Sad irony: Australian article about the decline of the US, published by the same company whose Fox News cable channel contributes to that decline

The Australian is Australia's leading newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp. 

In the US, the same company owns the Fox "News" cable channel, which is a major abettor of the President's worst tendencies and a divisive force in US politics (The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting, National Bureau of Economic Research; "What you know depends on what you watch: Current events knowledge across popular news sources," Fairleigh Dickinson University).

I can't see copies of this photo being framed and hung on the walls of Trump's various golf clubs and hotels.  Photo:  Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty.

The article, "A perfect storm is exposing Donald Trump and US frailties," does in part blame "Democratic progressivism" for some of the partisanship.

And doesn't acknowledge that animus arises from the fact that Trump did not win the popular vote, but ended up president because of structural biases in the Electoral College process. From the article:

The most powerful nation on Earth is being brought undone from within by its pent-up governance and moral failures. The crisis has multiple triggers — abuse of police power, entrenched disadvantage of black Americans, mounting anger in American hearts, cultural schisms across the nation and political polarisation driven by Donald Trump’s populism and Democrat progressivism.

The intolerable killing of ­George Floyd has erupted into something far larger. On display now is a conflict between two contradictory visions: resentment at the injustice, racism and despair embedded in the American project, and Trump’s resort to the executive “dominance” against lawlessness, casting himself as “your President of law and order” to defend the public by threatened military deployment.

The fourth year of the Trump presidency has turned into a nightmare that has shaken the lives, livelihoods and confidence of all Americans. COVID-19 was the perfect storm that exposed US frailties. Trump’s response was appalling; more than 100,000 Americans have died, the economy plunged into a downturn with unemployment heading to 20 per cent, consigning millions of households and businesses to misery. But the bottom 50 per cent — and that includes most African-Americans — are the most damaged. ...

It's rarely a good look for a politician to stand in front of a boarded up building, especially a church that is boarded up because it fears its windows will be broken.  Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images. 

Trump is a phony tough. He cannot handle a genuine crisis. This is the central lesson from 2020 politics to this stage. “Most of you are weak,” he told state governors. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time, they’re gonna run over you, you’re gonna look like a bunch of jerks.” Trump substitutes abuse and arrogance for leadership and inspiration.

In this crisis Trump has chosen domination over healing, military threat over moral exhortation, abuse of Democrat governors over cross-party unity. Anything else would be inconceivable. This is how he became President. Trump is a populist and populists live on blaming others in the hope of winning 51 per cent after dividing their country. The man is devoid of shame, posing with a Bible outside the famous church opposite the White House. ...

In 1968 Richard Nixon, pledging to deliver stability, won the White House after stormy years that saw major city riots, the civil rights movement and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. The American people went conservative. Comparisons with 2020 are filled with traps, not least that Trump, unlike Nixon, is the incumbent. He carries baggage; his gross ineptitude in crises, and an administration characterised by reoccurring chaos.

And this from a company that supports President Trump wholeheartedly.

But it wouldn't be published in a NewsCorp newspaper in the US (these days their only US newspaper is the New York Post).  Instead it's published in a newspaper in another country, in a city almost 10,000 miles away from Washington, DC.*

I don't imagine Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, or Sean Hannity will be interviewing the author of the piece, Paul Kelly, Editor at Large of The Australian, any time soon.

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* A story about distance from headquarters making it easier to say or do things that aren't otherwise allowed. In the US, the Army Corps of Engineers runs locks.

The Chittenden Locks in Seattle connect Lake Washington to the Puget Sound. It's the only ACE installation with a botanical garden, which is not an allowable facility. One of the landscape architects at the facility, Carl English, began to organize the plantings on the site with the aim of creating a park like place.

He could get away with this at the time, starting about 110 years ago, because Seattle is more than 2,000 miles from Washington, DC.