J ⛱️ 🌊 🌴

Agree and disagree. Australia and the US derive from common roots & have similar factors shaping them, so some of what looks like aping America is merely understandable similarity. HOWEVER… Globalised media & changing demographics are turning the Australia into a more generic multicultural Anglosphere country, which is more open to external cultural influences… and the US is the world’s no. 1 exporter of culture. Its influence is everywhere, but especially in Anglosphere countries, and in young ones like Canada & Australia most. Step back a generation or two & you’ll see a more Australian Australia & a more British Australia. Your results may vary as to how good or bad this shift is overall - one might argue we are more sophisticated & inclusive now - but it’s bad from the perspective of maintaining a distinctly Australian culture. An important factor here I think is also Australia’s relative lack of jingoism. Australians do have pride in their nation & culture but in the cosmopolitan middle class it’s seen as a bit cringe & crass. Not a phenomenon unique to Australia, but one more likely to diminish some overtly Australian aspects of our culture. Traditional “Aussie”-ness is obviously more highly valued among white Anglos with deeper roots here, but also among the working class and particularly rural Australians. Personally, as a person of partial Asian descent I’ve never fully identified with the Aussie identity, partly because as a youngster I didn’t feel it included me in it. I’m the epitome of the shift towards cosmopolitan global culture. But I can’t help but feel greater appreciation for many aspects of traditional Australian culture with the passing of time, and wonder what good things we be lost to us along with the bad.