THERE ARE LESSONS to be learned from the Biden-Trump debate/debacle. Important lessons, which New Zealanders would be most unwise to ignore. The first and most important of these is the need to face some harsh truths.
The American people have been running from the truth for decades. Electing an actor to govern them in 1980 merely confirmed their allergy to reality. Now they are readying themselves to elect Donald Trump for the second time. And, having witnessed Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, who can blame them? That the American Republic will struggle to survive such a final and decisive refusal to correct the consequences of its own corruption is unlikely to dissuade the American people from embracing its liquidator.
New Zealanders should, however, resist the temptation to sneer at the USA’s self-inflicted wounds. A dispassionate survey of New Zealand’s present predicament reveals a nation whose First World status can no longer be considered secure, and lacking a political class of sufficient calibre to retain it.
At virtually every level of the New Zealand state, from the lowliest public servant to the Justices of the Supreme Court, there is an alarming absence of evidence that the nation’s predicament is understood. Distractions there are in great number, but a clear-headed grasp of what it takes to hold a country together is not in evidence among those responsible for New Zealand’s administration.
This lack of clarity also pervades the ranks of New Zealand’s elected representatives. These are, with only a handful of exceptions, inadequately educated, lacking in relevant experience, and unadventurous to the point of actual cowardice. New Zealand’s current crop of politicians are place-holders not nation-builders. Unable to rise above the crude calculation of partisan advantage, an understanding of the broader national interest and of the needs of citizens yet to be born is beyond their capabilities.
Accounting for these alarming deficiencies is not easy. No matter how precariously positioned, New Zealand remains a First World country. Its people are educated, and their health preserved, by public institutions that easily bear comparison with those of much larger and richer nations. That being the case, the administration and government of New Zealand should be more than equal to the challenges faced. Likewise, its entrepreneurs and business leaders should be equal to the task of maintaining a productive and profitable economy.
And yet, when it comes to maintaining and extending the nation’s infrastructure, New Zealand’s leaders – private as well as public – are failing dismally. The political unanimity required to recognise, plan, and pay for the projects required to preserve social cohesion, while enhancing economic competitiveness and growth, is no longer a feature of New Zealand’s national life.
The indelible mark left upon a whole generation of New Zealanders by the Great Depression and World War II; an impression that not only permitted men and women of all classes and races to perceive the need to work together for the common good, but also to know – thanks to the bonding experiences arising out of existential danger – that such co-operation was possible.
Depression and war (but especially war) made brothers out of farmers and freezing-workers, professionals and tradespeople. Bullets and bombs were no respecters of who one’s ancestors were, or which particular sailing vessels they arrived in, but incoming ordnance did make clear who was keeping who alive. Such lessons are not easily forgotten.
But, neither are they easily learnt. In the absence of the near universal experiences of economic hardship, the threat of invasion, and the intense comradeship born of armed conflict, the influences of class, race and gender soon recover their power to separate and divide human-beings. Without the common memories born of working, fighting, and sacrificing together, it becomes easier and easier to believe that “some animals are more equal than others”. And the longer that heresy goes unreproved, the harder it becomes to see the point of building anything that benefits anybody beyond one’s own kind.
There was a time when New Zealand politics was a reflection of the efforts of its two largest political parties to both represent and advance the interests of their “own kind”. Labour stood for the working-class. National for farmers, businessmen and (most) professionals. Thanks in large part to the Cold War, however, both parties understood the importance of keeping political sectionalism on a short leash. The beliefs that held New Zealanders together were accorded much greater importance than political ideologies with the potential to tear them apart.
But those beliefs, absent the experiences which informed them, could not escape the challenges of a generation that had not known privation or war. The ideas that kept New Zealand society tight: white supremacy, male supremacy, heterosexual supremacy, capitalism and Christianity; were deemed oppressive and unjust by the most outspoken of the first generation of New Zealanders for whom tertiary education was something more than an elite privilege.
But if these young intellectuals were successful in loosening New Zealand’s tightly wound society, they had also made it easier for the separate strands of that society to be pulled apart. It would become increasingly practical for New Zealand’s now less-connected citizens to look after their own kind – at the expense of all the other kinds.
