2022 was a competition between competing cults & wounds.
I don’t think we have comprehended the psychological carnage social media and alienation have combined to become a threat to democracy.
The unique universal experience of lockdown is causing internal ructions and currents through the political, social, economic and cultural landscape of NZ which all magnified this year.
The algorithms of social media Hate has amplified toxic debate in ways we are barely appreciating.
Into this vortex cultural fault lines are rupturing.
Vulnerable communities in a pandemic angry that their well being is collateral damage for the rich.
A distrust of Authority while being utterly dependent upon them.
Social isolation and a growing sense of dislocation.
Qanon lunatics who are impossible to be reasoned with alongside Woke lynch mobs on never ending cancellation purges.
The poor whose poverty has become survival level subsistence.
Renters locked into debt servitude.
Damaged kids ram raid and the fear its brazenness exploits scratches the veneer of public order we all require to burn in private.
Such shamelessness by youth rocks our sense of society and stokes fears that only harsh measures sate.
We are seriously arguing about putting ankle bracelets on children for fucks sake.
Not actual funded wrap around services.
This year there are 5000 young people transitioning to adult hood from state welfare guardianship, after 18, the State simply pushes these vulnerable kids onto the streets. We have less than 200 permanent beds where those kids can go at 18, what the Christ are we doing for the other 4800 transitioning wards of the State?
One solution would be a law preventing State Agencies who have guardianship from releasing 18 year olds straight to the street, and instead require them to assure housing first.
But no, that’s not being considered. Ankle bracelets on children are what our easily spooked populace have been triggered into demanding from a media whose click bait crime porn ratings bonanza is paying the bonuses at underfunded newsrooms this Christmas.
We only ever seek vengeance, not solutions in this country.
Māori were reminded how angry frightened white people get when they perceive someone else getting something white people don’t think they already have.
The racism, the naked cracker braying racism has been honky levels of banjo twanging this year.
Watching red necks blaze crimson in spittle flecked fury over Māori representation on organisations and democratic infrastructure they couldn’t name or identify would be amusing if it weren’t all so petty and basic.
Micro aggression policing trigger thresholds where the quickest to take offence wins in a never ending grim roulette of intersectionist grievance where a cacophony of wounds jockey for social hierarchy.
Farmers who have been given so much economic and political muscle are now finding derision for them via social media as domestic consumers are forced to compete with 40million overseas middle class consumers pushing up prices while polluting waterways and making climate change gases.
This cultural resentment played out by Groundswell and corporate polluters interests keeps dragging progress backwards because we are a juvenile settler nation afraid of deep thinking and big ideas. A low horizon imagination people with all the cultural maturity of a can of day old coke-cola.
All these have become building blocks towards barriers that divide while cocooning us all into echo chambers.
In 2022, we ran out of patience with one another.
In 2022 we set the lawns of New Zealand’s Parliament on fire and we never recovered.
In 2022, social media algorithms allowed for a toxicity of debate that was easily manipulated.
A symphony of sweaty truths all screaming for attention and no one listening.
Woke Identity Politics activists have seized the joy of having no gatekeepers to express how much they hate white men while alt right Incel Nazi’s have seized upon the joy of having no gatekeepers to express how much they hate everyone else.
It’s like Twitter on Elon out there.
Millennial woke culture sees macro violence coming from micro aggressions and piously police those micro aggressions with virtue signalling purity mantras.
Alt Right Incel Nazis see white persecution and create some bullshit replacement narrative to justify their powerlessness and feed that resentment online.
People stop seeing the political party and only see the activist and in the end proxification means the activist becomes the proxy representation of the Party, and seeing as people have negative feelings towards the proxy, they turn from the Party.
Voters aren’t voting on policy, they are voting on who made them feel resentful on social media!
The political is the personal now means what hurts me personally becomes political.
Before social media activists could only face each other off at protests or through letters to the editor or talkback radio. There were constraints of interaction but with social media there are none and it turns out the freedom to insult and dehumanise others is more addictive than nicotine, alcohol and weed combined.
Wokeness has become a puritanical religion with none of the beauty where everyone more mentally ill than you is toxic and everyone less mentally ill is privileged.
The danger of identity politics is that it locks people intellectually into only defining the world through their skin colour, genitalia or sexual orientation – it also becomes toxically subjective and tribal where the only solidarity is with other people who share the skin colour or genitalia or sexual orientation- without shared truths and values, the 1% and their 9% enablers continue to divide the rest of us 90%.
The Left has lurched into woke ‘Social Justice’ territory which alienates more than it attracts.
