pestilence, but city-destroying earthquakes are rare in the country. On 28 December 1989, Newcastle experienced an earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale, which killed 13 people, injured 162 and destroyed or severely damaged a number of prominent buildings. Some had to be demolished, including the large George Hotel in Scott Street (city), the Century Theatre at Broadmeadow, the Hunter Theatre (formerly ‘The Star’) and the majority of The Junction school at Merewether. Part of the Newcastle Workers’ Club, a popular venue, was destroyed and later replaced by a new structure. The following economic recession of the early 1990s meant that the city took several years to recover.
Nothing of that destructiveness is visible, here now in March 2022, as I take a short tram trip ($1) to the centre of the city and the Old Newcastle Train Station, a mausoleum for when passenger rail travel once took tourists right to the heart of the city. Southport, Queensland, is another example of such rail tourism. Trams are, however, are a good substitute, which were also part of the historic landscape. Like most Australian coastal towns and cities, there is the foreshore foot and cycle path, with parks and garden surround the slower paced journey. Fancy restaurants nudge the waterside around Queens Wharf, but it is Harry’s Café de Wheels which offer me the expensive-but-delightful Peas and Pastry ($10). In the quietness of late afternoon park area, I hear the quietness of Ruth.
I had chosen to come to Newcastle from a journey I had done in 2019, before the pandemic. It was the start of the journey from the Charles Strong Symposium to the publication of our book, published in December last year, Charles Strong’s Australian Church: Christian Social Activism, 1885-1917 (MUP). I recall those days, not so long ago, as I walk the around the civic block of Newcastle with the City Campus. This was just before a later dinner at the Hotel (2000 AEDT). As I drink the wine and eat the burger, while penning in my notebook I reflect that Ruth never came to know Newcastle as I did. We did visit together during our Sydney-Lake Macquarie sojourn early in our married life, before children, however, that was a quick day trip with Ruth’s friends. Indeed, the friends were parent’s Ruth’s former, and Sydney-base, fiancé. I was very lucky that the dominance of the ‘Premier State’ and the country’s first city did not win out in that love affair. So Newcastle means something to me, very much, a victory in love for Ruth and I.
It must have been 3.15 a.m. or so. I was on the street near the water, a little way up the small hill. The noise first made me aware that something was happening. A few shots and shouts. From the sounds I could tell it was no drunken brawl. I was there only because I had awoken at around 2.00 a.m., unable to sleep and not able to drift back into the comfort of a dream. Now, I seemed to be in a dream awake. The moment was when everything turned to ashes in the mouths of many, but for me I was already tired with life. While I was surprised by the moment itself, I could see it coming for a long time. I was aging widower who had played the role of a prophet in the wilderness. A nobody but an author of local history.
It was by accident that I witnessed the moment. I was an alcoholic and I was on a self-confined retreat at Wynnum, Queensland. “It has been 110 days, six hours, since my last drink.” My name is unimportant. I am narrator of my own story. I say, “was an alcoholic”. Looking back to the “Friendly Invasion” moment, although tired of life, the occasion shocked, all of us, out wanting anything than to be sober. In the early century people complained about something called the “Woke” movement, and it seems no one can recall what that was about. Nevertheless, being awake became a necessary survival tactic since that first early morning.
Concerned at hearing gunfire, but with the pull of insane curiosity, I eased myself down the street to the esplanade. Across, and thru the clearing, I saw hundreds of rubber dinghies with the soldiers of the “Friendly Invasion”, as the historical occasion become propagandised a decade later. At the time it had been, simply, the 150th anniversary of the Great White Fleet. That is how it started. In the late previous century, I had been writing about such acts of cultural colonialism, but that was another era. We had all forgotten, even the local historian. The Great White Fleet had originally never appeared in Moreton Bay, but it seemed a benign commemorative visit from our best-but-strange ally.
