The Two Jacindas and the limitations of Neokindness

There were two Jacinda’s

The first was ultra conservative and saw change in incremental stages that were heralded  as ‘great first steps’ but amounted to jogging on the spot, and then there was the Jacinda with the enormous emotional intelligence who could channel NZs infamous emotionally stunted headspace to embrace the huge moments that defined crisis in NZ.

From volcanoes, to terror attacks to a once in a century pandemic, she cut a glowing light of hope against the darkness of those moments.

Her masterclass in leadership that Jacinda performed defying the feral QAnon antivax lunatics and death cult capitalists by protecting us from 32 000 Covid deaths deserves special attention.

Was the personal sacrifice steep to all of us?

Yes.

Was the economic cost steep?

Yes.

Do the recent revelations by Pfizer that the vaccine didn’t stop transmission suddenly prove all the anti-vaxxers right?

Not at all…

Fact Check-Preventing transmission never required for COVID vaccines’ initial approval; Pfizer vax did reduce transmission of early variants

Social media users are circulating video clips of testimony by a Pfizer executive, who is said to “admit” that the company and its partner BioNTech did not test whether their mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine reduced virus transmission prior to rolling it out – which is something the companies were not required to do for initial regulatory approval, nor did they claim to have done.

To get emergency approval, companies needed to show that the vaccines were safe and prevented vaccinated people from getting ill. They did not have to show that the vaccine would also prevent people from spreading the virus to others. Once the vaccines were on the market, independent researchers in multiple countries studied people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and did show that vaccination reduced transmission of variants circulating at the time.

As these results on transmission were emerging in early 2021, national health authorities in many countries implemented or proposed vaccine-passport-style regulations that prompted ongoing debate (here) over the ethical and legal basis of the rules.

The misleading posts imply that national restrictions such as vaccine passports were based on a promise of vaccines blocking virus spread that neither the companies nor EU regulators made before the vaccines were marketed.

…Jacinda’s courage to go hard and go early caused deep societal anger and dislocation, but so would have 32 000 dead!

We all sacrificed, some more than others, but we all paid a pound of flesh to get through this horror and while the response wasn’t perfect, the truth is we were running blind through a once in a century pandemic and Jacinda saw us through that better than most.

The immediacy of banning the favourite machine guns of psychopaths in the wake of the white supremacists terror attack in Christchurch was another example of her ability to provide true leadership.

Those crisis moments made her and saved us, but her incremental reform of the neoliberal Wellington Bureaucracy, her ‘Neo-Kindness’ is what robbed her of her strongest strengths leading a Government with an unprecedented MMP majority.

Jacinda’s aspiration didn’t meet the reality and in her interview with Jack Tame last year had the audacity to call any criticism of her aspiration unfair by arguing  it was better that she had high aspirations rather than not having any at all.

That’s her argument, sure we aren’t doing anything meaningful or transformative, but it’s important she had high hopes.

That’s neokindness.

At the end of 2017, 108 people said they lived in cars and John Key’s Government was torched for that.

Last year there were 480 people living in their vehicles.

A Million dollars a day is spent on motels for vulnerable people causing enormous social carnage with no real wrap around support services present and 27 000 are on emergency waiting lists – we can’t solve those problems apparently but the Government can spend a billion dollars on consultants each year?

$1bn spend on consultants each year

“Labour’s spending on contractors and consultants has climbed to nearly $1bn a year, despite Labour coming to power suggesting that they would rein in this use of the private sector. Much of this is spent on the “Big Four” contractor firms – Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and Ernst and Young.”

What the hell happened to left wing transformative change? (BTW – Since becoming the Associate Minister for Housing, Marama Davidson issued just eight press releases and introduced no new laws, if Labour were missing in action, where the hell were the Greens?)

You can not spend a billion dollars a year on the professional managerial class in consulting while 150 499 children live in extreme poverty, while we hand out 100 000 food packages each month while our suicide rates soar.

You can’t spend a billion dollars a year on consultants while so many are in material hardship.

Jacinda’s neokindness wasn’t enough,  if you aren’t forcing the Wellington Bureaucratic Elite into radical reform, they play you and stymie your agenda.

Jacinda’s neo-kindness is a cautionary political failure of obscene proportions.

To paraphrase Tennessee Ernie Ford,

You work 16 hours, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Jacinda, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the the company store

We will mourn Jacinda’s resignation because it was driven by feral abuse from the lunatic fringes but we also mourn the loss of true transformative change that we were promised in 2017 alongside the sinking realisation that the neoliberal Wellington Elite Bureaucrats will always win no matter how talented the Prime Minister we elect.

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