Down But Not Under: In “No Worries” Australia, Worries About America

Also in Zimbabwe, Ireland, Lithuania, Russia (yes, even Russia)…

By Stephen Golub, Benicia resident and author, “Benicia and Beyond” column in the Benicia Herald, Mar 23, 2025

My wife and I recently returned from a vacation in Australia, a land of beautiful beaches, other natural splendors, kangaroos galore and remarkably friendly people concerned about what America’s current course means for their country.

From Worries to Outrage to Sorrow

Chats with friends and other folks we met Down Under, along with glimpses of Australia’s national news, illuminated a lengthy list of worries in a land where “No worries” is a favorite catchphrase.

The lead TV news story one night was how Trump’s tariffs would hurt Australia’s crucial steel and aluminum exports. Arguments over how to handle him loom large in its national elections this spring.

His televised Oval Office confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy triggered considerable press coverage and doubts about America’s reliability: Australian “officials, politicians and diplomats woke up and watched, slack-jawed, as the spectacular theatre of the Trump-Zelenskyy confrontation played out in the Oval Office and on their screens.”

Many folks we met highlighted his erratic economic policies and statements as threats to the global economy, and more specifically to the Australian stock market and their retirement savings.

One couple understandably fretted over their daughter’s plan to visit the United States in August, even wondering whether there would be a civil war here by then.

Several individuals voiced fear about how an unstable individual with his finger on the nuclear button would manage tensions with China.

In view of Trump’s actions undermining Ukraine and his desire to make Canada the 51^st state, others doubted his commitment to our equally loyal ally Australia, particularly in view of mounting Chinese economic and military pressure. (That pressure includes an unannounced, unprecedented live fire drill by Chinese warships in waters not far from Sydney and Melbourne last month, forcing dozens of commercial flight diversions.)

On our way out his door for our flight home, an outraged Aussie friend, by no means a political type, showed us a clip of Fox News host Jesse Watters somehow finding it “personally offensive” that Canadians don’t want “to be taken over by the United States of America” since “that’s what everyone else in the world wants.”

A few Aussies went as far as to share their sentiments on the state of the United States: “We feel sorry for you.”

The sorrow was certainly understandable. In fact, it was the way I sometimes felt during my international development career, when visiting societies repressed and ripped off by corrupt, autocratic regimes. Except the people in those societies typically did not vote such regimes into office.

Not Just Aussies

It wasn’t just Australians who were upset by what America is doing to itself and the world. We met others similarly alarmed. A white Zimbabwean mining executive, apparently no flaming liberal, was aghast at what Trump was doing to democracy and world order.

And then there was the diverse array of fellow travelers (so to speak) with whom we spent several days touring parts of Australia’s beautiful southeastern island of Tasmania. The thirteen participants hailed from America, Australia, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Russia and the United Kingdom. Except for the polite-to-the-point-of-reticence Japanese, they were troubled by Trump’s ascendance.

My wife and I hadn’t intended to indulge in so much discussion of American politics on a trip through a place about as far from America as you can get. But it kept popping up. And we couldn’t resist soliciting their thoughts.

The (anti-Putin) Russian warned that she saw the United States going down a path similar to what Russia experienced at the start of Putin’s reign. In a different chat, and despite my own confusion, I tried to explain to our new Irish friend why so much had gone so awry in our country.

The Lithuanian expressed trepidation over the fact that if Putin could get away with attacking Ukraine, her tiny nation was at great risk. She shared that right after Trump’s election Lithuanians held out hope that, just maybe, he might stand up to such potential aggression against their homeland (a NATO ally). But before long, they concluded that “He’s just an [expletive].”

If there was one comment that cut across the Aussies’ and the foreigners’ reactions to Trump’s election, it was, “How did this happen?”

Down, But Not Knuckling Under

My wife and I returned to America glad to be back home even as we knew home to be in crisis. But we also arrived to a blizzard of emails from friends and neighbors here, about matters local and national.

The local focus was the increasingly promising fight for Benicia (the small Bay Area city where we live) to enact an Industrial Safety Ordinance that would force Texas-based oil giant Valero to be more transparent and accountable regarding its Benicia refinery’s accidents and emissions. Things can change, but our City Council is barely a week away from the vote that will likely seal that deal.

The emails’ national focus comprised discussions of meetings, rallies, strategies and steps to save our freedom and survive Trump’s political onslaught. These initial signs of activism, admittedly in need of much refinement but repeated across the country, constitute seeds of hope in a bleak landscape.

Having just returned from abroad, I wish more than ever that Trump supporters in the United States could hear from folks in other nations, as a counterbalance to Jesse Watters’ jingoism. I wish they could appreciate why, halfway across the world and in many places in-between, so many foreigners fear that what’s happening in America harms not just us but them. I wish they could grasp why those foreigners so strongly back the fight against authoritarianism here.

While it’s ultimately up to Americans whether our democracy sinks or swims, we should take heart from such overseas sentiments. We’re down, but we’re not knuckling under. Our battle to save democracy is just starting.