Ever since that history-breaking election of 2024, and the regime of the Patron MAGA dictators, Australia seemed to drift back to being a 21st century colonial outpost, as the scholars today discuss such things. The population, as usual, never noticed such things; unless you were at the receiving end of such policies. For a century and half, the invasion fears were planted in the Asian world. Vague memory recalled the late Bill Metcalf and his long nineteenth century history (1801-1919), talking of the local fall and rise Antipodean Utopia; more as a dystopia from a late twentieth century (1975-2000) perspective. It was a different world. Indonesia, the great invasion fear of the 1990s, now had collapsed into civil war and anarchy. China, the other invasion fear of the long twentieth century (1920-2019), came close, but, in the end, the economic cost of its military and cultural colonial expansion meant, creating a peace pact with the first of the Patron MAGA dictators, the esteemed Donald Trump. Although it came late in the Trump’s term of office, before handing over the reins to the esteemed son, the peace with China held these many decades. Russia also imploded with the new geopolitics. Other regimes followed the pattern. North Korea had been such a great ally to the Trump nation that its dynastic model was adopted for our “friendly ally”, which has now saved us in the era of Australia’s national emergency. Still that first day was an initial shock.
In that early morning, I was a local witness of Australian history changing. The commemorative fleet had launched military landings on our shores from the bays of capital cities. Parliament had been sinking into chaos for some time, and we needed “a friend” to save us from ourselves politically, although that was initially a military operation. Still, after nearly a decade, we wonder when the troops will leave and return to their home country. I recall the first shock. Units of soldiers walking the streets and setting up checkpoints. I found the courage to walk across the esplanade and to the shoreline, but nevertheless hiding my presence. I heard the few shots but I saw no death. Soldiers were so casually wandering off the sand and mud to the grass gathering points, and being given their orders, headed up the streets, more in a swagger than as an invasion force. At this stage of the “Friendly Invasion” there was no resistance movement. Australians had their fill of witnessing global violence since the Great Gaza War. We were always a freedom-loving people but we were very serious in asking the question, “What cost Freedom?” We were not like the nation of the Patron MAGA dictators, always celebrating the violent revolutionary past.
In my Australian caution, still unsure what I was witnessing at the time, I crept into a large Moreton Bay mangrove. In the dark, but enlightened by the ships’ searchlights across the landing sites, I saw a single sentry guarding the empty dinghies, the water lazily lapping up to his boots, on a patch of sand in the middle of mud and dark waters of the Bay. I was nervous he would see me, and kept still. A few minutes later his torch flashed onto me in the midst of the branches. I am sure he saw me, even as he pretended not to. Years later it made more sense, it was a “Friendly Invasion.” We were in a world of pretence. Each of us had a role to place. I trembled, frozen, an old man crouching in the mangrove, and, “my friend”, six or eight metres from me, glad he was on sentry duty and being entertainment for that old man in the strange tree. The solider was in a state of peace, not having to walk up into the street, where dangers lurked.
After a good hour the scene unexpectedly changed. Another wave of dinghies hit the shores, not with soldiers, but parties of unusual-looking civilians. They reminded me of an ancient film, when a such thing existed, of impoverished migrants arriving to the country. They did look friendly but their presence was a mystery. The behaviour of the single casual sentry gave me the assurance I could go over to these new non-combatant arrivals, gathering on the grass. They were happy to see me, and the soldiers organising them on the esplanade were out of sight. Amongst a large gathering we had the compassionate and kind chats. I found out that night that the military, of our friendly saviours, did not trust our own service class, and these were working-class migrants of their own: the military’s trusted provisions in keeping soldiers comforted – food service, household duties, and, of course, sexual favours.
