Most academic research into psychology tells us that human beings, in moments of crisis, regardless of being right or left, become immediately altruistic.
It’s like a switch goes on in our brains, a reset, where we reach out and help one another.
The reason no one in NZ punditry appreciated the power of this solidarity from the universal unique event of the lockdown is because the 35 year neoliberal experiment in individual uber allas culture (fractured a billion more times by identity politics and the grim wheel of intersectionist grief) made us forget what solidarity actually felt like.
The self sacrifice many felt by the lockdown played out differently. For the vulnerable, it was the first time the State had reached out to actually help them and for the middle classes they felt that vulnerability for the first time ever.
The vulnerable welcomed the housing, the wage subsidy and public kindness while the middle classes marvelled at their own courage as akin to storming the beaches of Gallipoli.
This solidarity has forged a loyalty with Jacinda that has reset the psychology of the electorate in a tectonic fashion.
If you ask the average Kiwi who is voting Labour this year to name just one Labour Party policy, I would put money down on the vast majority of them answering with, ‘Jacinda saved NZ?’
When your policy platform is seen by the vast majority of people as ‘saving our lives’, you have built an emotional 20 lane multi level motorway suspension bridge towards a mandate that demands use.
The structural reforms that need to be embarked upon within the neoliberal State will face immediate and toxic resistance, the next Government must over run that resistance by dramatically expanding the size of the State and drowning out toxic public service workers with a huge influx of a new culture.
NZ currently employs around 300 000 public servants, maybe that needs to be 600 000?
Much of the neoliberal free market hegemonic structure is a threat to us now, not just a false promise. This first wave of pandemic is a startling insight to the climate crisis future of instability we face, Labour are about to be rewarded with a mandate that they have no choice but to build from.
The Greens and Labour need to have a summit after the election with the Māori Party if elected and thrash out a 100 day plan that will see a raft of reforms and upgrades that are passed immediately to begin building that new future.
This is a once in a generation event, we must have a once in a generation response.
Anything less is a vile betrayal of that political loyalty.
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Yes Martyn Labour will win; and will then need to set the goal to carry forward their promises made to us back in 2017.
The list is large.
Hi Jacinda.
Now you have the whole country supporting you to do what you think best, you must do as Martyn says!
D J S
I’ll wait till the numbers are in on Saturday really, but the poll trends for months have not had Labour under 47% and Nats closer to, or even under 30% than 35%! so the indications are hopeful for a re-elected Labour led Govt.
How the Great Leap Forward to burying the toxic legacy of neo liberal hegemony and Parliamentary consensus is actually achieved will be another matter. Blairism runs deep in the Labour Caucus and the unelected Wellington “tops” of Labour–who so covet “one Labour to rule them all” in their class collaborationist dreams.
A lot could of course be done at the stroke of a pen in the first 100 days, but I maintain it will not actually happen without deep community organisation and direct action. This would have to include a class left leadership takeover of the NZCTU by affiliated unions, and a hell of a lot of autonomy granted to Māori communities to run their own affairs. Climate action needs to become mainstream and properly resourced and supported by schools and workplaces.
I think it will actually take a 3 three year activist campaign including both confrontational and inclusive strategies to get the required shift to mass state house/apartment builds, a restored Ministry of Works, top echelon of public servants to reapply for their jobs etc. Such a three year campaign would be aimed at the 2023 election and the boomers replacement generations–it would be the ultimate expression of the old leftist saying “work with and struggle against”. Accept and welcome the useful reforms a Labour, Labour/Green, or Labour/Green/Māori Govt. would deliver, but simultaneously push and organise for a whole lot more at the same time.
Yes Tiger Mountain. The Unions are the start place for revolution. Oh, I wish.
‘This is a once in a generation event, we must have a once in a generation response.
Anything less is a vile betrayal of that political loyalty.’
Expect to be severely disappointed. Expect to be betrayed, Martyn.
Other than the above-average response to Covid-19, everything the incumbents (and their opponents) have said in their campaigning is absolute bollocks -more road construction, more population overshoot, more dependence on fossil fuels, more pollution, more squandering of energy and resources on so-called infrastructure [that will have no utility in the very near future], and more energy and resources squandered on corportised sport etc.
All of it is based on the desperate desire to try to keep local branch of the global banksters’ Ponzi scheme going, and to placate the consumption-based business sector, and pander to the wants of the trained-to-be-stupid portion of the general populace that thinks is has a right to gross overconsumption of resources and gross overproduction of pollution: the whole ‘We must get international air travel up and running again’ narrative says it all.
All of what we see is based on neoliberal lies and fatally-flawed economic theories that have got us into this inescapable [at this late stage of the game] predicament.
It’s a loot-and-pollute economic system, so assuming the Adern government does get a mandate, it will keep facilitating looting and polluting, whatever the dire consequences. Uninhabitable planet! “So be it; we have to protect and preserve banking and consumption, whatever the cost.” I can hear the words, even if they are never spoken.
It is, of course, the mindset of people like Jacinda Adern and Grant Robertson that is the problem, and nothing is going to change that mindset in the short term, I’m afraid.
It can be argued that they are too young to know any better, since they have never known anything other than the bollocks of loot-and-pollute and never experienced the kind of frugality and cohesiveness that existed immediately after the Second World War, and which the consumption-driven banksters and industrialists worked hard to demolish via mind-control systems developed by Bernays and his accomplices in crime. And they are certainly not trained in ecology or fundamental chemistry, we know that for a fact.
Indeed, Jacinda and Grant, and the entire echelon of scientifically-and-financially illiterate, born-into-privilege politicians and hangers on will keep doing what they do till they can’t, and ignore every warning of impending catastrophe.
‘This is my message to the western world – your civilisation is killing life on Earth
We Indigenous people are fighting to save the Amazon, but the whole planet is in trouble because you do not respect it’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/12/western-worldyour-civilisation-killing-life-on-earth-indigenous-amazon-planet
Schooled in Tony Blair’s office, the cult of the third way is the only religion this Blairite knows. The third way – taking the worst of the right and the worst of the left and creating the political and economic diarrhea since 1990.
Frank the Tank,
It must be really exhausting being you.
Sympathies to the family.
Get well soon.
Much love.
Terry Tibbs.
I always get an immediate lift whenever you reply to my posts.
Tony Blair is now a recognised war criminal
Third of British people want to see Tony Blair tried as a war criminal over Iraq, finds YouGov poll
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tony-blair-war-criminal-iraq-trial-convicted-yougov-british-people-uk-prme-minister-wmds-dossier-george-w-bush-a7870341.html
Yet he still gets kickback gigs from the EU and all his globalist buddies long after the original neoliberal celebrity Prime Minister left office. Outside of the above is there anything lasting he did? Sound familiar?
P.S. He did beat the UK’s worst PM in living memory. But then again a pot plant could have defeated John Major.
100% in agreement that placing the maori party in the ‘progressive’ tent is tipping one’s cap to the reality of post truth politics.
Considering how both other parties in question are subliminally neo-liberal by evidence of their mp’s attitude and complete lack of hands-on ability , the likelihood of a First 100 days reform blitz actually a/ occurring and b/ resulting in in any meaningful long-term structural change to Aotearoa ,are minimal .
IMO, the measure of Arden as a progressive leader will be in her post-election cabinet.
Her current crew are remarkable only for their lack of accomplishment and their combined ability to to apportion blame on NZ First for matters unresolved.
I agree ,Post Covid/Climate change reality needs a radical response and to that end a ministerial advisory/policy group drawn from all sectors and heavy on proven track records of engineering and technical achievement needs to be conscripted.
Politically the primary aim should be to permanently disrupt the intergenerational support of the rural vote for National , who long ago ceased to give a stuff about anything beyond the machinations within suburban Auckland.
Good call. We’re in a position to potentially move towards something resembling a technocracy. Getting the experts & the scientists into positions where they can effect the change they’ve been craving that improves everyone’s lifestyle. I’m hopeful that TOP can be a part of that at some stage, because they’re the really strong policy incubator right now.. I actually have a feeling that their result this election may turn some heads.
Remember back to Winston’s comments when he put Labour in. He was anticipating a global financial meltdown within the last term that hasn’t quite happened yet. That was long before covid and covid is disguising the implosion that was already happening then. It is always timing that is hardest to predict, exacerbated by not knowing what actions will be taken by authorities and how effective or destructive they will be. But the fact of the matter is that neoliberal economics in as much as it defines a market led global economy ended in 2008 with the GFC.
Since then it has been a zombie economy kept in suspended animation by ever increasing infusions of QE fait money being fed into the banking and finance system. The market no longer has any function at all except to distribute that QE money among the zombie corporations and banks to keep the necessary products for society’s immediate needs moving for as long as possible. By keeping the QE infusions out of the hands of the population and using them only for keeping the corporations and finance alive the advent of galloping inflation has been temporarily averted except in the futures, bond and sharemarkets with i spillover into house prices.
One important thing that this is doing is to draw everyone’s attention to the nature of money. The way it is being created now even here in NZ is being disguised as a massive loan in order I believe ,to avoid having to
provide the public with a clear picture of what is being done. The point being that if money can be created so easily then why the hell are people allowed to go without what they need in ordinary times? Borrowing money from our own reserve bank which we own ; money that is created on the spot specifically to make it available specifically for that purpose is just a conjuring trick. It is nothing like a loan from the IMF which does have to be paid back (even though it was originally created by exactly the same process but by someone else).
For the concept of money to work for society, society has to believe in it’s value, that they will be able to exchange what they get paid for their efforts to society with what the need from society for themselves . I’m sure it has been long resolved by the people who control it that we will better retain that faith if we do not think too much about how insubstantial it actually is, and how simply and painlessly it can be manufactured by those vested with the exclusive right to manufacture it for their own gain and society’s use.
The process that is under way now is demonstrating this aspect of the nature of money to everyone taking an interest.
I’m pretty sure that eventually it will all reach a point where the separation of the QE recipients being the international corporations banks and financiers and the rest and vast majority of society will become unsustainable. If sufficient of QE which will be in ever greater quantities filters into the working physical economy to forestall almost universal destitution, then inflation in the traditional sense of applying to the food and goods and services we all live by will explode.
So what the end result will be is impossible to say because it will depend again on what people in power in other countries as well as our own do as things develop.
But the point of all this conjecture is that the Labour party is right to be saying as little as possible about how they will proceed through the next 3 years. If they have taken Winston’s words to heart as I suspect they have as they see the world shaping up as he predicted, they will have to react to international developments as they happen. A transformation will best be implemented when the rest of the world is in an uncontroled state of flux rather than to try to row against the tide.
D J S
https://time.com/5897240/new-zealand-elections-ardern/
There’s a good deal of insight in what you say, DJS. The international waters are going to be a wee bit choppy and the ride a bit rough in the coming years. Current tools and levers, or whatever, will become useless and only further exaccerbate the meltdown. A really big challenge ahead, globally and locally. Against this backdrop we in NZ have a national election … as much as it captures our attention it pales in comparison for what is about to happen. Oh, and to add to the backdrop we have the political farce in the US of A. And the unfolding dynamics around the PRC.
I recognize your positivity everyone but the veil is lifted for me.
Ardern is a Blairite, the worst kind of politician, because ideologically they are as harmful neoliberal and globalist as the Nats but will bullshit you with a kind a face that they will make meaningful change.
They are fundamentally dishonest because of this.
They will govern for the (UN) scoreboard not for ALL NewZealanders as demonstrated by everything they have done so far.
The bullshit of kiwi build, child poverty inaction, climate change etc etc
The best, the only predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
We will be here, very soon, disappointed in what the incoming Labour or Labour/green govt gave us.
Covid is the only reason this government is getting re elected, it’s that simple and that shallow.
Stockholm syndrome.
+100 Keepcalmcarryon …well said!..and I am not even sure it is going to be a shoo-in for Labour or the Greens.
…re “the veil is lifted for me” … the veil has been lifted for a lot of other New Zealanders too eg. those disillusioned pissed off voters who are now voting ACT .
Wokie virtue signalling, is recognised as an attack on other NZers and their rights (and it is done by pretenders who have absolutely no understanding of class politics and nor do they come from the working class)
+100 Keepcalmcarryon
Keep CarryOn. It may just be a little bit rich blaming P M Ardern for not having yet remedied all the National Govt’s systemic cock-ups.
The world doesn’t run on pixie dust, my dear, or the waving Harry Potter wands or the fantasy of children’s books and waiting for Christmas.
“… the only predictor of future behavior is past behaviour” is the stultifying world of Al and algorithms choking govt departments and needing to be tossed out to make way for the original thinkers and problem solvers we’ve been pretty good at producing in the past, and need to make way for now. Defeatism achieves little.
Ardern’s pre-Covid response to the evil of the Muslim massacres, probably helped message us and prepare us about the necessity and desirability of community togetherness ; if there is anyone else who could have achieved that, then it is they who still wear a veil of invisibility.
If your assertion re past behaviour as a predication of future behaviour were, however, to hold true, then the future would not be looking too bad at all. Unfortunately, things are rarely that simple – but don’t give up yet, there’s too much at stake.
“Covid is the only reason this government is getting re elected, it’s that simple and that shallow.”
That may well have been the case until the mongrel came out in Collins. No sane minded person would vote a party whom has that appalling lying vile creature in charge. You want bullshit, vote National. Collins is Trumpite.
Good article . Adern is our ‘Churchill’. It just goes to show what being open and ‘human’ during crisis can achieve. It will be nice to see Labour, the Greens and the Maori party as a team. It would be more than nice to see a backlash against the neo liberal agenda. And it will be excellent to see the neo liberal framework dismantled.
We don’t need it around here anyhow’s.
Never asked for it. Never wanted it, and never needed it.
Yes, and we need Jacinda to now take this on board as her future ‘Covid moment’ as she has now been reminded by her peers ‘the UN’ as Wild Katipo correctly said.
UN: Earth on course to become ‘uninhabitable hell for millions’
2020|05:52
That’s what the planet is becoming due to the lack of action on climate change – according to a strongly worded United Nations report.
https://play.stuff.co.nz/details/_6199932699001
Jacinda _ “LETS DO THIS” (Courtesy of Jacinda Adern PM of NZ.).
I agree with every word Martyn, however…
The election hasn’t been won yet, and I sincerely believe that there are more “shy” National voters out there, than the polls would leave you to believe. Lets get through the election first, and pray to any higher powers, that it doesn’t all go sideways right.
Keepcalmcarryontalkingshit,
Could fill the townhall with what you don’t know.
Kiwibuild has been a fail so far but a failure that has been hindered significantly by other epic situations. That aside, most people would prefer ambitious goals to indifference and denial.
How absurd to state “child poverty inaction”. Clearly, you haven’t been paying attention to the progress made under diabolical circumstances while attending to an extremely long to-do list where every group is demanding their issue be resolved immediately.
Unfortunately, Ardern doesn’t have a magic wand. Do you really think Ardern could do give full attention to climate change under the circumstances?
Yes, you will be here bleating long into the future about the Ardern Government. Shit happens.
It staggers me that we live among eggplants who genuinely believe Covid-19 is the only reason Ardern will be re-elected. Her handling of multiple epic situations has increased her popularity but how is that a negative? Ardern has a personality people gravitate toward. She’s extremely intelligent, inclusive, and progressive. She’s a caring person who’s displayed great leadership. Only a simple and shallow moron would be so ignorant to emphatically state a deadly virus is the only reason Ardern is getting a second term.
Take Covid-19 out of the picture, Ardern still has a landslide victory.
Jacinda has a lot of disciples it would seem…say no more
Red Buzzard,
Surely you can do better than that? I feel like I’ve just been mauled by a newborn lamb.
I’d assumed you could spot the difference between a supporter / admirer / fan and a …….disciple. It appears I’ve given you too much credit. Any creature that has lizards, rodents, and termites as their main dietary content could hardly be expected to count to 10 or know the difference between a fan and a disciple.
Indeed Red Buzzard.
Those prone to excesses of emotion are easily conned.
Look! Shiny things!
I’ve dealt with my disappointment with our current politics, theirs is yet to come it seems.
Personality cultists for Jacinda are every bit as self stimulatory as Keys fawning idiots.
The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend.
No need to talk dirty though.
Well at least with Aderns supposed ‘third way’ politics we can work with that. With Keys divisive politics only a small group benefited. The rich.
While I agree with most of what you have written I don’t think 600 000 public servants is the answer to the 300 000 some who are useless employees now. I would like to see a politics free public service where the best ideas are acted on & they focus on helping New Zealanders & not themself.
Meanwhile CO2 at 417ppm, the atmosphere and climate obey their own physical laws and we take the consequences.
Clearly time for more meaningful bickering.
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