2024 – The Year we Collectively Failed (with one tiny silver lining)

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
64
2294

2024 was the Year of Collective Failure.

In Gaza and the West Bank, Israel’s immoral genocide continued with gruesome efficiency. The moment IDF soldiers pack raped a teenage Palestinian prisoner in front of other teenage Palestinian prisoners to psychologically torture them AND THEN have the Israeli electorate back those tactics is a true marker of how evil the Israelis themselves have mutated into because of the Occupation.

When you commit terrible evil to cement into place your legitimacy, then you become terrible evil.

That we allow the IDF to holiday in NZ to help them chill out from committing war crimes is deeply insulting to everything we as Kiwis stand for.

The death toll stands at 44.835 (including 17, 492 children), 106 356 injured, 11 000 dead trapped under rubble and 186 000 killed by indirect violence.

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When you are knocking on quarter of a million dead in 1 year, how is that not genocide?

Does ‘active ethnic cleaning war crime’ sound better?

Our collective refusal to reign in Israel and America should shame us and our pretence at Western Morality forever.

The collapse of the repugnant Assad regime in Syria highlights the twisted regional influences at play. All of a sudden we have woke Taliban running things and that’s a far better preference.

Lebanon and Iran have been dangerously destabilised all because Israel refused to end their illegal and brutal occupation of Palestinian land.

The impact of watching Palestinian children blown to pieces on TicTok will generate animosity towards America and Israel in ways that will make 9/11 look mild.

In the Ukraine, the terrible friction of Putin’s monstrous war continued unabated. Putin played the long game and waited until Trump’s re-election.

Putin has killed and maimed over 700 000 of his own soldiers and the American Military Industrial complex will fight Russia until the last Ukrainian.

The stresses from the Ukrainian war are being felt throughout Europe as a new shadow war erupts.

The environment collapsed with tipping points now clearly breached, we are seeing more catastrophic weather events and the speed of the warming has shocked scientists.

This is now the age of climate consequences harvested from broken environmental promises and empty emissions pledges.

This year research claimed there was a more than 50% chance of the AMOC failing before 2050.

It could happen as early as 2037.

Most have no idea what the AMOC is or what happens if it fails.

We are so fucked.

The woke identity politics clique suddenly realised they had cancelled all the voters with their pure temple politics and had made the Left as appealing to working class males as a cup of cold sick while the Trans activists went very quiet after the Cass Review painted the movement out as little more than a middle class cult.

It was the year of adult diagnosis of ADHD.

A Venn diagram of woke activists screaming that you are transphobic alongside adults who suddenly declare they have ADHD would be a perfect circle.

Despite the belief of the woke, not one family in poverty was sitting around the kitchen table cancelling each other for misusing pronouns, they were trying to work out how to pay the bills and when they turned to the Left for solutions to their pain, they found flakey word salad feelings instead of actual policy.

The woke are great at organising free the nipple protests with militant kink friendly mommy blogger vegans on bikes, not so good at challenging the neoliberal hegemonic structure.

China’s economy continued to fall while the West locked into importing inflation from just-in-case supply chains replacing just-in-time supply chains.

This never ending inflation burns the working classes in the West and that pain leads them to elect authoritarian figures.

Trump’s landslide win played to this global dynamic of economic anxiety.

Those who claim Trump has a mandate and the ‘majority’ misunderstand what that means.

Just because you have the majority, doesn’t mean you are right, it just means you have power.

Look at what Trump is doing with that power.

He is appointing the most Ghoulish Cavalcade of Political Circus Freaks, this is a Rogues Gallery of Supervillains, people, who are acolytes and loyalists before they are intelligent people.

They are cogs in his machine.

A terrible, terrible, terrible machine.

America was always a Military Industrial Complex death machine but now Trump’s United States of Wounded Masculinity has elected a naked Plutocracy.

Trump’s brand of Orange Fascism has used the UNDERmensch to empower the UBERmensch.

That’s a very clever joke.

The ‘majority’ aren’t right just because they are the majority and we are seeing that in NZ.

Majoritarianism is not Democracy!

The NZ Political Right have mistaken anger at Labour as a mandate for culture war vengeance!

2023 wasn’t an election, it was a  grudge fuck against Labour by an embittered post Covid electorate who were economically insecure, alienated by woke dogma and heart broken that all Labour could do with a once in a generation MMP majority was ‘good first steps’ rather than transformational leaps.

It has resulted in a Hard Right Racist Government bound together only by a shared glee in bashing beneficiaries, workers, renters, prisoners, the environment, gang members, drug addicts and the disabled.

