Saturday 16 April 2016

The New Black Is Blue: National’s Grip On The Electorate Remains A Strong As Ever.

The Winner: Like Dorian Gray’s, National’s sins have left not the slightest blemish upon its public face. No doubt, in some upper room, safe from prying eyes, a cursed canvass portrays it’s true hideousness. So long as it stays there, securely hidden, National’s supporters simply do not care.
 
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT’S unprecedented run in the polls rolls on. Eight years in office and still the level of support for John Key’s ministry in the New Zealand electorate continues to fluctuate between an unassailable 45 and 55 percent.
 
These would be outstanding numbers even under the old First-Past-The-Post electoral regime. Under a proportional, multi-party system they are extraordinary. In fact, given all the things Key and his colleagues have done, or failed to do, they should be impossible.
 
And yet, like Dorian Gray’s, National’s sins have left not the slightest blemish upon its public face. No doubt, in some upper room, safe from prying eyes, a cursed canvass portrays its true hideousness. So long as it stays there, securely hidden, National’s supporters simply do not care.
 
This state of not caring – evinced by close to half the population – is something new and disturbing in New Zealand politics. It speaks of hardened attitudes and even harder hearts; of an electoral bloc that has simply shut its eyes and ears to the plight of less fortunate and hard-pressed citizens. That they have remained faithful to the Key Government for eight years is because in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways it has told them that they are right not to care. Not caring is the new black: National’s new blue.
 
It’s important to grasp the fact that this ingrained lack of compassion is in no way reflective of simple bigotry or ignorance. The new National supporter is not the sort of know-nothing backwoodsman from the provinces who hated queers and backed Springbok Tours. Confronted by the Left for their apparent lack of compassion, these new National supporters will round on their accusers and charge them with constructing a soft and dependent society critically lacking in grit and resilience. Their refusal to mollycoddle the poor and work-shy may look like cruelty, they will say, but in the long term it will be revealed for what it is – the most socially productive manifestation of true kindness.
 
That this hard-nosed approach entrenches inequality and widens the social divide is fine by them. People have always needed incentives. Big sticks for the poor. Juicy carrots for the rich. “You don’t make a poor man rich”, they insist, “by making a rich man poor.” A healthy society is one in which the poor person’s burning desire to escape his or her poverty is only equalled by the well-off person’s fear of falling into it. Those who make it into the winners’ circle need to know how hard it is to get there – and stay there.
 
This is the gospel according to John Key’s new National Party, and its capacity to attract and hold close to half the electorate is unprecedented. The professional middle-class, hitherto susceptible to the Left’s appeals for them to join it in the struggle for equality and social justice, must now be counted among the new National Party gospel’s most enthusiastic converts. The better angels to which Labour once appealed have long since been made redundant and let go.
 
Those poll numbers ain’t going to change anytime soon.
 
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Saturday, 16 April 2016.

47 comments:

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"A healthy society is one in which the poor person’s burning desire to escape his or her poverty is only equalled by the well-off person’s fear of falling into it. "

Yup – it works in Amurrica. /Sarc for those whale oil devotees.

Anonymous said...

The Labour party is in a serious and some say fatal decline. There are many reasons here is one;
This week Andrew Little spent a great deal of time in parliament attacking John Key on tax dodging and tax havens, not one of his front bench got up to support him
Andrew little's chief of staff Mat McCarten, who earns a good salary from tax-payers largess ( I estimate that he earns more than about 90% of the taxpaying public ).
It is well known across NZ that McCarten did not pay to the IRD the PAYE tax that he took from the employee's pay packets whilst he was the President of the Unite union. The IRD is trying to recover those monies to no avail.
McCarten has been in his well paid position for many years.
Why does he not pay back the money he stole?.
There is discomfort within the Labour caucus about this situation.
Why does Andrew Little turn a blind eye?.
Why does "National Grip On The Electorate Remain As Strong As Ever".
The above is one reason.

Anonymous said...

Little would do well to discard the unionist lackies that surround and 'advise' him and get some people in that can advise him on how to present himself as a PM in waiting with a cabinet in waiting ready to go today.

The reality is Little hasn't scored a hit on the PM in Question Time and is a lacklustre 'retail' politician. If you can't sell ideas, you won't win elections.

Also I see the new General Secretary, Kirton, has started up at Fraser House. So far looks like a timid church mouse.

Anonymous said...

"This state of not caring – evinced by close to half the population – is something new and disturbing in New Zealand politics. It speaks of hardened attitudes and even harder hearts; of an electoral bloc that has simply shut its eyes and ears to the plight of less fortunate and hard-pressed citizens. That they have remained faithful to the Key Government for eight years is because in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways it has told them that they are right not to care. Not caring is the new black: National’s new blue."

No. You have previously hit the nail on the head repeatedly as to why National has such a strong grip. It's more to do with them not hitting the electorate where it hurts and Labour being a mess. The National voters certainly do care. They just don't trust Labour with it being union run and wanting to charge for water. Everyone knows charging bottling companies is the thin end of the wedge and soon everyone will have to pay for the water - not just the reticulation.

Anonymous said...

National has cannibalised the entire right-wing vote. It wouldn't actually take that much of a swing for them to be screwed.

Anonymous said...

It reads like the anonymous post above came straight out of the PM's office / tax payer funded ministry of truth.

Nick J said...

It is more like a party. It's great fun and everybody is having a ball. And whilst we lucky party goers are earning well and getting easy credit all is good. We will vote John because it is obvious that under him our real estate value is sky rocketing, we've got the new 4WD, we go offshore for holidays. We are the better half and quite frankly as far as we are concerned Johns the man and stuff those who don't want to join the party.

Anybody who has been to a party with great excess will know what a hangover of monumental proportions results. And we all know that a party is a finite event. The circuit breaker to this party will be dairy price collapse, international financial crisis etc, already underway. Soon the repo man will appear for the car, then the bailiffs for the mortgage. Much lamentations angry renting of hair will result.

Not a Fan of Key said...

Bullshit.

I don't know the truth behind your shit-slinging, oh brave Anonymous one, and neither do the overwhelming majority of voters. This is most definitely not why so many voters are sticking with grinning-boy Key. I find the man cringe-worthy, but it's clear that most don't. Most want to believe that we have a "rock-star economy" and that our tax system is among the tightest and most transparent in the world. They don't mind that our inglorious leader will seldom front-up to serious interviews but is perfectly happy to joke about with morning radio shock jocks. They don't want to have to confront difficult issues or look beneath the surface. And Key's been smart in many ways; working with the Māori Party, for example, has helped him to put a gloss on things (like his failure to change the seabed and foreshore laws) and keeping ACT on a lead had helped him to sell his most extreme policies, like Charter Schools, as being concessions to them.

Anyway, whatever the reason why so many of our countrypeople continue to support a prat like Key, it's got nothing to do with concerns about tax issues or ethics related to income. After all, look at his background, and his use of trust funds to hide private assets and avoid tax...

Kat said...

Ah! the 47%, and here a true members view, so vicariously expressed by Anonymous @13:31.

Its time the 53% reclaimed what the darkness has stolen.

manfred said...

One of the reason why I love Chris Trotter is because he is one of the only key people on the left who knows his enemy. Chris's written incursions into the psychology of the right should be welcomed by the left in general. But no, what we have instead is constant screaming from the left's activists both online and in the real world. Most of it is totally lacking in any sort of economic literacy and is usually a set of parroted fixed attitudes. All this incoherent, confused screaming accomplishes is to make middle NZ think 'I'm glad that lot aren't in power'.

Don't get me wrong, no system in history has come close to surpassing democratic socialism's heights of refined decency in word and in deed, but the best system in the world means squat if most of the people calling for it are a bunch of mindless children.

Wayne Mapp said...

Your thesis in this post is that National voters don't care, and that is the key to National success.
Yet in other posts you have said one of the reasons for National success is that they are moderate. And as examples you have referred to not unwinding "Working for Families", or "Interest Free loans". Just this month welfare payments went up by $25 per week. The minimum wage is $15.25, increased at a rate well above inflation.
So which is it? A bunch of uncaring rapacious right-wingers, or moderates who understand New Zealand well enough that they know not to seriously disturb the underlying social fabric.
Obviously National is not Labour. That is why National reduces taxes, will change some labour laws (90 day trial periods), and will do some privatization. And these days are the proponents of free trade agreements, that no longer being bi-partisan.
But being National as opposed to Labour does not deserve the automatic tag of "uncaring", especially when you look at the record of the last 8 years.

Anonymous said...

Kat, 18.32. Yes I agree but where do you start?, do you take the present pretend line or do you cut out the rot and deadwood so that the tree may flourish?.

People will look kindly on a healthy tree rather than a plastic replica.

Labour is not a healthy tree and most Labour folk know it.

Anonymous said...

I'm happy to predict the 2017 General Election result today.

National will win a 4th term.

Simply because Labour didn't have the vision, the leadership, or the capacity to sell that vision to the electorate.

Oh and by the way, I was a Labour party member for about 15 years so do know the party's limitations & metal blocks.

markus/swordfish said...

Chris: "The National Government's unprecedented run in the polls rolls on. Eight years in office and still the level of support for John Key's ministry in the New Zealand electorate continues to fluctuate between an unassailable 45 and 55 percent"

Mind you, the Nats haven't been above 51% for almost a year now (and went as low as 43% in July). Bear in mind, too, that they were regularly polling 54-55% during the Key Govt's First Term in Office and, much more importantly, the Government Bloc as a whole was averaging 59-60%.

Support for both Colin Craig's Conservatives (over the last year or so) and for the small Right parties of Govt (over the longer term) has collapsed and largely moved to National.

So, the fact that, despite this replenishment from the minor parties of the Right, the Nats find themselves polling much lower than during their First Term and that the Government Bloc as a whole has often been polling just 48-49% over the last 12 months (10 points down on where they were in 2009-11) militates against this regularly regurgitated notion (and implied in your argument) that the Tories are as popular as they ever were.

None of which, of course, is to deny that it isn't a bad position to be in during your third Term in office.

David Stone said...

Hi Chris
It's worth reading...George Monbiot in the Guardian today.Very much on your topic.
We are in a comparable world economic pass as just before the depression of the 1930s . We would be in the midst of a similar pass now as of 2008 but for the innovation of the extreme money creation of the Q E actions of the major economies. But this has only postponed the effects of 30+ years of lasses faire, as the created money has all gone into the already bloated, parasitic financial industry to arrest its implosion , and none of it into the real economy.
In that previous time the NZ Labour party was new , and it's popularity grew out of a widespread perception that something was terribly wrong with the philosophy the capitalist world had been following, and nobody could ignore it. Labour offered a real intelligent common sense socially responsible alternative to the established parties and prevailed , and the old establishment disappeared.
In 2016 Labour represents the less dynamic , less cohesive, less competent alternative of the lasses faire establishment parties The TINA (there is no alternative) dictum is bullshit in economics but it is true of the NZ political scene at the moment.
It might be time for you to put your hand up Mr Trotter, but we would all miss your stimulating, informative column.
Cheers David J S

Anonymous said...

The main thing for Labour is fundraising at the moment.

Tim Barnett, the previous General Secretary, was well-known for his dislike of fundraising in the corporate sector - mainly because he was an uncompelling flaky character that couldn't sell anything.

Let's see how this new schoolboy look-a-like Kirton goes - but I don't rate his chances to raise $2m preferably $3m to match National in an election campaign in 18 months.

I remember a Labour candidate in the 2014 campaign telling me that Barnett told him that he had to self-fund his campaign as 'no-one will donate to us'. Certainly in Barnett's case it would have been useful if he got off his lazy arse and made an effort where it mattered and for a General Secretary in an election year the top priority is fundraising.

I do remember in 2014 numerous begging letters from Labour were emailed to me as a member (now a non-member) asking for me to 'chip in'.

Mike Williams was a classic - a story goes that he refused to walk out of a CEO's office until he had written a cheque and dictated the number of 0's!

Kat said...

Anonymous @10.06

"Labour is not a healthy tree and most Labour folk know it."

I would suggest that the electorate at large is not healthy and the 53% that didn't vote for the current govt know it.

In another lifetime a certain National finance minister said that the average kiwi voter wouldn't recognise a deficit even if they tripped over one. Unfortunately he was correct. Today your average kiwi voter wouldn't recognise a con man, even while he's grinning and handing out bottles of his wine.

The record of this Key led National govt over the past eight years will not just go down as "uncaring", its stoking of the resentment towards the working poor and those at the very bottom is obvious enough, or even the smoke screening of benefits for the wealthy elite by cynical acceptance of Labour policies. This Key led National govt will go down as a blighted moment in New Zealand's political history, its continuation brought about by a seemingly dazed and confused electorate voting against their economic and social interests.