Economic Justice does more than banning Gay Conversion, criminalising speech or gerrymandering the legal system to ensure anyone accused is found guilty, it redistributes wealth and makes direct provision to the cost of every day living. Beneficiaries and working class people care less about pronouns and the correct pronunciation of te Reo than they do about how to pay next weeks rent and power bill!
Pure temple doctrine divides & alienates. Broadchurch universals build solidarity.
Twitter outrage is woke righteousness porn for the Professional Managerial Classes. A puritanical razoring where the self elected morality police publicly shame and cancel anyone for not using the language protocols of the conclave.
I am interested in Economic Justice and the immediate welfare of the poorest amongst us while providing immediate life condition upgrades.
In this age of subjective rage where there is no objective truth, there is only your measurement of triggered micro aggressions to decide what is innocuous and what is a hate crime.
We are now a cult of wounds, all so quick to expose our scars in the intersectionist roulette of victimhood, a social media ocean that screams our pain for cultural hierarchy.
Currently we have a compulsory mass group therapy session where people’s feelings are the only currency.
We desperately needed a cup of harden the fuck up in 2022.
While we unforgivingly tie ourselves endlessly into the next cancellation noose, National intend to throw disabled young people off welfare, the Banks posted billions in profits and the planet continues to melt.
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
And in 2021, 20 people owned more than 50% of the entire planet.
In 2022 the richest man on Earth bought one of the most important social media platforms.
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford.
We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected.
Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
This isn’t progress, it’s Corporate Feudalism on a planet of ash.
Our brittle weakness is collectively beneath the challenge of our times.
Happy New Year.
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This is a perfect summation of being woke:
“Wokeness has become a puritanical religion with none of the beauty, where everyone more mentally ill than you is toxic and everyone less mentally ill is privileged.”
The worst part is that in a country with effectively no mental health system it’s literally true. It’s like neoliberalism made woke be real.
it strikes me many if not most on the right are not only mentally ill ada but extremely and I do mean profoundly as thick as 2 short planks…it cuts both ways. ada
Whatever comforts you, gargarin…
maga-hat mob, I rest my case.
That’s why you lose your cases..
why do right wing gunmen and mass killers rely on the ‘mental health issues’ defence then ada…proclaiming I ‘ve lost from your losing position fools no one.
another rightard racist gunman gone postal in paris…no doubt the right will cry false flag and or mental issues…they are laughable
Ada it’s a fact that those on the right have a much higher level of education than those on the left.
bob the last….sarcasm, right?
Albert Einstein
Oscar Wilde
George Bernard Shaw
Bertrand Russell
George Orwell
H.G. Wells
Pablo Picasso
Noam Chomsky
Don’t take any notice of Bob, he’s living proof his uneducated opinion is just another lie.
A list of extremely wealthy people,some from a long list of aristocracy.
Picasso in inflation adjusted terms a billionaire.
Champagne Socialists.
And like clockwork, Bob the dumb responds with stupidity.
Brilliant people so very intelligent. Note, no Bob on the list, neither were any educated at Bob’s pedophile Dulwich school.
my dad who self educated at night school after a few years killing nazis…
Gosh gagarin, it’s a known fact Bob has mental health issues. Gosh what a very sad individual he is, either that or very childish.
That’s a bit rich coming from someone who can barely scrape together a sentence in English.
Bomber – you note a great many salient points, particularly the 5000 kids about to graduate from state care into a wrap-around vacuum. On the other hand, you completely miss the mark with your commentary on farmers and farming. I extend an invitation for you to come and visit my farm and drink from the streams there so that you might dilute your farm commentary with a little more insight in 2023. Anyway a very Merry Christmas to TDB and all your lunatic followers. Long live Father Christmas and freedom of speech.
Haha, Well said, ++1 there Jason.
Jason – Nice
Martyn treats farmers & Christians as if they are all as bad as the worst examples of those who identify that way. The other unfortunate reality is that deception is a tricky thing & I know many people from both groups who think that they are wonderful people yet there are others who disagree with various aspects of the way they live. You are not going to keep everybody happy & while plant-based food is increasing around the world I can see that NZ’s animal-based agriculture producers are being unfairly condemned for just doing what was socially accepted farming practice till now.
@ jason… Oh dear. Poor lamb. You have no idea do you?
@ Martyn Bradbury. Do not drink Jasons creek water. And no, that’s not some kind of kinky metaphor.
Jasons creek water ( Ba ha ! ) will contain sulphites, nitrates glyphosates and God only knows what else. Perhaps not directly from his farm but I guarantee they’ll come from up stream or could be air born from heli crop spraying next door. Glyphosate is especially deadly to aquatic animals, it’s linked to cancer in humans and I believe that since the moronic, lobbied councils use the toxic poisons on public land, my pup got fresh Roundup on her paws which gave her the pancreatic cancer she eventually died from.
But it’s not farmers who are to blame despite the old adage ” Ignorance is no defense”. It’s the multi billionaire clique investing in Ag Chemicals, who bank with ( Or are indebted, or are in some way owing to. ) anz, bnz, asb and westpac. @ jason and his buddies mark and nathan ( Are those names taken from a Happy Clapper fundamentalist christian Christmas party guest list? ) are not to blame. They’re as head fucked as the rest of us by a cartel of MSM media, lawyers, politicians and sundry spin doctors, liars and accountants.
5 million people on a gigantic farm with a well established exports industry and bigger in land area that the UK by 29 K sq km and we’re broke arse fucked and going mad while billionaires and banksters walk into the lounge and steal the TV as we watch it and we go ” Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhh…… Hey man? Ya can’t…. ya can’t do that man. Hey……… ? I mean, c’mon….!? No! …. Awwwwwwwww…. sniffle/cringe/harrumph.
Jesus Christ! What’s it going to take? God riding bare back out of a UFO on a Unicorn shooting sparks out its arse hole while winnying in 7000 languages “ Hey you suckers! You dumb mother fuckers! You’re being fucked without the kissing! Ba haaaaa ! Winny, winny winny winny…! ( Could be called Winston the Unicorn. )
Da nett.
Over 7000 languages are spoken across the world today. Chinese, the language with the most native speakers, has 13 variations, whilst Similarly, Arabic has 20 variations, reflecting the wide range of countries and cultures it is spoken in.
Have a suitably manic Christmas CB, and I can assure you there are no nitrates, glyphosates or fundamentalist unicorns in our stream, only eels, Kura and happy kids swimming.
Well said Jason your commonsense trumps most of the juvenile nonsense posted here.
Thanks Bob and Merry Christmas to you
Nice invitation and sentiment Jason.
And yes wishing you a very Happy Christmas Martyn and all who inhabit this blog!
Yes do that. And remember a lot of those farmers run their businesses or whole industry cooperatively they are socialist at heart even if they dont recognise it!
Man, that was dark and depressing. It wasn’t all pestilence backed by the Four Horsemen. Some people just get in with life, strangely enough!
I think the shopkeeper who had a thumb and finger removed by a :Misunderstood” young man would have preferred that the thug was at home with an ankle bracelet on.
@ brom This is what’s funny. Your comment is what makes you worse than the attacker. What would your mother think.
The now nine multi billionaires are who manufacture the desperate finger choppers no doubt bank with what were AO/NZ owned but now are foreign owned banks who literally steal billions of dollars out of our farmer-earned economy by exporting their goods to over the seas.
Our farmers, who’s money it is that built the nine multi billionaires are as culpable because farmers need instructions with pictures to open jars of jam. Imagine then, an exhausted farmer sitting down of a midnight after the last look to figure that out.
In short, I think what I’m trying to say is we’re fucked. Sooooo fucked.
You poor bugger. Go and put yourself out of your misery.
100% Brom
Yes Brom probably he would have cut it off the ankle bracelet i mean not the finger
Well said Brom!
So we can all lay the fault of all of this at the feet of the worst labour government in history for this. Thats right! Worse than Lange & Roger Douglas’s neoliberal downtrow to the people of NZ.
Labour are a disgrace to the working class, oh, no! They dont even know the working class or who it is because they invented a new class of bourgeoise named the ‘muddle class proto fascist wokester-stasi Mellinial GenZ’ers’ base, who rushed out and bought a house in the peak of a housing bubble(so much for NZ Ed) and are now piss’n themselves with a mortgage thats worth more than the bubble houses that theyve bought. Good fuck’n job! Remember, these two Gens are meant to be the most highly educated fucks ever! If that is true, education doesnt necessarily mean or equate to intelligence??
As far as lil ole NZs future. You have to accept that lil ole NZ isnt a leader in anything. It does what its told and for that privilege we get to believe we have a proper functioning political system that resembles some kind of democracy, come Authoritarian proto Fascist regime.
If you really want to know where we are heading and why there isnt a political party now that can fix this, its because they’re either really really thick, or they may be ignorant or just in it for the buzz and are happy to trough out whilst spending a term or two at the trough.
What is happening in the real world is pretty bleak, war, famine and the planet is getting fuck’d over by GreenWash’n mellinials and GenZ types who dont want to reduce their consumption but want everybody else too! They can go fuck themselves!
Here, Nouriel Roubini explains it again. No one listened to him 2005-2007 when he predicted the GFC and described the consequences of the effect it would have on everyone, Austerity mainly and then massive amounts of money printing the has only just ended! 14 years of money printing has come home to roost! Good luck trying to get out of this one by using MMT.
Inflation is the ‘T’ in MMT tax for everyone for at least the next 10 to 20 years!!
When you dont put up taxes and wont reduce spending, everyone gets to pay by inflation suckers!
Here, Nouriel will fill you in with the details! Merry Xmas suckers! Dont spend too much!
https://youtu.be/ADh6QTp8798
Chur there Tane, great rant.
Totally agree this Ardern Labour Government are disgraceful.
Biggest problem is their legacy an economic disgrace,the poor rubbished,education and health along with crime out of control.
Blah blah blah blah blah!
Yes and that too, so much blah,blah little or no progress.
Little or no progress is better than a right wing government taking you backwards.
Martyn is passionate about poverty, racism and equality and writes with that passion in his fingertips. One person’s solution may be different to another but neither is always right or wrong. I’m not against ankle bracelets for the hundred so called children who are ram raiders simply because I came from a generation who suffered corporal punishment at school, and believed it did more good than harm. I knew no one who complained about it, you just expected it if you got out of line. In those days we also had compulsory military training that also did no harm. There wasn’t much crime and you could count the murders in a year on one hand. These days we look upon corporal punishment as uncivilised abuse but look what we have now. No discipline, no accountability, no parental guidance and no social skills. These violent children have a roof over their heads for the most part, but no parents that care enough or who can control them. Short term just get them off the streets. I don’t care how because they are dangerous. Long term pour money into good education which includes high standards of literacy, arithmetic and life skills. Keep striving for equality, adequate housing and meaningful employment. Have a good Xmas Martyn. It’s always good reading the blogs and comments and understanding how others think.
Well said New View
2022 a competition between competing cults & wounds? Qanon lunatics impossible to be reasoned with? And all the lunatics who came out to play as a side effect off covid arriving.
One blog site in the year carried the story that Jacinda Ardern was worth $25 million. The weirdos were right into it. Money from vaccinations was the story. Bill Gates had had a secret meeting with her and she was getting $whatever per shot. A week later I saw she was worth $36 million.
How fucken marvellous to have a leader that good she could make that much so quickly! A triumph!
A few days after seeing that a farmer mate, a Groundsweller, was around. He said, “Jacinda is worth $25 million!” That was terrible he reckoned. Of course I assured him, no, she was worth $36, she’d made $11 million in days.
Earlier this year out with a friend of years, a nice, good, ordinary sensible woman on a Saturday. All sitting around in a cafe. A helicopter went over which didn’t seem to be the regular rescue one.
“They’ve been lots of flights, they’re people here for Jacinda’s wedding. They’re staying at the fancy resorts up North in the Bay of Islands.” (Well before the event was publicly delayed.)
“But she’s getting married down Gisborne way and it’s not this weekend. There is no way in the whole wide world information wouldn’t get out if it was happening.”
“She is, they’re trying to keep it hush hush.”
People go to school, get jobs raise families, live normal lives and then you realise the appalling mentality that is all around. Maybe it was rays emitted from 5G towers that did it! Billy TK where are you?
I can beat your conspiracy. I was enjoying my meal at a National Party function when the woman opposite who up until then had seemed very sane said her brother in law’s friend told him that he had heard from a reliable source that Clarke Gayford has an electronic bracelet. Trying to keep a straight face I asked how this information had not been discovered by the likes of Barry Soper .zShe smiled and said they are all involved in a conspiracy to keep it quite .
It is frightening that this person and many like her have a vote
when I comment on conspirisists sub par mental state….if you belive delusional things, have delusional thoughts then act on those delusional thoughts are you not mentally ill?
I’d just like to add, the world is NOT ending. We’re in a new 100 year ish cycle. We CAN turn this bad shit around. I’m having garage BBQ Xmas coz it’s gonna be raining in my area. Don’t waste your money on boxing day sales of Chinese plastics and electronics that will end up in land fill within two years. Do plant your summer vege gardens. We’ll get through 🙂
the device you’re using to post here was probably assembled if not designed as well in china sinic, so I’ll look forward to your absence when you chuck it out.