Inevitably, it was the wealthiest and most powerful New Zealanders who had most to gain, and gained most, from the post-war generations’ great loosening of New Zealand society. In just two generations the nation reverted to the class-ridden, race-divided, sexually-exploitative society it had been before the election of the First Labour Government in 1935. The country’s politics, likewise, reverted to a competitive struggle between the elite defenders of the nation’s farmers and importers, and the elite protectors of its professionals and industrialists.
Chris Trotter is a well known political commentator. This article was published HERE
New Zealanders should, however, resist the temptation to sneer at the USA’s self-inflicted wounds. A dispassionate survey of New Zealand’s present predicament reveals a nation whose First World status can no longer be considered secure, and lacking a political class of sufficient calibre to retain it.
At virtually every level of the New Zealand state, from the lowliest public servant to the Justices of the Supreme Court, there is an alarming absence of evidence that the nation’s predicament is understood. Distractions there are in great number, but a clear-headed grasp of what it takes to hold a country together is not in evidence among those responsible for New Zealand’s administration.
This lack of clarity also pervades the ranks of New Zealand’s elected representatives. These are, with only a handful of exceptions, inadequately educated, lacking in relevant experience, and unadventurous to the point of actual cowardice. New Zealand’s current crop of politicians are place-holders not nation-builders. Unable to rise above the crude calculation of partisan advantage, an understanding of the broader national interest and of the needs of citizens yet to be born is beyond their capabilities.
Accounting for these alarming deficiencies is not easy. No matter how precariously positioned, New Zealand remains a First World country. Its people are educated, and their health preserved, by public institutions that easily bear comparison with those of much larger and richer nations. That being the case, the administration and government of New Zealand should be more than equal to the challenges faced. Likewise, its entrepreneurs and business leaders should be equal to the task of maintaining a productive and profitable economy.
And yet, when it comes to maintaining and extending the nation’s infrastructure, New Zealand’s leaders – private as well as public – are failing dismally. The political unanimity required to recognise, plan, and pay for the projects required to preserve social cohesion, while enhancing economic competitiveness and growth, is no longer a feature of New Zealand’s national life.
The indelible mark left upon a whole generation of New Zealanders by the Great Depression and World War II; an impression that not only permitted men and women of all classes and races to perceive the need to work together for the common good, but also to know – thanks to the bonding experiences arising out of existential danger – that such co-operation was possible.
Depression and war (but especially war) made brothers out of farmers and freezing-workers, professionals and tradespeople. Bullets and bombs were no respecters of who one’s ancestors were, or which particular sailing vessels they arrived in, but incoming ordnance did make clear who was keeping who alive. Such lessons are not easily forgotten.
But, neither are they easily learnt. In the absence of the near universal experiences of economic hardship, the threat of invasion, and the intense comradeship born of armed conflict, the influences of class, race and gender soon recover their power to separate and divide human-beings. Without the common memories born of working, fighting, and sacrificing together, it becomes easier and easier to believe that “some animals are more equal than others”. And the longer that heresy goes unreproved, the harder it becomes to see the point of building anything that benefits anybody beyond one’s own kind.
There was a time when New Zealand politics was a reflection of the efforts of its two largest political parties to both represent and advance the interests of their “own kind”. Labour stood for the working-class. National for farmers, businessmen and (most) professionals. Thanks in large part to the Cold War, however, both parties understood the importance of keeping political sectionalism on a short leash. The beliefs that held New Zealanders together were accorded much greater importance than political ideologies with the potential to tear them apart.
But those beliefs, absent the experiences which informed them, could not escape the challenges of a generation that had not known privation or war. The ideas that kept New Zealand society tight: white supremacy, male supremacy, heterosexual supremacy, capitalism and Christianity; were deemed oppressive and unjust by the most outspoken of the first generation of New Zealanders for whom tertiary education was something more than an elite privilege.
But if these young intellectuals were successful in loosening New Zealand’s tightly wound society, they had also made it easier for the separate strands of that society to be pulled apart. It would become increasingly practical for New Zealand’s now less-connected citizens to look after their own kind – at the expense of all the other kinds.
