Chris Uhlmann the Australian January 31, 2025
In November a banana taped to a wall sold at a New York auction for $9.57m. Or rather, the idea of the artwork, called Comedian, sold. What crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun bought was a certificate of authenticity that gives him sole authority to gaffer-tape a banana to a wall and call it Comedian. What was to stop him, or anyone else, from doing this for free is anybody’s guess. But the spectacle of a dealer in a currency no one understands spending a fortune on a mirage is a work of performance art perfectly sculpted for this post-reality era.
To casual observers this underscores all that is wrong with the direction of art since it was unmoored from actual skill with a brush or chisel. Without discounting the abilities of many modern artists, some are clearly taking the piss. Alas, that does not stop the learned from bestowing value on a void and mocking those too stupid to see.
Given Comedian is a blank canvas, let’s load it up with some meaning of our own. Imagine it is the central artefact in the cathedral of consensus built by the puritans of progress. Since colonisers snatched the banana from the global south and shackled it under a petrochemical seal, this enslaved fruit eloquently cries a great J’accuse against the uncountable crimes of Western capitalism.
It silently screams against borders, nations, “populism” and patriotism. It rages against colonialism, equality, individualism, merit, masculinity and heterosexuality. It celebrates technocratic orthodoxy, intersectional identity, climate catastrophism, mass migration, historic guilt and gender fluidity. As penance it demands we abandon markets, fossil fuel and meat.
Behold, Comedian as the crucifix of institutional progressivism.
Well, a gorilla just ripped that banana off the wall and ate it.
Donald Trump 2.0 is the kind of art you fashion in a boneyard with a chainsaw. His rebirth is like a mixed martial artist genre-jumping into Disney’s Bambi and slapping that baby deer into the Avengers Multiverse. This is brutalism on a palette; history’s brushstroke soaked in blood and ash.
With the return of the great disrupter, the only thing that is certain is creative or destructive chaos. He is all things to all people because – like modern art – much of the evidence of his good or evil is subjective. Those who believe Trump is the messiah and those who see the devil will all have a Bible’s worth of proof for their faith.
There will be winners and losers inside and outside the United States. Whether or not Trump’s ideas are coherent, or work, is not the point. America’s regent will act and the world will have to react.
He returns as the Chinese emperor and Russia’s tsar are well advanced in their own plots to refashion the world, and everything is up for grabs. The rules-based international order has been abandoned by its author and defender. The dominance of the global reserve currency will be tested as the monetary system evolves or fractures. Nationalism will unravel globalism as trade barriers rise. The net-zero fantasy will be exposed as energy security trumps green dreams. An economic world war three has begun. The chance of a shooting war is real.
If the Albanese government understands the size of the wave on the horizon then there was no sign of it as the Prime Minister paddled in the shallows in his election-setting speech to the National Press Club.
What was Anthony Albanese’s opening salvo as Australia navigates this most dangerous of times? Upgrading Queensland’s Bruce Highway. The real world is about to devour Labor dreams of electric cars driving on that road.
Trump knows the world runs on fossil fuel. If his command to “drill, baby, drill” is heeded it will be good for US consumers and dicey for investors as the price of oil and gas falls. Real, cheap energy will fuel new power-hungry industries.
Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi also understand how the world really works.
Look past China’s renewable energy shopfront and the factory floor data shows its carbon footprint has grown by 38 per cent over the past decade.
Over the same time India’s emissions went up by 25 per cent and Russia’s by 10 per cent. With the US pulling the plug on the Paris Agreement, nations responsible for 60 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions have net-zero intention of putting virtue-signalling before progress.
Those who believe the future is paved with windmills, solar panels and green hydrogen will be on the side of the losers, and that was true before the second coming of Trump.
The European Union and United Kingdom are a study in what happens when politicians unplug an economy.
So what does Australia do? Do we continue to follow the EU and UK down the pathway to poverty; depowering and deindustrialising to try to hit emissions-cutting targets that will have zero effect on the climate?
Or do we use the resources beneath our feet and try to stay rich and adapt to whatever the future holds? We will not reap some imagined benefit of “cheap” and “profitable” green industries fleeing here from the US. We will get the rent-seekers, America will get the business.
In the swings and roundabout of Trumpworld, cheap oil and gas will push costs down while tariffs force them up.
Tariffs are paid by US consumers, not the countries they target. But if the threat of tariffs encourages businesses to relocate to America and foreign money is invested in US industries then this will help drive Trump’s ambition to retool manufacturing. If he cuts federal income taxes, tariffs will act as a consumption tax.
Whatever happens in the US, Australia could be roadkill in a global trade war. So what is the plan for how we deal with the direct and knock-on effects of tariffs, which could see demand for our exports tank, our currency weaken and inflation return with a vengeance?
Trump also wants to cement US dominance over the western hemisphere, threatening to take Greenland and the Panama Canal by force if necessary.
This makes it a tad hard to argue China shouldn’t take Taiwan and Russia can’t impose itself on Ukraine. If the world is carved into spheres of influence then, sadly, Australia sits in the eastern hemisphere with China. Where is the thinking on this?
It would be wrong to assume the resurrection of Trump in the US necessarily signals a change of government here. Australia is not America, our electoral system pushes politics to the centre. Here the permanent administrative state rules. Here much of business competes for government largesse. Here our mostly urban community is disconnected from its sources of energy, food and wealth. Here radical change is hard.
It is tough for an Australian politician painting by numbers to compete with a man who, quite literally, wants his face carved on Mount Rushmore. But the least we should expect in this election year is a clear idea from both Labor and the opposition of how they intend to deal with a radically changing world. Because the one we knew is coming unstuck.
Nelle's journey 