I'm utterly amazed that people are drawing parallels between Oz & Yank culture. Chalk & Cheese! Apart from the fact that both Yanks & Australians are equally guilty of having stolen the land from its rightful owners, the similarity ends here.
We don't even speak the same language. Each & every genuinely OZ movie (& English, Scots, Welsh, Irish et al) will invariably have a whining IMDB entry from some semi-literate mongoloid from the Western hemisphere complaining about "why do youse foreign types always talk with stoopid accents, cant youse talk normal-like"? Because as we all know the entire world speaks with entirely unintelligible languages & accents - except North America. Yanks apparently don't have any trace of an accent!
Let's conveniently ignore the fact that almost half of NA actually don't speak English either; usually French or Spanish. Australians also speak with a whole plethora of mother tongues. Whilst English may actually be much more ubiquitous numerically than in NA, this is taken as normal & healthy within an Australian multlicultural context.
Therein lies the greatest cultural contrast between the 2 continents: Australians, unlike specifically USA residents, just aren't as scared of the big bad world as Yanks invariably are. Here, kids actually walk to school, ride bikes even. Play in the streets, stay out all day at the weekend & come home for supper when it gets dark. We don't fear our neighbors, and especially don't get terrified by other people who don't look or sound like us! We try to embrace, rather than fear multiculturalism.
I've never, ever in my entire life ever felt the need to lock my door either day or night, except when the house is empty. Why would I wish to turn my home into a death-trap during a fire? I've rarely locked my car either: only if parked in a "dodgy" neighbourhood or maybe if filled with expensive goods or shopping. I live in an (albeit semi-rural) area with the nation's highest unemployment statistics.
The other fundamental difference is that Oz isn't really a violent society. We just don't feel the need to murder either our fellows or foreigners like Yanks do. Yanks kill each other for fun, as a job, and even in a cruel, medieval form of punishment! More disturbingly, I've noticed that so enveloping & ubiquitous is this killing culture that most Yanks don't even see the damage this does to society. Kids are actively encouraged to practise murdering each other in video simulations. Research has found that the hundreds of thousands of simulated murders can, and does, translate to a more sociopathic need for violence. I'm told that you still execute the mentally handicapped, like Hitler did in the concentration camps. Anybody with the mental age of ten is fair game for the legalised murder of execution!
In fact there's a whole disturbingly homoerotic subculture of violence happening here. Look at the kid's superbowl handball competitions that generates an almost gladiatorial frenzy, bloodlust & tribalism in both protagonists & spectators. Simultaneously intensely homosexual in its ritualised "extreme" male bonding rituals, and absence of actual gameplay, on the few infrequent occasions the ball is actually in play for a few seconds and the players can be persuaded away from their romantic embrace, the inherent violence becomes clear. The games tribal predecessor was I am led to believe actually played with human heads. Perhaps that's why they only throw the ball to each other like the negro netball game rather than kick it like the rest of the world does. Not just kids but even adults are trussed up head to foot in a ridiculous suit of plastic armour (including helmet) for a sporting game!! The message is clear: inflict rapid, severe violence & injury on others before they are able to defend themselves. Do not under any circumstances allow youself any harm whatsoever. Inflicting violence is good (& Christian). Receiving violence is bad (and evil).
This pathological fear, innate violence and need for slaughter is also unfortunately combined with the highest rate of gun ownership not only in the world, but also in human history! Each child gets to see over 3000 simulated and real violent deaths depicted before even reaching school age. There's more guns than people, together with billions of rounds of ammunition. Not hunting weapons either, but dedicated man-killers. A society in a state of perpetual terror, armed to the teeth with assault and battle weapons, immune to alien concepts of civilisation, mercy and fraternity, and descending into evermore primitive depths of tribalism, fear & hatred of the "other".
Yet nobody seems prepared to address the issue. In a country awash with drugs, booze & guns, it's little surprise there's an endemic contempt for authority, the rule of law and the right of ALL, not just white trash or any other tribe, to the benefits and opportunities that are universal rights. Mexico's pain is a direct result of the Yank's insatiable lust for illegal drugs of addiction. America is the problem, not Mexico! She fuels the demand, arms the protagonists and bankrolls the criminal enterprise.
Even more damning is a foreign policy with total disregard for international law, human rights and national sovereignty that has invaded, illegally occupied and annexed, raped and murdered its way across not just the entire North American continent but also a substantial proportion of the third world too. With the cost of millions of innocent civilian lives, bombed, burned, tortured and starved to death, or merely denied of access to healthcare, water or food, hospitalisation and shelter as an act of "war" that is in reality mere cruelty. The cruelty of illiterate, uncaring, immoral thugs unleashed on inocent civilian populations incapable of defending themselves. Some Yanks still think torture a legitimate and useful interrogation technique, despite having signed UN charters specifically banning the actual practises still inflicted, often upon the innocent to elicit false confession.
To compare my beloved nation to a race of homicidal, drug-crazed thugs is extremely offensive to me. Australia, whilst far from perfect, is a cultured, civilised nation that was born, and lives, in peace. Not in a bloodbath. We are not the same. Never have been, and (to my last dying breath) never will be.
reply
share