It is often said of the USA that it is stiflingly patriotic but that it’s most redeeming feature is that its strongest critics are, in fact, Americans. This captures something about a great democracy. It may gets things wrong, disastrously so at times, but it does have a natural mechanism of self-correction in the national discussion that transpires in its media.
The same cannot be said for Australia. Australian exceptionalism is an altogether more toxic beast. Because we’re so much smaller than the USA, not to mention much less independent of spirit and more prone to anti-intellectual populism, our media is positioned somewhere between a cowed dog on the Right and mincing wowser on the Left when it comes to thrashing out the issues of the day.
That, in turn, enables our institutions to lie with impunity generating a national discussion that is at once cowardly, self-serving and corrupt. It also means that when crisis strikes, propaganda and supposition swiftly rise to replace argument and fact in the national narrative.