They all have a particular dislike for Māori and have used attempts at co-governance to fulfil the promise of the Treaty (which is our collective obligation) as a weapon with which to cement into place 19th Century White Settler Privilege and call that ‘democracy’.

They are doing this fundamentally for their donor’s interests who want to be able to rape the environment without consulting with da Maaaris.

In a modern liberal democracy, you acknowledge the power imbalance created in society and you resource to ensure those power imbalances are compensated for!

In a liberal progressive democracy, it doesn’t matter what role you play in the complex super structure of our society and economy.

It doesn’t matter of you are a garbage collector, a dr, a nurse, a drain layer, teacher or tradie – if you all stopped doing your jobs the system can’t work.

Everyone deserves to share the collective harvest of civil society with public services and policies focused on the public good enshrined in the intrinsic civil liberties each individual has.

Wealthy individuals who become mega rich thanks to the landscape generated by those values are required to pay more back into the system they have benefited from beyond the bare necessity of ruthless accountancy practices.

The Political Right are screaming that imposing Qanon talking points as social policy, destroying workers rights, Tobacco deaths for tax cuts and taking $555million from the poorest families are all acceptable because they have the Majority so fuck everyone else!

That’s why on the first day of the Government there were nationwide protests. That’s why in the first week of the new Government global headlines were attacking our u-turn on gas and oil exploration and smoking policy.

That’s why 84 000 protested in Wellington last month

That’s why their resistance is the silver lining to a year of collective failure!

More Kiwis see the Treaty as a source of hope than a means for division, that alone saved 2024!

Dismantling the values of a liberal progressive democracy to cement into place 19th Century White Settler privilege using culture war vengeance as social policy IS NOT Democratic, it’s majoritarianism without any of the values of a true Democracy.

You can’t shit on Renters, Māori, the Environment, Workers, Beneficiaries and Prisoners while pretending to be democratic.

That’s the zeal of the Lynch mob, that’s not Democracy!

Look at how this hard right Government have traded the common good for their donor mates interests FFS!

Majoritarianism is the whip of the autocrat masquerading as legitimacy. It has none of the soul or wisdom that a Democracy requires to be meaningful.

2024 was the Year we Collectively Failed.

A gathering of Trumps is called a ‘Sociopath of Trumps’

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64 COMMENTS

  1. Tiny silver lining, this is about it for sure. Super duper tiny silver lining, the pic here, amusing but horridly true, granted most US politicians could front that pic to the same effect.

  3. Yeah well ; how do we get up tomorrow morning and resolve to fight another day? Because that’s what we, born of the working class, and yes the left “woke” have had to do forever. And will have to do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year. Or else, we might as well just give up and ask Mister Luxon “Can I have some more Sir” to quote a famous Charles Dickens story.

    • Still haven’t grasped it yet have you Darien?
      The Labour ‘woke’ are needed to be kicked out of Labour.
      You and your woke type cost Labour the election, in saying that though, I’m pleased you are all still around to ruin the next election for them too!
      ‘Labour woke’, the gift that keeps on giving to the right votes.
      Good on ya sister.

    • “born of the working class.”
      What on earth do you mean by that?
      We have National Prime Ministers and an abundance of multi millionaires that meet that category.

      • yep 1% draining the country .Wake up you fucken idiot the world economy is shrinking so the mirical you are waiting for is not going to happen .Fuck me if you do a bit of reading this government and treasury are living in the hope that in 26/27 house prices will pass the stupid figures of a couple of years ago and so will save the economy .If the idiots had any balls she would be taking back the tax cuts she rushed through and increasing the top rates .

      • Probably why you never entered into politics Bob, you are fucking clueless in the politics category..

    • I imagine Joe Biden will have quite a chuckle and wonder who this strange soul from the bottom of the world is that has the time to send him pictures of the even weirder orange troll doll.

    • Greater Israel Colonial Project Plan 1948

      “We should prepare to go over to the offensive with the aim of smashing Lebanon, Transjordan, and Syria….The weak point in the Arab coalition is Lebanon [for] the Moslem regime is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be established, with its southern border on the Litani River [within Lebanon]. We will make an alliance with it. When we smash the [Arab] Legion’s strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo”, David Ben Gurion, first prime minister Israel

    • Sounds like a challenge, quick question, is there any other leaders you don’t think should be insultingly memed? I’ve seen a good one of Netanyahu giving Satan a blow job, would you like to see it? Perhaps you could send that one to him?

