The infamous TDB Politics Awards 2020

And you thought Tiger King was a voyage into the pettiest idiosyncratic self delusion you’d ever seen!

It was nothing compared to the pandemic election of 2020!

National self mutilated themselves with the worst coup in Western political history.

Jami Lee Ross, Billy TK and Gerry Brownlee promoted conspiracy theories as if that was completely appropriate in the middle of a public emergency.

Michelle Boag disgraced the National Party.

Hamish Walker disgraced the National Party.

Andrew Fallon disgraced the National Party.

Matthew Hooton disgraced all political schemers.

Confused Merv disgraced Talkback listeners.

Paul Goldsmith disgraced basic arithmetic.

Judith Collins ended up attacking fat people, the Greens managed to disappoint on every possible measure and ACT won the ever growing Incel gun owner electorate.

Jacinda rose like the Queen of Dragons only to betray the progressive vote, just like the Queen of Dragons.

Trump morphed into a super villain, Black Lives Matter had white people at their most defensive, social media alienated and separated us in ways we never comprehended, Alt Right Nazis incited appalling hate while righteous social media lynch mobs tried to cancel Ellen for being mean.

It was the worst of cliches, it was the best of cliches.

And then a pandemic the woke originally claimed was xenophobic to criticise, went onto to infect millions and kill hundreds of thousands while turning the global economy upside down at a time when intense geopolitical tensions build towards conflict set against an environment that is super heating.

Hasn’t it been a fucking barrel of laughs?

The word ‘unprecedented’ was used an unprecedented amount of times.

This was an epoch moment in our global history where suddenly the tyranny of distance was our greatest luxury. The just in time supply chain from impoverished global suppliers of cheap labour to the marketing sales calendars for indebted Western consumers has been dealt a paradigm shifting blow to free markets at a time when Nationalism is demanding walls.

This pandemic laid bare the fragility of our economic infrastructure while simultaneously exposing and exacerbating existing inequalities.

The rapidly worsening climate crisis will make these pandemics occur with far more repetition and increasing severity, making the record high stock exchange set this year seem as rational as Trump at a conference on gender diversity.

After pumping $100billion into the pockets of property speculators, there are no more economic sacred cows left to slaughter. There can be no more excuses for not fully funding public services when we can just make rich people wealthier and call that ‘stability’.

Fuck that.

Labour have a mandate for transformative change with an unprecedented MMP majority, if they don’t fucking use it, there will be hell to pay!

Here are the infamous TDB Political Awards 2020.

MORE THAN A FEELING AWARD 2020

Solidarity- The right wing in NZ are so individualism uber allas that they didn’t comprehend that weird feeling of everyone bonding for the common good. They thought indiscriminate caring was just another symptom of the virus alongside losing your sense of smell.  The 35 year neoliberal experiment in NZ has to culturally promote the individual above all else, and any success obtained is understood as being by your talent and nothing whatsoever to do with existing power structures within capitalism. This elevation of self interest as a virtue and selfishness as a smart strategy exists as a self reinforcing ideology, but it shatters the moment a universal crisis occurs because evolutionarily we reset with an altruism that eclipses our political leanings. NZ bonded over the pandemic, it created a sense of shared sacrifice and collective concern. Bridges, Muller and Collins couldn’t understand that, Jacinda’s emotional intelligence could and did understand it.

INFO WARS CONSPIRACY AWARD 2020

Billy TK, Jami Lee Ross and Gerry Brownlee – So the virus was a bio-weapon spread by 5G and let lose by the Chinese to bring about a shadowy one world satanic child trafficking government? It sounds more rational than most of what Billy TK, Jami Lee Ross and Gerry Brownlee had to say at any stage of the election.  Billy TK has an excuse, he’s a blues guitarist who spent too much time on QAnon Facebook pages, but Brownlee and JLR were senior National Party stormtroopers who supposedly had basic comprehension skills. It would be like finding out the Deputy Prime Minister believes the Earth is flat, you’d feel the vetting process had let you down somewhat. Brownlee should resign immediately.