As I was chatting, I thought I was having a Dreamtime vision. A man who was to become a great mate in these years, appear to fall out of one of the houses aligning the esplanade. I soon realised he did not fall, but scramble out of the window very fast and crept up to us. He had seen me come up and mingled with the crowd of strangers, and when the attention of the soldiers guarding the migrants turn in another direction, he made with haste to welcome the visitors. He was a Turrbal man. Still very dark in the appearance thinking after these many centuries. In such a shock the two of us became as Australians one, we bonded immediately in this era of the “Friendly Invasion”. Uncertain how things were to turnout, and gleaning information from the service migrants, Tom and I forged a plan. As, I, a very old widower with most of my family past and my daughters living overseas, and, Tom, a very recent divorcee and most of his mob in other places, had an opportunity for a radical turn. We decided to pretend to be members of the service migrant party which had just landed. We were pretty good at one of the regional accents. Black or White, it did not matter. We could act the part of any patriot.
So, it has been several years working in the migrant-run military kitchen. The staff is friendly with me, an elderly man of an uncertain age, in better health than he ought to be. Even the libido is there, just sitting there; like I had been sitting there, many days ago, in a mangrove, alert-but-calm. Ready. Just thinking about it I am aroused. But I am too old, and these days there is no romance generally. We all too tired. The young barely make it into performing sex. There is rarely bromance as well. Tom and I are good mates, but even so, our worlds are too far apart to be close. It was and always be in the cultural outlooks. Nevertheless, in days of the “Friendly Invasion”, it is good to have peace. The early 21st century era of the culture-history warfare had long gone. Today we just have invasions.
Featured Images: top to bottom, right to left.
Page 27 of The Queenslander Pictorial, supplement to The Queenslander, 12 September 1914. (2014). John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
A 1908 Australian postcard welcoming the American ‘Great White Fleet’ to Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_White_Fleet#/media/File:Australia_Welcomes_the_Fleets.jpg
Kansas sails ahead of Vermont as the fleet leaves Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 16 December 1907. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_White_Fleet#/media/File:Us-atlantic-fleet-1907.jpg
[Editor Note: A concise and better expressed, academic, version of the first section of this blogged discussion essay has been submitted for publication]
At the outset, it must be said there is no contempt from good people for anyone on both sides of a culture-history war when all that anyone really desires is the possibility to live life in peace. Today’s discussion is not for cultural warriors but for those who want to see a way forward for a peaceful and civic life.
There is two parts here. The first is to explore the philosophic-historiographic argument. The second is to explore the philosophic-poetic argument.
PHILOSOPHIC-HISTORIOGRAPHIC ARGUMENT
If you read broad media today, you can see we have reached a high point in the cultural war because of what is happening in American politics and society. The consensus is that the matters are going to get worse before it gets better. Danielle Allen [2021: online] in The Atlantic said in her opening remark,
“Things were getting bad even before the 2016 election, but somehow, within just a few years, they have gotten worse. In an environment of intense partisan warfare, each side believes it has a claim to lead the nation based on its own set of values.”
That is a good start to the definition of the state of the cultural-history war globally. I do not think it will help to go any further for a definition, even as more should be said. However, if I go too far into a definition, it will only revisit the war. My intention here is to outline a few historical insights but I am not going to re-debate the war. The purpose here is to look for ways to peace, meaningful peace.
The reason to open-up on the topic with The Atlantic is that in the past, sometime ago, The Atlantic was seen by left-wing commentators as a conservative journal. It is still a conservative journal, but now the journal is being attack by the extreme of the Republican Party who are trying to normalise or mainstream what is anti-intellectual nonsense. The war had become so bizarre under the Trump administration that The Atlantic is now one of the leading critics of the current state in the Republican Party. Take Allen’s article. It is entitled, “The Road From Serfdom”, which is paying to homage to Friedrich Hayek, the darling of the old neo-conservative movement. A liberal-left critic would disagree with Hayek but agree with Allen that the alt-right is in danger of creating that serfdom Hayek feared coming from the Left. Allen offers a reasonable argument against factionalism and for the political unity which George Washington describe. Whether you agree or disagree on the technical points, I would say Allen has full support for the principles he offers across the political sides of a democratic institution.
