Michael Fullilove, Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, addressed the National Press Club of Australia yesterday. His topic, 'Australia in the Trump era'.
He concluded his speech with this anecdote :
Ladies and gentlemen, I was last in the United States in
January. I left just before Mr Trump’s inauguration ceremony.
I’m very fond of America. I admire its energy and its
idealism and, for all its flaws, I believe the country does much more good than
ill.
I have many friends and colleagues in Washington, which was
once my home… and I didn’t want to be there to see what followed.
Because I left town before the twentieth of January I don’t
have any first hand information for you on what Sean Spicer memorably described
as, “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration period, both in person and around the globe”.
But, I was part of that huge crowd on the National Mall in 2009 for
President Obama’s first inauguration. And before the proceedings began in
January 2009, I looked up to see a bald eagle, Americas’s national symbol,
soaring and swooping over the Capitol dome. And I found this quite affecting, I’m
a romantic by nature, and I turned to the stranger sitting next to me and I pointed
this out to her.
But she turned out to be a very conservative Republican,
and she said to me, “That’s no heavenly sign, that’s a trained eagle that the
Obama campaign has put up in the sky to attract positive media attention.
Now, at the time, I found this world view merely
disappointing. In retrospect, I see it as pretty disturbing. It was an early
case of a new more dangerous strain of partisanship in which Americans are
willing to ignore reality if it does not fit with their prejudices.
I was present, I believe, at the first instance of fake news : where I saw an eagle, she saw alternative facts.
And, ladies and gentlemen, this is the world, Trump’s world, in which the United States and Australia must now make our way.
And, ladies and gentlemen, this is the world, Trump’s world, in which the United States and Australia must now make our way.
Thank
you
EPILOGOS/HA HA
Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...
or rather, we are...
Theatre of the Actors of Regard!
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA