Watching The World Burn: What was it that Michael Caine, playing the role of Batman’s butler, said: “...some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Just substitute the word “worthwhile” for “logical” and replace “money” with “human decency” and you’ve defined the amoral narcissistic pyromania that is neoliberalism.
IF SOMEONE TOLD YOU they could jump off your roof and float
gently to the ground, you’d doubt their sanity. Gravity is something we all
experience. All of us – bar the seriously deluded – understand that it cannot
be overcome. At least, not without the help of parachutes, gliders, hot-air
balloons, aeroplanes and rocket-ships. Most of us – but, bafflingly, not all of
us – are similarly convinced that the earth is a sphere. Significantly, this
conviction is born of the faith we place in science. A spherical earth is not
something most of us are able to grasp intuitively. Rather, it is something we
trust to be true because we accept the explanations of people clever enough to
prove it. In short, most of what we believe derives from direct personal
experience. The rest we take on faith. This can be a problem.
For example. If someone attempts to convince a Treasury
official that the performance of state institutions is improved by appointing
leaders on the basis of their proven expertise and long years of experience
within the relevant organisations, and by offering state employees secure
lifetime employment, then the chances are the official will respond as if you
have just declared that the Earth is flat. Since the number of state servants
who can still remember how the public sector functioned before the neoliberal
revolution grows smaller with every passing year, the Treasury official’s
dismissive response will, almost certainly, be based on faith not direct
experience.
Were you to suggest that the entire neoliberal ideology –
from which his ideas about the best way to organise the state sector are
derived – makes no more sense than the notion of a flat Earth, he would be
astonished. He would struggle to believe that any sane person could doubt the
veracity of neoliberalism. Mentally, he would file your suggestion under “N” –
for nuts.
The events of the past few days: the appalling failure of
our neoliberalised state sector to keep our borders secure from the threat of
the Covis-19 virus; ought to produce the same reaction from its defenders as a
person who, having jumped off a roof, mysteriously finds himself failing to float
gently to the ground.
Certainly, it is difficult to imagine a more convincing
example of the way in which neoliberalism has corroded the whole ethos of
public service. The civil servants of 50 years ago would have been a rock
against which the special pleading of selfish visitors/citizens, and the
asinine braying of journalists, would have broken without effect. They would
have understood that officials like themselves were all that stood between the
people of New Zealand and a renewed outbreak of the disease which had already
gouged a huge hole in their economy. Unmoved by the howls of protest of people
unaccustomed to being told what to do they would have enforced the rules
without fear or favour. What does it say about the state of our state that the only
people who can now be relied upon to protect it are the personnel of the NZ
Defence Force?
The person I feel most sorry for is Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
His own professional training (which, unusually in the neoliberalised state
sector, actually relates to public health) told him that granting
“compassionate” exceptions to the strict requirements of self-isolation and
quarantine would be extremely unwise. That ruthlessly defending the border
against Covid-19 was the only way to eliminate the virus. He had reckoned
without the faux outrage of a news media seemingly unable to understand the
need for all responsible New Zealanders to close ranks in the interests of
national survival.
Day after day the journalists bleated. “What would you say
to those who cannot say farewell to the their loved ones?” Simply by asking
that question they must have known that they were helping to dismantle the
crucial defences against a resumption of community transmission.
Would their counterparts at the time of the Blitz have asked
Winston Churchill such a question? Would they have turned the natural grief of
families caught up in a once-in-a-generation national crisis into an excuse for
embarrassing the government? Would the journalists of 1940 have deliberately
compromised the nation’s resistance for a cheap headline? Not bloody likely!
In the New Zealand of 2020, however, after years of
neoliberal corrosion, the Parliamentary Press Gallery knows exactly how to
break a civil servant’s resolve. They are well aware of the fundamental caution
which utterly pervades the state sector. They know how determined senior
members of the public service are to protect their ministers from the clamour
of an aroused populace. Evoke sufficient emotion; enlist sufficient support
from Opposition politicians; apply sufficient pressure; and to protect his
Prime Minister even an Ashley Bloomfield will break. This is how we got
compassionate exemption. The Gallery broke the will of the Director-General of
Health and forced the Prime Minister to bend. I hope they’re happy.
And, of course, they are happy: in fact they’re delighted.
So delighted that they’re still doing it. Still asking the Prime Minister and
her Director-General: “What would you say to … ? Don’t you owe an apology to …
?
What was it that Michael Caine, playing the role of Batman’s butler, said: “...some men aren’t
looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied,
reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Just
substitute the word “worthwhile” for “logical” and replace “money” with “human
decency” and you’ve defined the amoral narcissistic pyromania that is
neoliberalism.
