Talk dirty to me about the fall of America

“I don’t believe in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. I just believe in parties.” - Samantha Jones

A reminder that I record all my Substacks, so you can listen to them by pressing play above if you don’t feel like reading.

It’s been nearly a week since I returned to Australia, and I’m feeling the typical conflicts and tugs of home that I usually do. Since I’ve come back from the States, almost daily Australians have asked me “how bad are things really over there?!” So many inquisitive Aussies are eager to know about the perceived collapse of Trump’s America.

This Saturday while working my customer service job, I spoke to another American about being from the US. An Australian woman overheard me and when she got to the counter asked me, rather rudely, “Well, would you ever go back?”

”Just got back on Tuesday,” I said to her with a big smile.

The conversation abruptly ended.

It annoyed me so much that later that night, after drinks with a girlfriend, I went home and wrote a poem from the perspective of Australians masturbating while listening to me talk about the fall of America under Trump. It is undoubtedly in bad taste, so I’ll leave it until the end. As my Australian boyfriend pointed out, it’s really unflattering towards Australians, but what is art for if not to get out your unkind emotions? Now that I’m an Australian citizen, I think I’m allowed to criticize this new culture I’ve been kindly accepted into, lulz. Hopefully this Substack is not considered treason.

Bad emotional poetry aside, the reality is most of my left leaning American friends are DEEPLY concerned about the current state of their country, so much so that a chocolate shop owner in North Carolina casually told me, after serving me a delicious pumpkin spiced latte, that if he were diagnosed with a terminal illness, he would gladly find a proud boy protest to drive his car through. “Holy hell.” I thought while listening to him and smiling and nodding like this was a normal conversation, is this the “radical left” they talk about on FOX?!

I talked to people across the political spectrum on my trip home. Like all groups of people, Democrats and Republicans are not monoliths; their perspectives vary wildly within their political ideologies. Not only that, but a lot of people who vote in either direction have not thought deeply about their belief systems and why they vote the way they do. Myself included, for example shall we consider my steadfast vegetarianism for the sake of saving lives and how it does kinda conflict with me also being pro-choice. I justify being pro-choice because I also choose to eat eggs.

Let’s not forget that life’s too short to take too seriously.

On the plane ride back to Australia I watched a dated episode of Sex & The City and I couldn’t help but laugh when I learned how little our educated empowered main characters cared about contemporary politics; JFK was the hottest though. Samantha killed me when she said: “I don’t believe in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. I just believe in parties.”

Part of this is cringe, but part of me couldn’t help but cackle, thinking of how this line just wouldn’t casually fly in most social circles now.

Next Monday I’ll publish a series of more detailed interactions and observations from my trip which includes some right-leaning opinions about the US, but, before I get to the bad poem, here are some other true political stories that happened while I was home.

Left-leaning people had a genuine curiosity about moving to Australia that I’d never noticed in the past. I felt a desperation and defeated-ness in them that broke my heart, warranted as it may be. The left have an unquestionable certainty of right-wingers being racists, bigoted assholes of every variety. I was told that the country would never be ready to elect a woman, a black woman at that. But also I have a cohort of friends and acquaintances who are less politically aligned as Democrat and Republican and just simply concerned about Palestine. Everyone has their own agenda.

One friend and I agreed, it was difficult to state the Democrat’s number one issue during the last election. Several topics caused lots of in-fighting, but was there one clear issue that outshone the others? This is increasingly the left’s weakness. We’re so interested in clapping back and arguing with Trump-like figures that we haven’t figured out what we really stand for.

Conversely almost everyone I spoke to with the center/right views brought up Covid/pandemic related frustrations. Whether it was the claim that Covid was created in a lab (a totally plausible possibility), Fauci being pardoned by Biden, and authoritarian lockdowns, and all things connected to vaccinations, several issues in recent history are very remembered by half the country. The left is doing itself a dumb disservice by sweepingly calling everyone a racist asshole and not looking more closely at the right’s frustrations. This is not limited to the US either; if you look at the right wing revival currently coming out of Melbourne, you can draw a plausible correlation (if not causation) between overt displays of power and control during one period and a political backlash that follows.

I watched one right wing friend post with glee about Jimmy Kimmel’s show getting pulled (before he was reinstated). As my friend saw it, this was the right’s payback for the left pulling Trump off Twitter five years ago.

I paused.

”Oh yeah, that’s right, Trump did get pulled off Twitter!”