Tiger Mountain said...

Mr Key is the “Great Enabler”–bought an ex “statie” and joined the ranks of the new rentiers? its ok–“Keysie” says so

to question “Keysie” would be to question oneself and the deep denial of their social being so many fellow New Zealanders live in



Anonymous said...

I am a former Labour voter too and switched my vote to National the moment Helen Clark and Cullen introduced the rich prick tax. It is a tax which punished success and I want to be successful.

Anonymous said...

What hacks me off is the housing crisis that has developed under National and the fact that they mostly ignore it. People who happened to own a home in Auckland became rich overnight for doing nothing whilst the rest of us have to put up with dodgy, overpriced rentals and the fact that short of a mircale, we are all shut out of even a modest home in Auckland.

Key has encouraged greed and selfishness, and it is at the expense of the youth of today. Brighter future? Only for the handful. And you are right Chris. The well-off don't give a monkeys about anyone else. I knew a multi millionaire at the helm would be trouble. The guy is shameless, and worse, not a shred of empathy, ever.

manfred said...

Hi Wayne Mapp. A very important question you raise about Nationals moderation.

My answer is that you don't have to be very far to the right to be injurious to the social democratic balance which is essential to the existence of a decent society.

The policy that those who don't look for a job should have their benefits cancelled sounds fair enough and is 'moderate'. But the result is thousands of people living in very precarious circumstances even becoming homeless.

Some conservative governments such as those in the european christian democratic traditions realise that welfare must be a bar below which people not must fall, in order for it to attain the goal of pretty much abolishing poverty. Angela Merkel is in this vein. The German Constitution itself supports this approach.

Sadly when it comes to welfare, Anglo-Saxon Toryism is woefully lacking. This is not immoderate by our standards, but is no less destructive to people's lives and social order.

Olwyn said...

I have come late to this conversation, and will make just a couple of points. Firstly, Key is very divisive - he may well be the most hated PM at the same time as he is the most liked. This is because he does not give a damn about the people he doesn't need, whose accommodation conflicts with his economic beliefs. Someone might point to the dole going up by $25 at this stage - my guess is that he is doing this because he is seeking middle class consent to take still more off them.

Meanwhile, overseas, people are getting restless and crying "enough!" and you can be pretty sure that some among the rich and powerful are starting to look for ways by which to modify their position without losing their dominance. Rather as Muldoon held out against international pressure to abandon the Keynesian economic model, I can imagine NZ under Key becoming a kind of fortress Aynrandia as the rest of the world finally starts waking up.

Anonymous said...

Kat a good cure for KDS is to write out a thousand times a day "I believe that John Key is the best Prime Minister that NZ has ever had".

After a couple of years you will be cured.

Kat said...

Anonymous @09:17

Why would I want to delude myself over a politician who has a mental health disease named after him.

If it worked for you then that is perhaps why you are 'Anonymous'.

jh said...

I heard Katherine Ryan interviewing David Farrah and another pollster on Nine to Noon. She got on to the issue of politicians doing extreme things, the examples being Richardson and Douglas. Always overlooked is the shift from an inward looking nation to one which opend it's borders to the world. This involved a shift towards aiming state institutions at dissenters (resist = racist) I.e Race Relations Office and HRC. The Universities preached White Privelege, Post Colonialism, etc. Maori radicals challenged the sanctity of the nation. Labour introduced Diversity, at a cost to national identity; the Property Institute love it. Reality for some is a well paying job or profitable business based on land income but for others it is a lower quality of life in a burgeoning services sector.
Tourism is a great success story. That means 3 cruise ships arrive at the Canterbury Museum instead of one and 8 busses want to stop at Queenstown Steamer Wharf instead of two. No one has added another Museum, Steamer Wharf, Larnach"s Castle or Milford Sound. Chinese now own 43% of Motels and Hotels in Rotorua.
Labour has to argue for it's constituents from a globalising perspective and it's message is dead in the water.

Anonymous said...

I am a former Labour voter too and switched my vote to National the moment Helen Clark and Cullen introduced the rich prick tax. It is a tax which punished success and I want to be successful.

39% tax on income over $60,000 (in 1999-2000) was not "punishing success". It's the basic principle of progressive taxation - marginal income becomes less valuable at high incomes.