And then there was Adam Serwer’s article (2021: online) in the same issue of The Atlantic. His article would be uncomfortable for mainstream conservatives but a necessary historical corrective for the Republican Party. Serwer’s exact point is “William Howard Taft and a succession of other Republican presidents privileged restoring relations with the South over protecting black Americans’ rights.” Serwer’s wider point is that the politics of civility has become defined as “I can do what I want and you can shut up.” His alternative definition of civility relates Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From Birmingham Jail. Serwer’s stated:
In his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. famously lamented the “white moderate” who “prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” He also acknowledged the importance of tension to achieving justice. “I have earnestly opposed violent tension,” King wrote, “but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.” Americans should not fear that form of tension. They should fear its absence.
This insight is what is meant in the Black Lives Matter slogan, “No Justice, No Peace”. However, slogans and social media memes are no substitute for understanding the intellectual schema. Those who have no desire to dig deeper in knowledge – philosophy and history broadly-speaking and with much detail – do not understand and perpetuate a destructive warrior culture.
The Left spectrum is ‘equally’ to blame in a fair overview. I disagree with the arguments of ‘whataboutism’ because the arguments tend to cherry-pick. I agree with the conservative criticism that left-wing journals tend to ignore their ‘own’ conspiratorial agitators. But let my mainstream conservative colleagues be assured that, in social media debates, liberal-left critics or British-type socialists, are getting mentally tortured by those social media agitators who see themselves as left-wing defenders of the ideological/political faith and the fan club members of once respected academics and former teachers. The reasonable Left is also speaking out, in the same way as has brave, dissenting, Republican Party members for intelligent republicanism.
The damaging polemic debates are on both sides. We have had the process theologian David Ray Griffin lost himself to the 9/11 conspiracy movement. In a torturous four-hour argument with an eminent left-wing Australian social historian and his fan club on social media, I have personally suffered in the war. My friend’s final words were [in part]
“Every time you use it [the term, ‘conspiracy theories’] you align yourself with the CIA…I am very familiar with this process [conspiracy theories in relation to modern medicine and health policy] having studied the propaganda of the frontier and the propaganda of World War I in great depth.”
The fallacies, aimed at discrediting me, are the theory of ‘origins-determine-outcomes’ and not comparing like-with-like. The propaganda of racial and world wars and my eminent historian friend’s alleged defence for anti-vaxxer attacks on modern medicine and health policy (what was behind the above quote) is not cognitively equal for a fair comparison.
So, clearly, we have a major problem that the mainstream Left and Right can agree upon, but in that consensus is the central problem that the terms of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ have become misunderstood and entangled in the polemics. I have been a cultural and social historian in relation to the ‘American challenges’ for many years. This historical analysis, which began in the 1980s, is uncomfortable for those outside of the United States, and, academically, it is contentious and has shown its limits. Indeed, the globalisation thesis of 1990s has moved debates on. Nevertheless, the historical-philosophical paradigm of the United States as the leader of the free world remains, for good or bad…or ugly.
While I appreciate the moderating commentary of better journalists, I felt that they keep missing the bigger picture for the capacity to educate people on their own belief systems, and why they become so wrong in their judgements on the political environment without that capacity. You hear a phrase like, “America has always teetered on the edge of collapse”, a journalistic phrasing which does not make sense when you think about it, somewhat deeper. The historiography is true as only as the narrative of “maelstrom”, a violent whirlpool of disorder, is true; but being overplayed, with good or bad intent (either way), it is false. Does anyone pause to consider that it is the naïve shock which feeds this exaggerated alarm. We have seen this recently with the storming of the American Congress building in Washington D.C. There became a shock at a half-hearted insurrection, where the politically astute — those who were not shocked — could see it coming. If we are gladly shocked at anything, it is the lack of bloodshed, and we can be glad for the lack of determination within the madness.