Inevitably, it was the wealthiest and most powerful New Zealanders who had most to gain, and gained most, from the post-war generations’ great loosening of New Zealand society. In just two generations the nation reverted to the class-ridden, race-divided, sexually-exploitative society it had been before the election of the First Labour Government in 1935. The country’s politics, likewise, reverted to a competitive struggle between the elite defenders of the nation’s farmers and importers, and the elite protectors of its professionals and industrialists.
Chris Trotter is a well known political commentator. This article was published HERE
8 comments:
NZ's days as a First World nation are certainly numbered given the present situation where Maorification is accelerated and further cemented daily.
A referendum is urgent: should NZ be a democracy or an ethnocracy?
NZers must be given the chance to reply to this choice.
The advance towards tribal rule - by stealth - continues......
And well and good Chris but given we our future lies with our ability as a trading nation and an efficient producer of exportable goods, should we not be supporting the more efficient sector when faced with the trading difficulties such as we are now experiencing.
Unfortunately a well educated society and inefficient industrialists are simply “nice to have” options when the proverbial hits the fan.
Your examples of generations who were the product of WWs 1&2 and the Great Depression are useful observations to make of societies faced with little choice.
By comparison the last two generations have been spoilt for choices and unfortunately have made some pretty awful ones both opin terms of who they chose to lead us during a time of plenty and their accomodation of the elite classes who have endulged themselves at our expense.
Perhaps we have only ourselves to blame. Maybe we should all have to endure the hardship that has currently befallen some our most efficient producers through no fault of their own.
But nobody seems to care enough until they are personally confronted with hardship and it is a sad fact that most wouldn’t recognise it before it was too late. So, who is to blame for the bulk of society being as unprepared as we obviously are - certainly not the farmers!
And well and good Chris but given our future lies with our ability as a trading nation and as an efficient producer of exportable goods, should we not be supporting the more efficient sector when faced with the trading difficulties such as we are now experiencing.
Unfortunately a well educated society and inefficient industrialists are simply “nice to have” options when the proverbial hits the fan.
Your examples of generations who were the product of WWs 1&2 and the Great Depression are useful observations to make of societies faced with little choice.
By comparison the last two generations have been spoilt for choices and unfortunately have made some pretty awful ones both in terms of who they chose to lead us during times of plenty and their associated accomodation of the elite classes who have endulged themselves at our expense.
Perhaps we have only ourselves to blame. Maybe we should all have to endure the hardship that has currently befallen some our most efficient producers through no fault of their own.
But nobody seems to care enough until they are personally confronted with hardship and it is a sad fact that most wouldn’t recognise it before it was too late. So, who is to blame for the bulk of society being as unprepared as we obviously are - certainly not the farmers!
I think people are missing the point. The embedded NZ identity is self actualisation through self identified truth. By definition other countries will recognise and respect and support this -to do otherwise would be a betrayal of global independence and integrity ( NZ of course being critical to this).
Anything else is colonialism ipso facto get rid of it asap and delete it from the past so that it forms no part of the NZ psyche and is scrubbed from the future.
If you don't like it then it proves you are not a true NZer so best outcome is go leave. No one cares. Luxon recognises this.
The embedded NZ identity is self actualisation through self identified truth.
to do otherwise would be a betrayal of global independence and integrity (NZ of course being critical to this)
Anything else is colonialism
Mumbo jumbo. Kindly translate.
New Zealand has come to remind me of the movie The Truman Show. In the sense that we have a media narrative that nightly portrays the world as a very dangerous place outside of our borders. A very fake version of reality of life in New Zealand is provided as well such as least corrupt country on earth or safest country on earth.
To Richard Treadgold, thanks for highlighting Anon@4.18 post. I was reading it also and it's probably a cut and paste from some university social degree as I doubt anyone can explain what is being said.
It will make perfect sense to the lefties tho as it can't be defined!!
Electing an actor to govern them in 1980 merely confirmed their allergy to reality.
Ah yes. An actor. Also very old and dare we whisper it (and Lefties "whispered" it a lot in the 1980's. Some may still be around)... senile.
In fact "age" became an issue in 1984 during Reagan's re-election.
Enjoy watching a 73 year old handle the question and contrast with today...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-kGUyqOpFA
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