The bleak conclusion of Enemy Within, Don Watson's latest Quarterly Essay, is that the American malaise has more to do with the mindset of the people than the quality of the country's leadership, or the capacity of Donald Trump to exploit fear and hate and insecurity for political gain.
It was Jimmy Carter who first drew attention to this condition, in a speech in 1979, when he spoke of "a crisis of confidence" that struck at the very heart and soul of the national will. "The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America," he declared.
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John Updike explored the phenomenon a decade later when he identified dozens of things that made Americans feel bad about themselves, including poverty, crime, industrial decline, racial and generational discrimination, obesity and environmental squalor.
More recently, another American writer, Richard Ford, addressed it in the context of Trump's improbable tilt at the presidency. "It's we who're guilty of not having something better on our minds. It's our national malaise with life that's become the problem," he wrote.
![Illustration Matt Davidson](/web/20161002094824im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/s/i/w/o/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grrztl.png/1475294266225.jpg)
Watson discovered the condition in a bar called the Branded Steer near the Milwaukee airport, on the junction of two eight-lane roads, surrounded by overweight people eating hamburgers and drinking beer. "The barmaid called me 'darling' and wanted to know how my hamburger was," he wrote. "I thought if I sat there more than half an hour I'd get maudlin."
He also found it in the churn of the 24-hour news networks on the TV screen in his "dogbox in the bar-less, cafe-less Holiday Inn": "All those flickering impulses that Donald Trump can prey on".
It helps explain why Trump, a man who is singularly unsuited for national leadership, is still very much in contention for the November election. "Trump says, Hand your fear over to me," Watson writes. "Hand your loathing over too. I will deal with your enemies as I have dealt with mine."
Watson chose to observe the presidential campaign from Wisconsin, the state that for more than a century was the most progressive in the union, but discovered a microcosm of a country rancorous and divided.
![Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Parliament.](/web/20161002094824im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/h/m/r/v/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grrztl.png/1475238723143.jpg)
The similarity with Australia's July election was how petty politics have become, with climate change and the danger of nuclear re-armament barely mentioned and Islamophobia rampant, but the overall impression was that America's malaise runs much deeper than ours.
The level of disaffection and alienation was much, much higher; the fault lines older and deeper; the extent of economic and social exclusion far greater; the racism much, much more entrenched; and the right wing media much more alarming. "People underestimate how ignorant and xenophobic vast swathes of America are," he tells me.
![The Western Bulldogs is a story of how a club facing extinction survived and thrived by supporting all elements of a ...](/web/20161002094824im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/r/r/g/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grrztl.png/1475238723143.jpg)
But the truth is that Australia is affected by each of the above, and this helps explain the success of Pauline Hanson's One Nation and, to a degree, the growing assertiveness of the conservative rump within Malcolm Turnbull's government.
The Prime Minister returned buoyed from his reception in Washington and New York this week to discover his approval numbers had hit a new low in the latest Newspoll and the prospects of his marriage equality plebiscite going ahead have receded, dramatically.
![Liberal senator Cory Bernardi.](/web/20161002094824im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/l/f/p/n/7/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.grrztl.png/1475238723143.jpg)
The unsolicited advice from far right Liberal senator Cory Bernardi was that support for the Coalition is ebbing away to One Nation and others who were "saying things that I think the Liberal Party should be saying, with a bit more nuance and maybe a little bit more delicacy".
This poses a curly question: precisely how does one delicately advocate a ban on Muslim immigration, or wearing the burqa, or building more mosques, or on Australian companies paying for halal certification, as Hanson has so stridently done?
Queensland Liberal National MP George Christensen offered one answer before Parliament rose on September 15, but not before suggesting "anyone shackled to rabid political correctness and those who permanently search for reasons to be outraged to look away or turn off right now".
"We should consider some tighter controls on borders, such as restricting immigration from countries where there is a high prevalence of violent extremism and radicalism. Many immigrants entering this country in recent years do not share our Australian values," he said.
While the recent Essential Poll, showing 49 per cent of voters support a ban on Muslim immigration, suggests broad support for Hansonite views, Watson's emphatic view is that this is not the direction the vast bulk of Australians want to go. He is spot on.
"If you followed the polls, when Turnbull replaced Abbott, it was as if that showed more truly the country's sentiments – that they would rather a progressive centrist to a right-wing eccentric," he explains.
"That really is where the sentiment in Australia lies – and it just wants someone who can express that, whether it's slightly to the right of centre or slightly to the left. They don't want to be out where a Donald Trump is, or a Cory Bernardi or a Hanson anymore than they want to be way to the left."
In other words, the problem in Australia is not with the people, but a leadership more intent on making political points than expressing empathy, or pressing the case that we all gain from an open, inclusive, pluralist society, or addressing inequality, or celebrating the multicultural success stories.
One of them is unfolding this weekend, whether or not the Western Bulldogs raise the Premiership Cup at the MCG: the story of how a club facing extinction survived and thrived by supporting all elements of a community facing multiple challenges. "At a time of widespread institutional weakness, the club is a model of how to win a social licence," says Labor MP Tim Watts.
Back in June, the club celebrated World refugee Day by hosting its 11th annual citizenship ceremony at the Whitten Oval, when 45 migrants and refugees from 21 countries sang the national anthem and then the Bulldogs' club song. Along with their citizenship, they received Bulldogs membership packs.
As club president Peter Gordon strolled among the throng at Thursday's final training session, he recognised many of them in the crowd, joyous, united and prepared to invest without reservation in a dream: the face of modern Australia.