After spending the last year living in the United States, I will mercifully be whisked back to my peaceful homeland of Australia before the tumult of November’s election season begins. While I am not a US citizen, I certainly have a dog in the fight — as a green card holder, a taxpayer, the husband of an American wife, and the father of an American daughter. Being a fellow Westerner in general and an Aussie in particular, I am also acutely aware that America’s destiny largely shapes that of my own country, not least as Communist China flexes its muscles in our largely undefended region. Before my first visit to the US some five years ago, I had an image of a confident, prosperous America, of mansions and manicured lawns, clean cities and cutting-edge culture, risk and ingenuity — basically, the America I saw in the movies. While that America does exist, it is increasingly found in gated communities and elite coastal suburbs, far from where the majority live. The majority live in cities like Milwaukee, where I have spent the last 12 months.
Battlefield
Milwaukee is a city of battlers. Located an hour and a half north of Chicago on the western shores of Lake Michigan, Milwaukee is a gritty industrial hub, famous for big-name breweries like Miller, Pabst and Schlitz, and the headquarters of Harley Davidson and Milwaukee Tool. In Milwaukee’s early-19th century settlement by faith-filled German immigrants, its rapid industrialisation, and its incredible taming of wild frontiers, I see distinct reflections of my own native Adelaide Hills. I understand these people. In many ways, Milwaukee is a microcosm of 2020s America. It is a cultural and political battlefield. Here, farmers, factory workers and finance types are hustling to survive a cost-of-living crisis while their taxes fund foreign wars, DEI bloat and federal largesse. Schools have become a frontline in the fight over pronouns, pornographic library books and other propaganda. The Wisconsin Supreme Court just re-legalised ballot drop boxes in a state where voter fraud allegations were widespread. Wokery is weaponising the empathy of everyday people to recruit foot soldiers for its cultural revolution, but most don’t realise the TV and newspapers are lying about how popular those ideas really are.
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Image Credit: Unsplash
This article was originally published on Mercator under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