GG, lolz! You do so often miss the point, aw bless
GG, lolz! You do so often miss the point, aw bless – sinics post
TRANS- you got me there
so what if anything is your point sinic?
Sinic, gagarin misses the point on so many occasions. Your point was straight forward, I guess that’s why gagarin struggled with it. Yes sinic life does go on, vege garden is looking great.
bert and the point was? do elucidate.
Educate yourself, don’t be lazy.
Ok I got it,it’s simple,those honky pakeha are to blame.
Oh gosh.
Racist Bob.
And thanks to Andrew Little I have a salary that now affords me to buy that cheap leg of Lamb for Christmas dinner, along with the cheap chicken and cheap pork. It’s been a good year, despite the doom and gloom conspiracy theorists with such negative outlooks in life.
Bert, I got me a lamb leg yesterday too! Under $20. They froze the ones from a few months back that they couldn’t sell for $40 ish. Score 🙂
But wait! There’s more….
In 2023 the economy will collapse into a massive recession, judging by the ANZ business outlook survey. Record negative sentiment by the people most able to judge their future prospects. A bloodbath of negativity:
Services -64.0
Retail -68.6
Manufacturing -74.5
Construction -75.7
Agriculture -100.0
https://www.anz.co.nz/about-us/economic-markets-research/business-outlook/
Martyn, you misspelt “cults”
If you think 2022 was bad, just wait till next year!
It’s going to get a whole lot nastier before the current government are consigned to the waste bin of history.
Put the popcorn on!
Yes Andrew you are correct.
The Labour Government should be ashamed.
One self inflicted debacle after another.
Now have Dunedin Hospital rebuild to add to the growing list.
Luxon, one self inflicted debacle after another.
Heres a prediction for next years general election.
The Labour Maori Caucus (15) jump waka to the Maori Party! Theyre allowed to in an election year once the writ has being handed too and accepted by the GG!
Probably 7 or 8 will. So if the MP score big and get 3, they could end up with 10 or more!
See 3Waters & Co Governance back on the menu post election!
If that happens you can bury the Labour Party. Which might not be a bad thing as collectively they could not identify a worker if one stood in front of them self identifying as a worker. It would also mean that the Maori Party then is nothing else but EX Labour Party wankers and that they should be treated as such. People without loyalty.
My thoughts as well Den…But if it’s not enough to keep National, ACT , from becoming government next election, then it’s good bye to the Māori seats as they could possibly be abolished and it will be promoted as one person, one vote….It will not effect the kiwi Māori battler as they will just carry on as usual, working , but it could have a devastating effect on the Māori who’s job is based around the Iwi Corp type of structure. They could possibly be out of a job along with many Public Servants…Māori representation in parliament could be reduced and staying with Labour could be not a bad idea after all , but with much reduced influence ….2024 is going to very interesting…2023 will be just a side show…
Its way passed trying to reform any NZ government. Theyre all drunk on the neoliberalism.
We’re fucked!
Its a gravy train for them and Austerity forever for us!
There isnt a politician in NZ that you can believe or think that they can change anything.
Theyre in lockstep with the US kind of authoritarian democracy until it all collapses which is anytime soon, 2023-2026.
The death of the US empire is well and truly here. So the real question is, are we going to go down with them or look elsewhere … BRICS+ to forge a longer term relationship?
The US economy is in its death throws. This inflation spiral only goes one way. Inflation, hyperinflation, recession, depression and then total collapse. We’re in the first stage, inflation, and then hyperinflation-recession ect …
The BRICS+ is the only way out.
Bryce Edwards said today in his mail out that Henare Peeni is retiring this year? Labour are really fucked if he goes. He’s probably the best performing Maori MP they have!
LINO really are looking like Dog Tucker!
Thank you!
I read today demonstration marches being organised in Dunedin to protest Andrew Littles failed hospital rebuild.
A dog’s breakfast.
Best Health minister in our political history.
Bert…come on…The Hon Dr David Clark without a doubt was the best Minister of Health in our political history…He will be missed by all after his retirement at the next election…
2nd best.
I think we should be kind to bert. Make that a New Year’s resolution I reckon. The poor person needs a buffer of cottonwool from the nasty shoves and jibes of regular politics, even before they get to the thrusting of knives and stilettos.
Gosh Warbler you have Bob the Dulwich pedophile agreeing, you should be proud.
2023 will be your year , in your own mind.
The Labour and Gween (Neoliberal proto fascist muddle class, bourgeoise millennial & GenZ) partys summer get together didnt go down so well after all.
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