We swapped cultural cringe for Coca-colonisation — and lost our distinctions by osmosis

Powerhouse: Tom Cruise promoting Top Gun: Maverick. Picture: Getty Images

You may recall that earlier this year Scott Morrison lost office. Lost it? That sounds like a minor mishap, as though he’d mislaid the Lodge like an umbrella. In truth, he was well and truly kicked out. The voters told him to get lost.

One of the first things he did after the election was to hire an entire cinema for a private screening of the Tom Cruise movie Top Gun: Maverick. Our no-longer top gun invited a few close mates and apparatchiks along for the fun. It’s nice to think of them sitting in the dark munching popcorn along with the pop culture.

It illustrates a central concern I’ve been writing about for decades. The power of soft power. The way US dominance of cinema helped US dominance full stop. For generations more than 97 per cent of Australian cinema tickets went for American movies. Britain was shoved aside as we swapped the cultural cringe for Coca-colonisation. We lost our distinctions by osmosis. Even our colloquialisms were lost to those drongos. Sorry, those SOBs. Our heroes were their heroes. Forget Ned Kelly – here’s Hopalong Cassidy.

It was even worse with television. While the ABC rolled out the red carpet for BBC programs, the commercial networks gave us the choice between American and American – LA versus New York. We dragged the Trojan horse of US soft power into our lounge rooms. Law and Order wasn’t just the name of a NYC drama; it became a term deployed in our elections, a way of thought. For many the US flag became their flag. Top Gun anybody?

Buy US culture today! Free bonus offer: US religiosity! Forget fusty old-fashioned faiths like RC and CoE. Why speak Latin when you can speak in tongues? Swap to the new brands of Pentecostalism. Sample QAnon. Listen to John Laws and Alan Jones mimic Rush Limbaugh. Turn our elections into de-facto US-style presidential elections. Do selfies with Donald.

Soft power becomes indistinguishable from power power. Having another war? Please Mr President, can we come too? Vietnam, Iraq? Your enemies are our enemies. Yes, we’ll be on the wrong side of history, complicit in the murder of millions, but what are friends for?

Nor does it matter if we go to US wars based entirely on lies. Remember the fictitious Gulf of Tonkin incident that spurred US involvement in Vietnam? Iraq’s non-existent WMDs and its “central” role in 9/11? Hollywood isn’t the only dream factory. Try Washington DC.

Time for our Little Sir Echoes to raise the flag of the Australian confederacy. I exaggerate? Hardly. The drums are beating. Just as we couldn’t wait to sign up for that most insane of public policies, the War on Drugs. If the US says “jump!” we, almost without exception, ask: “How high?”

Any fraying vestigial links with King Charles III aren’t our real problem. Our republican movement should be concerned with our domination by the US Republic. By the real-political fact that our head of state lives in the White House, not Buckingham Palace.

Our appetite for the US is insatiable. It’s not just Maccas. After Seventh-day Adventists invented cornflakes at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan we munched them in millions of tonnes. We drink enough Coke to flood the Murray-Darling, and Australia was once the biggest per-capita market for Marlboro.

As the 51st state at the very least we deserve a star on Old Glory. And a vote in the next presidential election. See you at the movies.