  8. ” A gathering of Trumps is called a ‘Sociopath of Trumps’ ”
    Let’s wait and see? I know, I know. Trump is orange and is evil etc but let’s wait and see. A German film director once said to me as we sat in a rental car watching a cluster fuck evolve into a catastrophic cluster fuck.
    “Azzumptions are zi mozer off all fock ops.”
    Look to home here? What a fucking mess. Unless you’re the PM who, by his own words, is rich and comfortable. Who wouldn’t be on 484,200.00 PA plus perks?
    Ol Luxon aye. Mr Rich N Comfortable.
    Naked Mole Rat man.
    https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna44878500
    RNZ
    Auckland foodbanks face closure, reducing services as funding to stop
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/536762/auckland-foodbanks-face-closure-reducing-services-as-funding-to-stop

    • @ B with a V.
      ” Better to not vote! ” Wrong. I mean Jesus, what a stupid thing to suggest. Not engaging, not bothering, not caring is exactly what got us into this fucking mess. I’d like the precise opposite to not voting. Namely of compulsory voting. We must each and all engage in our politics. Or sooner or later the vastly rich will take over then customise politics to best suit themselves. Which is exactly and precisely what’s happened and is happening as I write and it’s not just AO/NZs rich. Peter thiel is here, larry fucking page is here and I dare not think who else is here soon to be waving their sticky little cocks about in our faces once they’ve finished fucking us all without the kissing!
      Neoliberalism was a roger douglas wallet-fart. He’d a been bought then exploited and now his neoliberal disease is in every atom of our politic and as a consequence we have a crippled agrarian primary industry, our largest city’s facing certain failure and hundreds of thousands of people are living in poverty alongside 14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires each with a starting gate minimum of $50 million net each and four now australian owned banks making more in profit from us that any other banks in the world with the exception of fucking Canada. For fucks sake! You think it’s better not to vote! Are you fucking kidding!
      Right now, as is my understanding, there are 80 Maori tribes petitioning the crown to intervene in our corrupt political infrastructure as ACT threatens to change the Treaty to be able to legally lead it down a dark ally to murder it to pave they way for further foreign control of Aotearoa / New Zealand. Not voting will not result in a net positive outcome for that fucking nightmare I can promise you that.
      ACT’s wet dream is that the treaty will go then the crown will go and when that happens seymour will spurt to the ceiling with a lip twitching snivel.

      • Oh FFS, “compulsory” voting is such a weird fetish. You do realise that it’s already compulsory to be on the electoral roll (not that it makes any practical difference), and the Oz “compulsory voting” system that fetishists point to as a precedent includes a “no confidence” option.

        There’s a million better ways to increase participation, all of which revolve around making the system more democratic (eg citizen’s assemblies), not more authoritarian (compulsory anything).

  11. Violence was always innate in America, now it’s out there firmly — exxate?. The rulers will regret that. The form of democracy covered a lot of shit.

  12. Martyn, you’re more informed about the details than me. I ‘m still confused about the ‘woke’ thing you go on about. Could you talk about it with the terms ‘identitarian’ and ‘politically correct’? Cos, at the moment, you just seem to be another Lefty going Right because of a personal problem. All three of our Left blogs.

    The benefit of the people, for me, doesn’t disallow minorities, let alone women.

    I’ve said this many times to you. Take your troubles on the chin and don’t allow it to undermine ‘t’Cause’, which it is at the moment.

  13. Agree with some of these points but some of us “non-woke” people don’t immediately know what various acronyms stand for. Yes I can look them up but makes easier reading if at least once the actual name is stated. AMOC?

  14. Reality is the left pissed of the majority by making it plain how much they despised them
    Can’t see them voting for a TPM/Green/Labour government to get despised even more

  15. Matthew,
    The thought of such a coalition Labour/Greens/Maori terrifies the majority of New Zealanders paving the way for a right wing landslide victory at the next election.

  18. WTF Bomber? What have these two things got to do with each other?

    ADHDers have been struggling for decades to get our condition recognised, and to make diagnosis and medication available for those who need it. This sneering from you is the equivalent of telling people who need a wheelchair they’re just too lazy to walk. This is a profound failure of solidarity from someone who ought to know better.

  19. Can everyone on this site who isn’t a troll *please* stop feeding the trolls.

    Their goal in posting here is not to convince us of their positions. It’s to “flood the zone with shit” (to quote Bannon). Drag every discussion in left spaces into the gutter, so we lose the ability to do collective sense-making. When you respond to their posts, especially with personal attacks, you are helping them do their job.

    I’ll say it again; don’t feed the trolls!

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