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INTERNATIONAL

Bread and circuses in modern Australia and America

  • 24 January 2017

 

I have witnessed what motivated vast numbers of working-class Americans to vote for Trump. I agree with the view that it wasn't so much hatred of minority groups — although that is how it's been manifesting — as anger at their own deteriorating living standards and hope that an 'outsider' can fix the situation.

My husband and I took a six-week road trip around western USA the year after the start of the Global Financial Crisis. I set 'shortest route' on the GPS to intentionally avoid the faster freeways and travel off the tourist track.

What we saw in small-town and middle America horrified us. Not just the odd person sleeping in their 25-year-old cars but whole families camped along the smaller roads.

Vast trailer parks, not at all like Australia's lovely caravan parks, squat on the outskirts of any sizeable town. Row upon row of shabby demountables are set on weedy gravel only a metre or two apart. No gardens, no playgrounds, no privacy; just a pall of palpable hopelessness hanging in the dusty air.

Crumbling roads and houses also demonstrated that widespread poverty was not a recent phenomenon. The GFC had simply accelerated the process.

In lower-middle class areas, whole streets of deserted and already dilapidated new homes bore silent witness to dodgy developers and repossession by the very banks that had caused the crash. It was heartbreaking to see starving, abandoned pets roaming their old neighbourhoods, furry avatars for their desperate and departed owners.

I spoke to service workers on 12-hour shifts after observing one waiter eat several bowls of the free popcorn in the bar after his shift ended at midnight, because meals were not included. He couldn't afford to buy dinner on the then minimum wage for tipped workers of $2 an hour. The new federal award is still only $7.25, after taking tips into account.

Workers have no chance of ever buying a home, educating themselves, or even eating well. There is no way up for working-class Americans, and the middle class is sliding down to meet them. The claim in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal' is a farce for most Americans. It's easy to see how anyone seen as non-establishment, however erroneously, can feed their anger.

 

"I fear for my own future as a new senior. After working full-time for 40 years and with my husband recently retired after 50, the future looks bleak for us,
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