One of the first things you notice as an American living in Australia is that the locals don’t consider their country as far away from ours as we do. Geographically yes, of course, but socially and politically they tend to see us as a harbinger. So that whole “If my party loses this election I’m moving to Australia!!” thing you hear now and then in the US? You never hear it here, and people might even look at you funny if you tell them we say that back home. (If you’ve ever wondered, yes, Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day is in print here and is considered just as much of a classic...but in the Australian version, he plans to move to Timbuktu.)
All of which is my way of setting the scene to illustrate that Australians are just as perturbed by Trump as Americans are. And yesterday, about 6,000 of them joined us American expats in marching against Trump!
As you’ve likely read by now, Melbourne was reeling yesterday from an attack by a deranged young man on Friday that claimed at least four lives and injured about 20 others. (The usual suspects blamed everything from Islam to gun control, but it looks like the guy was just mentally ill.) I think if anything, that only strengthened our resolve to get out and march.
And march we did:
There were a fair share of Americans in the crowd, as shown by a show of hands when one of the speakers asked us to identify ourselves. But the diverse, peaceful grouping was concerned with the rise of Trumpism everywhere, as reflected by Pauline Hanson and the One Nation party here in Australia (another reason why Trump’s win was ominous to a lot of people here), and the focus was on fighting back all over the world.
But even over here, it’s Trump who inspires the best signs:
As early as the afternoon of November 9 (local time when the election returns came in), I was acutely aware that Australians in general were just as outraged and disgusted as we were back home. On the train home from the election watch party, I overheard a number of locals expressing their dismay without ever knowing there was an American present. It was, quite frankly, rather embarrassing to know my country was capable of causing that kind of consternation even this far from home. But the upside of that is that they’ve got our backs when we fight back! Yesterday, I saw that in no uncertain terms.