What Australians don’t get about America

After a year living in the beating heart of the United States, I learnt one thing: this nation Australians love is more complicated than we realise.

A year in New York gave me only a fleeting glimpse into this transient city and the complex country that surrounds it. A lifetime might not be long enough.

Still, it was enough to give me a few ideas about what New York means to the millions of temporary residents that provide its shape-shifting character.

From the vantage point of Sydney’s pleasant environs, the grimy streets of Manhattan may seem an odd prospect. My introduction to the big city's famous edge came almost immediately, when I watched a homeless man vomiting into a road stacked high with rubbish bags, outside the dismal Port Authority Bus Station.

This abject scene unfolded just metres from the merry hordes of Times Square, which is almost worse - a sea of tourists snapping mindless selfies in front of vast neon adverts, dodging fake Tibetan monks, ticket sellers and miserable grown-ups dressed as Elmo and Spider-Man.

These two sights neatly encapsulate New York’s problems, and those of the United States. Beneath the wonder and glamour lie the wretched, the desperate and the forgotten.

The bright lights of Times Square hint at America’s problems with consumerism, greed and failed dreams. Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP

A record number of Aussies are now heading to the United States, assisted by the easily obtained E-3 visa, and most are heading to the state of New York, closely followed by California.

As eager Australians flock to Manhattan and Brooklyn, it’s no bad thing to remain sceptical about America's undeniable magic.

Everyone will tell you that diverse New York is utterly different to the uncouth country beyond, yet the lack of a welfare system and the gap between rich and poor is bitterly obvious here.

Those living in the city’s skyscrapers and iconic brownstones — the ones Carrie Bradshaw could not afford even 20 years ago — must spend their days trying to ignore the homeless and disabled people begging for money on footpaths and in subway carriages.

The generous tipping culture excuses the lack of minimum wage, leaving some virtually destitute while working day and night. Work is good, America tells us. Those who strive can rise from nothing to unparalleled success.

Yet the divide between the haves and have-nots is evident across America, and its billionaire president has made a point of cutting taxes for rich corporations.

It’s those corporations that fuel America’s greed, the unavoidable advertising and the consumerist malaise that infects those trying to find cultural fulfilment in New York.

Self-congratulation in the “Land of the Free” conceals the reality of violence, addiction and injustices that accompany America’s relentless aspiration.

Yet our lives have never been more deeply influenced by this compromised role model. We lap up television shows breathlessly released on the “same day as the US”. Homegrown Australian TV looks and feels ever more American, with dramatic voiceover and flashy graphics. We embrace its food, fashion, design, film and cultural trends. We worship its celebrities and gratefully export our best talent to Hollywood.

Donald Trump’s corporate tax cuts and lethargy about helping the most in need is only widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. Picture: Saul Loeb / AFP

The boundaries between countries are growing increasingly blurred, and distance seem shorter and shorter in the age of cheap travel and fast internet. So many of us still dream of living in the ephemeral, urban wilderness of New York; we revel in the idea of being chewed up, bashed around and spat out.

And I would still recommend pursuing that — with one caveat.

Much of the culture and creativity we gain from the US, and the city at its heart, is truly invigorating. But some is darker: the blatant corruption, racism, selfishness and inequality.

The US doesn't have a monopoly on those traits, but it's powerful enough to lead us down the path to our destruction.

Just last week, we witnessed a sickening mass shooting, carried out by an alleged white supremacist Australian terrorist against Muslims engaged in prayer. Could anything more accurately mimic the malaise gripping the US, and by extension, the world?

America is not the source of our problems, but with its myriad motivations, ethnicities and backgrounds, it ably exemplifies them.

This is what I saw so clearly during a tumultuous year of Donald Trump grabbing daily headlines in Australia, what I saw normalised among his unquestioning supporters at a rally in Florida, and what was dizzyingly obvious in a White House press briefing room packed with more international journalists than the old-timers had ever seen.

We are losing our grip on who we really are. That’s especially dangerous when it's outsiders from all over world who make the US what it is.

“Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion,” E.B. White wrote in Here Is New York, one of the most famous essays on the city.

It's up to us to embrace the warmth of America, share in its passions, and emphatically reject its small-minded, isolationist impulses.