I have noticed a certain ideological conservatism in recent journalistic reactions to the mayhem. It is a tendency to blame uncomfortable agendas from the Left, back to “1968” (but agendas also had certain conservative roots). Of course, “radical” violence on both sides should be condemned, but why refer to “black civil rights, gay equality, family values, gun laws, abortion or feminism” and conclude that there is a perpetual culture war. That there is a culture war, yes, that is true, but who is perpetuating the alarm?
If you want to get out of the war, then it is important to understand one’s own self-hidden ideology and stop using the term as the problem for ‘the other’. The problem is that so-called conservatives do not understand conservatism, in the same way that progressivists do not understand progressivism. The capacity to utterly understand one’s own big beliefs is the very reason why you had thoughtful dissenters; like Mitt Romney, who was able to stand against the stupidity of his own party in a timely manner.
In the recent decades (say, back to 1990), there has been astute historical analysis of what has gone wrong in the Republican Party, and some have formulated a different republicanism (Pettit, 1997). There has also been recent astute criticism of the liberal university meritocracy policies which has contributed to the major problem (Sandel, 2020). Furthermore, there has been contemporised analysis of why the American culture has contributed to such a global polemic condition (Jacoby, 2008). One does not need to choose between any of these sociological or historical sociology theses. Each, and all, theses would tell social media readers what the set of problems are in the larger scoping, and some ways out, if only they read scholarly tomes.
Well, the concept is the historiography not driven by journalistic drama, but a historiography which attempts to untangle the logic or miss-logic of each opposing sides. Another concept is worldview, which builds from Hegel but differs from Hegel. By no means, am I endorsing any worldview, and nor am I desiring that persons remain content in their cognitive bubble.
There are two processes I am attempting. The first is to show that most of us misunderstand our own arguments, that is, not that that we do not understand our own thoughts, but in putting together the arguments as a view of the world we get entangled in a certain logic, a logic which we believe is our own tradition, but most of us are poorly read on the intellectual history of the subscribed tradition.
Secondly, to show that the dangerous arguments are not merely dangerous delusions. Certainly, delusions are part of the problem, but they are delusions built from faulty views of the world, i.e. worldviews. This is true now with the ult-right and their conspiracy theories. The theories do not come from nowhere, they come from a desire to see a particular order in the world, and that desire, with the poor capacity to deal (as opposite of critical thinking) with ideas (what is truly referred to as intellectual), produces crazy worldviews.
If that were understood, if it were taught on various platforms and schools, we could untangle the conflict, and, while we all still disagree, the warfare would not be necessary nor desired. I accept the hobbesian point that there will always be those who control the agenda, whether for peace or war, as the leviathan permits it, but I also agree with Locke, we, as individuals, have a certain power to control the agenda for benefit of the social contract. While there are those who desire the collapse, the end, of the State, a form of a proto-state will always exist, and, with all its faults, a regulated democrat state is better than tyranny – in whatever form. Perhaps, this is a contentious statement depending on a person’s worldview, however, too few are prepared to overthrow representative democracy to see if tyranny works better.
PHILOSOPHIC-POETIC ARGUMENT
So, this brings us to Amanda Gorman’s poem and the philosophic-poetic argument, not merely for the representative democratic state, but for a democratic society based in real peace. So, let’s explore, from my humble offerings, on Amanda Gorman’s poem at the inauguration of President Joe Biden on 20 January 2021:
When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
Peace from the cultural-history wars does not come from silence or quietness, but that we boldly ask ourselves where we can find understanding (‘light’).
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
There is no going back to normalcy from war; a lesson 100 years ago. Justice must be an important part of peace.
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
A nation state has endurance. If it is collapsed, it is the collective of individual decisions, even for those who opt-out, just by opting out. We should not expect that the democracy project should be perfect, but only that it is unfinished.
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
The least of us can do it; the least can find the high heights of personal-social achievement. This is the dream of democracy, not merely in the American mythology, but also in the other democratic traditions.
