I went to the pictures the other day, to see a doco about Aussie football. It featured a focus on winning, certainly, but by means of teamwork, having fun, having a healthy family life and keeping perspective.

Before we got to see the doco we were subjected to previews of other shows on offer. Top of the heap seemed to be Dune 2, which features dramas transplanted from Earth to another planet. The dramas feature a lot of fighting, of an updated mediaeval kind with swords and some magic. The plot seems to revolve about the hero regaining his rightful place ruling the planet.

All very hierarchical, monarchist and violent, as are most of our fairy tales and children’s stories, of which this is an adult-rated version.

Then there is the show about King Kong and Godzilla, this time teaming up to fight some threat that was unclear to me. I gather they had an unlikely meeting in a previous picture, and that they fought each other. As they would.

Except of course gorillas are quite peaceable and the big lizard thing is a fiction presumably based loosely on dinosaurs of unknown disposition. But most creatures only attack other creatures if they are hungry or feel threatened. I suppose every non-human creature on the planet has a right to feel threatened.

There’s a Ghostbusters movie, with lots of weird monsters that materialise out of nowhere and are all hostile. Be very afraid. And Kung Fu Panda 4, the Americanised martial arts series about a fat hero fighting a lot.

Why would we want to share the values of Americans? Americans, the US version of Americans, are violent. They have guns. Their origin mythology in the Old West features a lot of gun fighting. We could debate whether Australians have been any less violent (probably not, through our shorter history of dispossessing previous inhabitants), but we are clearly less lethally violent to each other at present.

Some years ago it occurred to me that there was an endless stream of disaster and apocalypse movies, mostly made in the USA. I could not recall seeing, or seeing of, a movie in which a long and healthy future is in store for the characters and their descendants. I still have not.

There are pre-apocalypse stories, post-apocalypse stories, disasters of all kinds but nothing to suggest the world will move into a better state.

The notable thing about all these dire happenings is that the apocalyptic threats we do face are rarely depicted, with the notable exceptions of one nuclear war and one climate collapse. Well, there are plenty of technological dystopias, but they are depicted like acts of nature over which humans have no control. The movies offer no way to avoid those either.

So, we fret endlessly and safely about disasters that could happen but probably won’t, and we remain resolutely in denial about the big one that will certainly happen unless we change our ways very soon now.

If you look at the real United States, what do you see? The most militarist nation on the planet, by far, with over 800 military bases world-wide and a military budget greater than the next several put together. The US has been at war in virtually every decade of its existence. At present it is supporting a proxy war against Russia, having spent two decades meddling and goading to bring the conflict about, and it is goading China in a similar way, with a clear wish for a military conflict. Either of these could turn nuclear.

It is not often said, and never in the mainstream media, that the US is governed by a clique of paranoid neo-conservatives who want to dominate the world by force.

If you look inside the US you see a society riven with conflict. There are many good people in the US, but they have this murderous rate of gun deaths. The political factions are beyond reconciliation, or understanding of any kind apparently. They have armed civil strife and are not far from civil war, based on politics and race both.

Do we in Australia share the values of the US? We have these conflicts, but they are rather less virulent, and often following the example of the US rather than being home grown. Why would we want to be like the US? The US has no tradition of the fair go. It has always been a more unequal and less cohesive society. It has never had serious (democratic) socialists in power, or at least restraining the power of the wealthy.

When our politicians talk about shared values, they seem to be thinking of our wealthy and powerful being like their wealthy and powerful, only less so. They share the idea that they want to eliminate threats to their power, like socialism, democracy and rival powers.

Thank you, but I want a country that retains and rebuilds mutual tolerance and basic respect, that does not turn to violence as the first choice at home or abroad, and that values the cultural diversity of the world. And the surviving diversity in the natural world.

And that has some prospect of surviving for more than a decade or two, and that may offer our descendants fulfilling lives into the indefinite future.