Before the fetid rise of reality TV there was Almost Anything Goes, an anarchic 1970s contest where teams pitted themselves against each other in battles that tended to involve inordinate amounts of Vaseline.
There was the race up the slippery slope to hang a quoit, the pillow fight on a greasy pole over an ice-filled pool and the pantyhose relay melding cross-dressing with confected violence. It was compelling like a car crash.
The show even had former footy legends as comperes to give it a veneer of sporting legitimacy but everyone watching knew deep down that it was all make-believe. Charades like this were fun but they would never replace the real thing.
The title of this cultural throwback has occupied my brain as I watch the mad scramble to the ballots in the US, Donald Trump’s super-spreader rallies, the court-packed rubber-stamped voter suppression, the dumping of conspiracy theories directed at Joe Biden and the democratic process in general.
The constant barrage of Trump’s norm-busting presidency has caused a collective numbness that accepts institutional impotence, renders objective facts relative and decouples actions from their consequences. Like it’s all become a game.
Now after four years where almost anything has gone, Americans and their friends across the world wait to see if those institutions can withstand a final barrage of orchestrated chaos and whether what emerges from the election is democracy or a paler imitation.
It is impossible to look away as we are, all of us, drawn into the orange vortex. And results in this week’s Essential Report show that Australians are doing so with significant levels of disquiet.
While Australians believe it’s important to maintain good relations with the US whoever is the president, two-thirds of us believe the Trump presidency has diminished the US’s reputation and half believe the US is less relevant to Australia’s interests than in the past.
Although many of us have been drawn into the drama as bemused onlookers, there is a growing detachment, a sense that what is happening is “over there”, like Hollywood, but in a bad way.
The pandemic has reminded us that Scott Morrison’s Australia is a long way from Trump’s America. Where the US systems have failed and more than 230,000 have died, Australia’s civic structures have proven far more resilient with fewer than 1,000 deaths.
But if we think this is all a side show, a separate result from our survey suggests there are a not insignificant number of Australians who would like the Trump show to continue.
While it is clear Trump does not have majority support among Australians, one-quarter of our respondents wish him well. One in five Labor voters support Trump, while sentiment is close to evenly split among Coalition voters. (If any of the 10% of pro-Trump Green voters are reading this column I would love to know where you are coming from in the comments section.)
We have seen in recent elections the effectiveness of third-party disinformation and a sharpening of the partisan echo chambers, although the Queensland election shows that competent government can still be a virtue that is rewarded.
More concerning has been a growing tolerance for the sort of low-level grift that undermines trust in public institutions; from inflated land deals, media dumps based on forged documents, to compromised trysts where no evil is seen or ever heard.
Despite overwhelming support for a federal anti-corruption body, the Australian government has dragged its feet and was only yesterday going kicking and screaming to the sort of Icac-lite that is unlikely to rebuild public confidence.
Critically, in the message box exercise below, the PM’s proposition that there are more pressing issues than a corruption watching is soundly, though not comprehensively, rejected.
It would be hyperbole to draw a line between this tardiness and a Trumpian world, but it would be naive not to see there is a path to the road that leads there.
Australia has withstood the worst of the pandemic by putting its faith in institutions, but there is no room for complacency. If there’s one lesson from America, whatever the outcome, it’s that democracy doesn’t just happen.
Without the integrity our of institutions, politics just becomes a spectator sport, where you cheer for your team as they try to ascend the slippery pole but you know deep down it’s all just a game.
• Peter Lewis is executive director of Essential Media
