Televised hearings have begun in the matter of the impeachment of the president of the United States. The country which Australian politicians, and most of its people, still consider to be the country’s best and most important friend is completely polarised and mired in political crisis.

The president, although overall less popular over his term than any other in recent history, and although credibly accused of a range of crimes and ethical breaches, still has the unwavering support of some four in 10 of his fellow citizens.

To a large extent the opposed political tribes of America mostly live in different places, live different lives, and inhabit separate informational universes. Commentators across the political spectrum, and people in the street, openly talk of civil strife if he is removed from office. You can feel it in the air, hear it in people’s voices – the country is set against itself.

If the president divides Americans, Australians are somewhat less conflicted.

United States Studies Centre polling suggests that fewer than one in five Australians want to see Trump re-elected, and only one-third of Coalition voters. Lowy Institute polling has two-thirds of Australians believing the president has weakened the relationship between the two countries. The same poll suggested that fully a third of the country thought Australia should distance itself from the US under Trump; actually an improvement on 2016, when 45% expressed this opinion in the lead-up to the election.

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Trump is not well loved down under, any more than he is in Europe or elsewhere. Despite this, Scott Morrison has spent much of this year appearing to lash himself to the president’s mast. His visit in September saw the prime minister parading himself with the president in a series of public occasions, including a state dinner, only the second of Trump’s tenure.

Then, and in succeeding months, he did Trump the kind of political favours that Australian public opinion would seem to militate against. He coughed up $150m to support Trump’s half-hearted plan to go to Mars. Later, and more seriously, his ambassador, Joe Hockey, offered support to the Trump administration in its conspiracy-minded efforts to discredit the Mueller inquiry, effectively assisting Trump in the pursuit of domestic political enemies.

You have to wonder why.

Is it pragmatism? Many Australians might agree that a precipitous break with the US, and a renunciation of our part in maintaining its increasingly rickety political hegemony, would not serve Australian interests.

Cold-blooded foreign policy realists might argue that whatever the moral character of the administration, Australia has neither the wherewithal nor the desire to police, say, the sea lanes that carry its exports to the world. However debased America’s polity may be, the other powers to which we might turn for sponsorship in an increasingly unstable world are openly authoritarian.

Sentimentalists might point to the goodwill and kinship built up between the countries during, and before, a long period of alliance and (one-sided) cultural exchange as something that should not be lightly tossed aside.

But that relationship wouldn’t die if Australia’s leaders adopted a less enthusiastic posture. It would be perfectly possible to maintain a wary distance from the current White House incumbent without destroying the relationship. God knows Trump – who by all appearances lives in a moment-to-moment stream of transactional encounters – would barely notice if Australia cooled the friendship by a few degrees. On the other hand, his entire personal history suggests that he is unlikely to be meaningfully grateful for any loyalty shown him.

The Australian right knows that the left hates Trump. And that is almost enough to lead it to ostentatiously embrace him

A well-placed, mild criticism here and there might leave room, later, for excusing ourselves from some foreign adventure embarked to shore up the president’s crumbling legitimacy, a possibility that it would be foolish to rule out.

Such criticism might also embody a recognition that the president is pursuing a self-destructive economic war with China, whose trading relationship with Australia dwarfs the Australia-US relationship.

If diplomacy is about threading such needles – balancing trade and security relationships – Australia’s government has shown no interest in doing so.

Moreover, the downside political risk in being so strongly identified with Trump – for whom there is a non-zero likelihood of being removed from office – would seem to be obvious. If Trump goes down, Morrison will not be able to erase all the glad-handing and back-scratching from the public record.

So why has the PM been so determined to suck up to the guy? A number of possibilities that suggest themselves. None are particularly comforting.

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The first is that the prime minister, his government, his party, and the whole culture of Australian conservatives know no greater pleasure, nor any greater purpose, than “owning the libs”.

The Australian right knows that the left hates Trump. And that is almost enough on its own to lead it to ostentatiously embrace him.

The pig-headed contrarianism of conservatism is an international trait, but it is particularly evident among Australia’s Coalition parties, which appear to have no special reason for being in government, and no ambitions for their administration beyond delaying a response to climate change, maintaining a racist refugee policy and frustrating efforts at reconciliation.

Right now, they’re literally watching the country burn.

Another possibility, though, lies in another aspect of the character of Australian conservatism. Increasingly over the decades, the Liberal party, rightwing media, and their camp followers have looked to US conservatism for the ideas that they, in their mediocrity, are incapable of generating.

Successively, the Liberals looked to their cousins across the ditch, and adopted their ideas. Like Republicans in the past, they used dog whistling, confected a border security problem, and exploited the “war on terror” as ways to win elections. They then enacted policies which largely benefited the wealthy and accelerated growing inequality.

Thinktanks including the IPA were successful less in thinking than in porting small government doctrine from the US right to an Australian context. The Australian right fell hard for concepts like “cultural Marxism”, which were initially forged as weapons in the US culture war. Christian right-style religious conservatism was always a harder sell in an irreligious country, but even this has made inroads, with culture warriors inside and outside the parliament picking fights on issues from halal food to trans rights.

Australia’s right is simply incapable of adopting a critical stance on US conservatism. They are under its tutelage.

One last possible explanation comes down to the temperament, personality and particular political character of Morrison.

If Tony Abbott’s politics had the flavour of a European reactionary – throne, knighthoods, and altar – and Malcolm Turnbull was a cosmopolitan neoliberal, Morrison may be the closest thing we have seen to a member of the all-American Christian right in the Lodge.

His enthusiastic, long-term membership in a suburban Pentecostal megachurch sets him apart from previous examples of the ways in which religion has infected Australian politics. Unlike every prime minister (outside a few notable atheists), Morrison is neither a Catholic nor a mainline Protestant. His faith was made in America.

His religious beliefs are fair game in this context because – as Morrison himself revealed – one of the visits he made in the US was to a similar Pentecostal church in Washington DC, run by an entrepreneurial, smart-casual pastor Mark Batterson.

Megachurch Pentecostalism offers a particular mirror on its country of origin. Long on personal inspiration and short on doctrine and history, each church in the loosely affiliated Assemblies of God network is often only as old as the building that houses it.

Pentecostalism emphasises direct experience, personal transformation, biblical inerrancy, and the moment-to-moment possibility of premillennial rapture, when faithful believers will ascend into heaven while the Earth descends into tribulation.

Megachurches are not confined to Pentecostalism but they are often under the even broader umbrella of American evangelicalism: 2000+ congregations happen across a range of denominations, but mostly in those that believe in biblical inerrancy, and the need to be born again. On the whole these churches are characteristic not so much of America as a whole but of its provinces, suburbs, mid-size cities: the sprawl.

And evangelicals are the segment of society which was most crucial in delivering the presidency to Trump. Almost all white evangelicals voted for him, and on their own composed 25% of his electorate. They voted for him not so much because of his intrinsic appeal but because they considered his opponent to be an existential threat to their way of life.

As with many other conservatives who had misgivings about a vulgar, adulterous, mendacious and acquisitive candidate, being anti-anti-Trump – hating the president’s liberal critics – has put them more and more in his corner.

In a movement that perennially sees itself as besieged by secular modernity, Trump has become their unlikely paladin.

This is Morrison’s faith community. This, perhaps, is his tribe. If he feels an affinity for the president, this may be its source: faith, loyalty and sacrifice.

Jason Wilson is a Guardian Australia columnist and journalist living in America