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
This is a challenge. How do we accept the imperfection of others to create a social-political union? There is a difference between imperfections in our efforts and the efforts to undermine the union.
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
In 2021 it is about harmonious cultural pluralism with justice for all. That pluralism can be interpreted in different ways, in a conservative paradigm, in a liberal paradigm, in a socialist paradigm, etc., but it will never be achieved in a paradigm that invents hoaxes and conspiracies.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Peaceful cooperation which looks to work through grief, hurt, weariness, together. True victory and true peace are not what it was in 1919, a popular attitude of peace through victory in war – it is only a pathway to perpetual warfare, not peace. We stand together in genuine search to overcome divisions while remaining different.
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promised glade
A Christian promise, not one of the fundamentalist or the Christian *FAR* Right, but a Christian promise which is pluralistic and allows the universality of God’s love, detached,un-beholden, to any one doctrine.
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
It takes effort, and those just opt-out, need to take note. It is not about patriotism in the way the American mythology has been twisted for political ends. One of the problems, indeed a blindspot, of democrats like Barack Obama (2020) and Joe Biden (2021), is the American exceptionalism. The United States does not own the democratic traditions. However, the democratic world does appreciate the lessons of American history, for good, bad, and the ugly. How do we repair history? As a historian I am not sure it can be done, but the line of the stanza said, “it’s the past we step into…” It is not history being referenced. It is history’s legacy in the present.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
Truth matters, and the truth is that the past Trump administration sought to corrupt democratic processes and divert democratic outcomes.
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
It is a long poetic way of saying we do not conform to the agenda of doomsayers.
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
The mission is intergenerational, and we have responsibility to fix our mistakes.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
Beautiful because here you have an affirmation that co-joins conservative, liberal, non-violent radical, beliefs together. It brings a tear to my eye, but not mere sentimentality. It is a strong intellectual sentiment.
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
Yes, it is American mythology in a great need for global political realism. But, as an Australian, I do not begrudge the Americans of their dream, as long as a larger realism is not denied, and we co-seek the benefit of the whole of humanity and a living planet.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it
It is a historical assessment of the present moment, and an invitation to a positive future.
In this essay I have pulled together a few ways for peace to overcome the cultural-history wars. In the Philosophic-Historiographic Argument I have shown where those efforts for peace are being made across different political sides. Yes, it is still a battle for ideas, but let the educated advocate for better education. Strategies, tactics, protocols, and rules are important, and the call here is in the peace of the representative democratic state with all its flaws. In the Philosophic-Poetic Argument I have used Amanda Gorman’s poem to show that, while we may disagree over national myths and big beliefs doctrines, we do have a common good, we do have ways to work for peaceful coexistence with fairness and justice for all. If the cynics demonstrate the failures, their defeat is the philosophical vicious cycle of the warfare. Failures are judged by the peaceful democratic valuing we choose each day, and so the cynics are wrong. We are not trapped in darkness but set out in the new dawn.
REFERENCES
Allen, Danielle (2021). The Road From Serfdom: How Americans can become citizens again, The Atlantic, December 2019 [published online].
Biden, Joe (2021). Transcript of the American President Inauguration Speech, Politico [published online].
Gorman, Amanda (2021). Transcript of inaugural poem, The Hill [published online]
Jacoby, Susan (2008). The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies, Vintage Books.
Obama, Barack (2020). A Promised Land, New York: Penguin-Random House
Pettit, Philip (1997). Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Oxford University Press
Sandel, Michael (2020). The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? Penguin Random House
Neville Buch (Pronounced Book) Ph.D. is a certified member of the Professional Historians Association (Queensland). Since 2010 he has operated a sole trade business in history consultancy. He was a Q ANZAC 100 Fellow 2014-2015 at the State Library of Queensland. Dr Buch was the PHA (Qld) e-Bulletin, the monthly state association’s electronic publication, and was a member of its Management Committee. He is the Managing Director of the Brisbane Southside History Network.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