No matter how high the casualties pile up, broken and
bleeding, on the ground below, Neoliberalism keeps pushing humanity off the
roof. Because, in their eyes, nobody is falling. In the world defined by their
demented vision, we are all floating gently to the ground.
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 19 June 2020.
4 comments:
For once I agree with you wholeheartedly Chris. The Fourth Labour government, ably assisted by an ideologically driven Treasury, set out to destroy the career public service and succeeded. Where once senior public servants delivered their best professional advice and assessments to Ministers without fear or favour, their successors now tailor their advice to what they believe their Minister wants to hear, always aware that their finite contracts are essentially in the Minister's gift, despite all the window-dressing about the State Services' Commission running the show. The public service has been steadily degraded and politicised. It is no longer fit for purpose and it is difficult to ever see its mana ever being restored again.
Neo-liberalism to blame? I think not. More likely the natural human emotion to grieve.
I know that many people make the comparison of Covid with the Blitz. But this is nothing like that. The great majority of us are living our lives barely unchanged. The country is not on a war footing.
The press will act as per normal times. They don't have to contend with "D" notices or the Official Secrets Act. They are not censored.
So in short we have normal democratic accountability. And it is not neo-liberalism gone rampart!
For years we have been told about the benefits of immigration, now Kiwis are returning from India and China and the taxpayer puts them up @ $4000 each.
Our borders are currently closed, with migration therefore having all-but dried up.
ANZ senior economist Miles Workman, in a forecast update on migration, said the Covid-19 crisis has turned New Zealand’s recent model of migration-driven growth "on its head".
Migration-induced population growth has been "one of the most dominant drivers of economic activity in recent years", but our per capita GDP growth has trailed behind the official GDP measure.
"This was never a sustainable source of growth," he says.
https://www.interest.co.nz/business/105518/anz-economists-see-burden-our-economic-recovery-being-put-domestic-stimulus-and
The tourist industry "boomed" (=increased), Chinese outnumbered locals and we fought over bus stops. Real wages fell. Now they are parked up on welfare.
CORIN You don’t want immigration to fall, though, do you? I just want to say something. I saw you in a speech after the Budget, and you were speaking to a big room of businesspeople – some of the biggest business minds in the country – and you stood up and you said, “Don’t worry about Treasury’s figure or estimation that it will go back to the trend of 12,000.” You were confident it was going to be a lot higher than that.
JOHN I just think it’s unlikely it will go to 12,000.
CORIN But it was like you wanted immigration to go up, because you were telling them, “Don’t worry. The demand in the economy is going to stay there. That’s what’s keeping New Zealand afloat.”
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1607/S00020/qa-prime-minister-john-key-interviewed-by-corin-dann.htm
I always feared they would tank the welfare system.
Chris, I disagree with your premise that it is unsafe to allow for compassionate exemptions to the quarantine rules. It should actually be quite easy to manage a few compassionate exemptions for people to visit their dying parent/relative or attend a funeral if the proper systems are put into place. For example, a Covid19 test can be done in less than a day and all those applying for compassionate leave should be tested and shown to be negative before being released. They then should have a management plan in place to limit the number of people they come into contact with during their next 14 days in the community - keeping a diary of who they meet, when and where. If this procedure was followed there would be almost zero risk to NZ. However, what we saw was a completely inept Department of Health with no auditing for compliance simply releasing people from quarantine without testing! There is no excuse for this except for poor management and planning. This is a common theme for this Labour coalition unfortunately and the coalition has been shown time and time again to be unable to deliver on their promises, to lie about the current situation and to blame others for their failings. Simply the majority of the cabinet ministers have no experience in managing large teams and it is showing through weak management systems within their Departments, no accountability for failures (David Clark at a minimum should have been removed as Minister of Health), and therefore in the eyes of the public a growing loss of confidence in their ability to deliver on any of their promises! We can only hope that the Country realizes this at the coming election and elects people with a track record of success in delivering on promises not simply those that state idealogical wishes as if they can be delivered. Housing, the health system (waiting lists for surgery have increased), infrastructure (roads cancelled in favour of rail projects now back on after a delay with no other benefits eg. light rail on hold and likely cancelled) Child Poverty (7 of 9 measured factors are worse), Homelessness (more houses cancelled than built eg. Ihumatau cancelled 480 houses vs kiwibuild (395 houses), the economy, Pike River reentry (a waste of taxpayer money - no bodies will be recovered as admitted by Andrew Little despite all the rhetoric prior to the election), all have had no improvement or have become worse since Labour took over. How much more do people need to see Labour does not deliver and society gets worse?
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