I talk to a lot of people, it's a core part of what I do.
I'm always looking for 'casual' conversations that help me to 'tune in' to where people are at, the 'vibe' of the thing...
The conversations I'm having here in the USA with random Uber drivers, bartenders, table waiters, random people on busses and trains, are amazing.
There's a wide mix of people of course, as there are in Australia, but I'm noticing a key difference.
The people I speak to who are skeptical of government authority (which is a LOT of them over here) are ACTIVE about it. They're animated, they're finding ways to stick the middle finger up in some way or other to 'the system'.
Often that's only in small ways, but they're not shy about telling me what they're up to, their little personal campaign of civil disobedience.
In Australia the proportion of people who are openly skeptical of government and authority isn't all that different, but most (by NO means all) are defeatist 'what can you do'? types.
There's a passivity, a resignation, a sense of fatalism and inevitable failure.
I'd say that's the #1 thing we can and should learn from our American cousins... that recognising a problem without doing anything about it is just whingeing. It's the choice to DO something, even something small, that matters.
My hope is that this is also what's CHANGING in Australia right now... more people than ever before are getting active, involved, and I hope in due course more people will join me (and to be fair, a bunch of others, I'm FAR from the 'only one') in actively saying 'no', in whatever way that means for you, finding a way, ANY way, to stick the middle finger up to the system, to draw a line in their own personal lives and say 'no further' to the creeping growth of the authoritarian state.
To say that the 'tone' here is refreshing is a massive understatement. I feel like I'm being recharged, refocused, and not only do I hope that my work will have a huge positive impact on America, I also feel that America is having a huge positive impact on me.