Anyway if you’re an Australian reading this, I know you are just understandably curious about the US and not desiring to see it and everything it stands for collapse. And despite my cheeky poem, I am concerned about what I saw and heard over there. This time I’m concerned about the political violence, the infighting, and, as per usual, I’m concerned like always about Americans accessing healthcare, reproductive rights (especially as I travelled mostly in the South) housing, job security and benefits.

Early on in my trip, my Aunt and I had random wonderful drinks with several black people at a nice bar in downtown Atlanta (their skin color is relevant to the story). That afternoon my Aunt, a man named Senaca and I talked freely about all kinds of political topics. Based on our hour at the bar together I would say that my Aunt was the most conservative, Senaca was more in the middle and I was on the left. All three of us had travelled extensively overseas and discussed how wild it is to see how the rest of the world views (and judges) Americans.

Senaca and my Aunt found common ground in the fact that they happily called themselves capitalists. I begrudgingly admitted to being a capitalist; my dream is to travel the world indefinitely enjoying a life of creativity, joy and pleasure. I have qualms with overconsumption, greed and land ownership, but I quite like having my own money and control of what I do with it. But also, I absolutely abhor my consumeristic nature. I’m a guilty capitalist.

We took turns buying the group shots. It was a fun end to a day in town. Senaca was glad to hear that my Aunt and I took Atlanta’s MARTA (public transport). A few days later the national news broke about the horrific stabbing of a woman on public transportation in Charlotte. I wonder, would we have had a different conversation around that then? Would my Aunt and I have opted to take the MARTA at all?

Before we left Senaca said to us, “You two should not ever be made to feel guilty for slavery and other terrible things that have happened in our past.”

“That’s lovely of you, thank you,” I told him.

”At the same time,” he continued, “we shouldn’t cover up or deny America’s history either.”

All three of us were on the same page there. It was one of several moments on my trip when I appreciated the way in which Americans are willing to sit down next to one another and immediately speak candidly.

If social media is the enemy of the American people, happy hours and close seats on a long bar is our ally.

Senaca’s comment was particularly interesting to me as my Aunt and I had just come from the Margaret Mitchell House, where they’d apparently had some substantial “upgrades” since 2020, no doubt influenced by the pandemic and George Floyd specifically.

Margaret Mitchell was the author of Gone With the Wind, a blockbuster bestseller that was released shortly after the Civil War. Margaret Mitchell wrote her book in downtown Atlanta, hence her historic house, with its typewriter and furniture remains. But Mitchell (and the book) isn’t all roses. Here’s a little bit more from the website to give you context:

”Both beloved and condemned from almost the moment of its publication, Gone With the Wind went on to shape the way that millions of people imagined the American Civil War for decades to come. Today, both the book and the film are internationally popular. Despite its popularity, the depictions of enslavement, the Civil War, the American South, and historic Atlanta are not accurate. Both the book and the movie depict a rosy myth of the Old South, casting the institution of slavery in a benevolent light.”

The story of Margaret Mitchell, like all of history, continues to be written and rewritten.

Some might argue it would be better to read the news than to talk to random people and hear their anecdotes, which is what many Australians do, or at least think they do.

Despite my feel-good and occasionally unhinged conversations with Americans across the political spectrum in the last month, I confess I’m not great at keeping up with actual politics. Most weeks I read Ground News and a few long-form journalism pieces from various publications. I’m probably better read than some Americans, but less informed than plenty too. No matter what the people around me say, you can always find a news source with a different spin. It is increasingly clear that every person on the street is getting wildly different news depending on their algorithm.

All the while, the rest of the world watches my country like it’s a reality TV show.

Without further ado, my poem.

Talk dirty to me about the fall of America
Let me get alone now
Tell me, slowly
Send me a voice message will you?!
Talk to me in the voice I love
About how your great country
Is on the verge of collapse

Wait wait
Let me get a tissue
Say it again
How bad was it really?!
When you went back
I don’t trust the news
I’m gagging for a live report
Don’t spare a detail
Tell me about how
The greatest nation on earth
Begs on its knees

What me, happy to hear it?
God no! I’m no sadist!!

But, say it again, will ya?
And could you say my name too
Tell me about the country
that never paid me no mind
Is now getting absolutely
f*cked from behind
Whisper in my ear
How it doesn’t care I exist

Of course I’m not obsessed!
But I’m getting so close!
Say it again slower
I’m riled up in the corner
Protected by oceans and your soldiers too
Tell me how bad things
Are about to be
Jesus I’m so close
Knowing full well
None of this
Really affects me