BEST POLITICIANS 2020

John Tamihere – JT had a blinder of an election. He dominated each and every political debate he was in and he garnered enormous media attention throughout an election dominated by Jacinda. Placing himself down at 7 on the Party list, he led with his ‘candidate vote strategy’ while promoting Māori leadership protocols. His leadership of the campaign reset the political legacy of the Māori Party while rehabilitating his.

Chloe – She is in that rarefied political stable of NZ Politicians who are immediately identifiable on a one name basis. To fight and come from behind in two polls when everyone else (including the smug arseholes over at The Standard) had written her off is a testament to her as a unique candidate. Her stewardship of the Cannabis debate cements her in as a Green Party legend in the cut of Bradford, Nandor and Keith Locke. She is the Jacinda we wish we had.

Simon Bridges – Of all the National MPs, he’s the only one who comes out with any mana. Trump showed us what a poor loser looks like, Bridges took the treason of his spineless MPs on the chin, hung out with a Baby Yak and probably did the funniest Campaign launch this election. He has shown dignity, intelligence and good humour in defeat, traits we all need to take on board.

WORST POLITICIANS 2020

Hamish Walker – Seemed to think he was Frank Underwood from House of Cards.

Andrew Falloon – Seemed to think he was Kevin Spacey from House of Cards.

Jami Lee Ross – Enabled a crazy conspiracy that he was politically relevant.

 

WORST MINISTERS 2020

Carmel Sepuloni – Has only implemented 4 of the 42 recommendations on Welfare and is considered the most captured Minister alive. MSD have turned her into a reverse Pinocchio, in that she was once a flesh and blood child and is now just a wooden toy.

Kris Faafoi – Known as ‘The Blocker’, Kris is placed in a portfolio the Wellington Mafia don’t want anything happening in. That’s why Kris has Immigration, Broadcasting and Justice. Expect NOTHING from those portfolios for 3 years. NOTHING!

David Clark – Seemed almost autistic in his inability to read the room.

WORST SELF MUTILATION 2020

NZ First Campaign Strategy – How did they get it so wrong? Attacking the most popular Left wing leader in modern political history whom they had just been in power with?  Who the hell thinks that’s a winning strategy? Rather than ride the wave of support, NZ First complained, belly ached and bitched about past grievances, you know, like an old person does and that was NZ First in the end, a confused political dementia that no longer remembered what it stood for while it was lying down.

Todd Muller as Leader – Combine all the false confidence of a tall man with middle management over achievement aspirations and the naked cowardice of backbench MPs who suddenly feared becoming unemployed and you had National Party values at their most self interested and traitorous.  Panicked clowns literally shooting holes in their own lifeboat. Muller was Cunliffe, Shearer and Phil Twyford all rolled into one.

WORST POLITICAL EXCUSE 2020

Peter Goodefellow – Why did National crash and burn so badly? According to National Party President Peter Goodfellow, it was the tyranny of a socialist media who sank National at the ballot box.  What part of the trainwreck National Party campaign where former Presidents passed Covid patient info to an MP who leaked it to the media combined with the worst coup in NZ political history combined with Gerry Brownlee peddling conspiracy theories during live TV interviews combined with Judith Collins bewilderingly shitting on Fat people – which one of those was the socialist media’s fault in covering Peter?

WORST WOKE AWARD 2020

When the virus first broke out at the beginning of this year, woke comedians, identity politic activists and the usual Wellington Twitteratti were labelling any criticism of the virus as xenophobic and just evidence of our collective inherent racism that we should be virtue shamed for…

…that didn’t age well.

The pandemic has gone onto to kill hundreds of thousands, infect millions and shut down vast swathes of the global economy. It has made inequality unbearable and exacerbated desperation, yet the identity politics goon thug force wanted to lynch anyone for being xenophobic.  It’s important to note in a crisis those whose own ideological blinkers make them blind to the issues at hand.

BATSHIT CRAZY ALT RIGHT FUCKWITTERY 2020

2020 was the explosion of batshit crazy alt right fuckwittery. It seemed to be every where at all times. Facebook algorithms were taking our hippy dippy crystal healing friends and turning them into QAnon white supremacists who believed 5G was causing them cancer. The New Conservatives wanted to roll back abortions and reinstate Primae Noctis for all baptised males while Plan B Death Cult Capitalists demanded all the slaves get back to work despite the virus because their Gold Card privilege’s were under threat. It was like the entire right wing spectrum had suffered a concussion while out drinking and injecting meth.

BEST POLITICAL ASSASSINATION 2020

Iain Lees-Galloway – It was the fluidity of it that was so terrifying wasn’t it? The effortless muscle memory that Judith displayed in blowing Iain Lees-Galloway’s brains all over the studio of The AM Show when she outed his affair to remove attention from her handling of Falloon. It was the casual malice of it all that was so jarring and it etched into our consciousness that Judith had all the compassion of a hungry wolverine in a premature birthing ward.

WORST POLICY 2020

Trickle Down – The shocking explosion in house prices is thanks to property speculators leveraging their existing debt to borrow more at cheaper rates. What is most horrific is that it’s a Left wing Labour Government who have done this. If only Labour cared about renters and the homeless the way they care about property speculators.

Green Party Jedi Academy – Did the Greens actually think they were getting Jedi at this Private Harry Potter Environmental Academy? I love that it has cocooned class rooms that look like the Ewok village from the Forest Moon of Endor. For years the Greens have desperately attempted to shake the wacky holistic Gaia worship midnight garden dancing image to be seen as responsible, but this Wizarding Academy fiasco has managed to tie them to the Maypole. It had a crystal garden, but what was most magical was that James Shaw didn’t seem to think funding a $20 000 a year private school for the elites was a big deal.

POSTER CHILD FOR REDEMPTION 2020

Damien Grant – The Judge felt that the issue of redemption was so central to the entire justice system that he stepped into the bitter RITANZ glee club wrangle and awarded it to Damien. What the judge was effectively saying was that redemption actually matters and Damien has not only paid his debt to society, he has gone onto be a successful member of society. The judge found RITANZ were a pack of easily triggered snowflakes who needed an emotional support peacock.

BEST POLITICAL IRONY 2020

Referendums – So we are a country that will let you kill yourself to stop pain, but we won’t allow you to smoke a joint to stop the pain? Unfucking believable.

Mike Hosking helping the Māori Party get elected – Earlier this year, Māori Party co-Leader John Tamihere won a defamation case against Mike Hosking, and hilariously John donated the winnings to the Māori Party…

Newstalk ZB payout to fund Māori Party election campaign

A settlement payout over defamatory claims Mike Hosking made on air about John Tamihere will help fund the Māori Party’s election campaign.

…so Mike’s defamation costs helped fund the Māori Party and the Māori Party managed to re-enter Parliament?

Reparations from the white cis male patriarchy never tasted so sweet.

Cheers Mike.

Happy days.

 

BEST LEADER 2020

Jacinda – Her extraordinary emotional intelligence touched people at their most frightened and she reset leadership from male characteristics to unapologetically female ones without losing any power. Every woman who matters to me stands taller because of her example. She made kindness a political strength, not a weakness and she showed courage under crisis. This result was a gratitude win, her tepid domestic policy has to become something vastly more meaningful if the next 3 years aren’t to be squandered. She spent 3 years redefining ‘transformative’ to mean ‘whatever Winston will let me get away with’, we all hope she doesn’t bastardise the meaning of ‘mandate’ to ‘managing expectations’.  She is a political phenomenon and she is setting up a 4 term legacy.

HISTORY WAS WATCHING AWARD 2020

Let’s celebrate us dear fellow New Zealander’s for surviving 2020.

To date only China can claim success at beating this pandemic. Their vicious authoritarian regime has the army and police required to enforce their will through brute force.

Liberal progressive democracies like ours however have civil liberties and human rights at our foundation, we can only strive to convince well informed citizens to act in good faith solidarity to collectively enforce the common good, we can’t do it at the end of a gun barrel.

When historians look back, Aoteaoa New Zealand can hold up our heads in the knowledge that our traditions of progressive liberalism and kindness withstood the challenge.

History was watching my dear fellow citizens and we passed with our mana intact.

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