If you can't understand why taxing the rich is an integral part of social democratic ideology, what on earth were you doing voting Labour in the first place? Had you fallen through a time vortex from 1987 or something?

jh said...

What Jane Bowron said in The Press:

"if we tap into the tourism and play host to the rich, the myth that we can all enjoy the benefits when the reality is that we will become like Bali, selling foreigners a hair plaitand a massage while they lie under our sun.

tonight I park my 13 meter bus by the Bush Inn Center so pax can walk to the Lone Star (some 50 meters). "Chickie" isn't happy: I should be frollicking with the cars in the car park.
And in Dunedin I am to double park outside a Chinese restuarant a few doors down from the intersection of Stuart street and Castle Street, when pax could walk from the railway station. I explain that New Zealand is an "egalitarian nation" for which I receive a narrowing of the eyes. The annoying bit is that that is what the Chinese drivers do and there is a sign at the Penguin place at Oamaru saying No Buses as the Chinese driver would drive into the carpark and up to the steps of the building (despite the bus park being on the clayey area on the left).

greywarbler said...

@jh
Your comments are very interesting, coming from someone at the coal face of tourism. I liked the bit about their eyes narrowing as they gave the idea of 'when in NZ do like them' appraisal. They presumably were able-bodied not like a neighbour with emphysema who started wheezing before walking far. She can't go on bus trips now at all.

There are sayings about travel broadening the mind, which a wit has followed with - that its the behind that gets broadened. And many shallow tourists merely note whether things are as good as they've got back home. Some have been impressed by our friendliness but as numbers grow that will become more like testiness and hostility. 'Loopies' is a term for visitors in some seasonal holiday sites around the world. As they block every interesting part of our country, they may get called ants (of the spreading argentinian or darwinian variety). Did you know that some ants nip, tiny though they are? In time the tourists will sting us more than we do them I fear.

Anonymous said...

I attended the NZ Poetry Conference at the National Library in Wellington last Novemeber.

I was chatting away in a group (of presumably poets in their 40's or 50's) and somehow the conversation got onto the 4th Labour government and Neo-Liberalism.

I made a comment of how Neo-Liberalism as an ideology was an odd fit for a country like New Zealand.

One of these characters in the group gave me a stare as if I had wronged several female members of his family and uttered: 'Well yes, but we have so much more now!'

All I could think of was...some mother's do 'ave 'em!

Richard McGrath said...

"...marginal income becomes less valuable at high incomes"

How on earth do you know that? The income of high earners is likely to be reinvested as capital, rather than used to purchase consumer goods; such investment is the basis for increased employment.

Your justication for punishing success totally ignores property rights and the investment of time and effort required to make high incomes.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Hope God not that old crap about the rich creating jobs again. Even business publications know that this is bullshit now.
"The most important reason the theory that “rich people create the jobs” is absurd, argues Nick Hanauer, the founder of online advertising company aQuantive, which Microsoft bought for $6.4 billion, is that rich people do not create jobs, even if they found and build companies that eventually employ thousands of people.What creates the jobs, Hanauer astutely observes, is a healthy economic ecosystem surrounding the company, which starts with the company’s customers."

"But, ultimately, whether a new company continues growing and creates self-sustaining jobs is a function of customers’ ability and willingness to pay for the company’s products, not the entrepreneur or the investor capital. "

The psychologists are correct. True believers, when confronted by evidence to the contrary not only don't change their belief but solidify it.
And: if you repeat a lie often enough you come to believe it yourself.
Not to mention that – taxes on the rich are at an all-time low just about at least in modern times. Were there fewer jobs created at times of high taxation? Simply because rich people had less money? Answer those questions before you make statements like that.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kabul-suicide-bombing_us_5715de3ee4b06f35cb7084a2

I see Afghanistan is still stable Wayne.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Oops: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/19/11451550/iraq-protests-sadr
I see Iraq is still stable too Wayne.

cricket? said...

The simple point people miss about politics and the people it serves is it is generational Every 20 years there's is a new generation of people on the planet and without govts that understand this there will be the kind of divisive political thinking that we have at present that naively believes through slavery you will be able to achieve the value of working for the likes of Bwana Key and English who have never had to put their lives on the line for anything other than their blind allegiance to the Tory party doctrine of power to the rich and no law to control their immoral behaviour which grows with their theft of the democratic rights of the masses and their earnings

cricket? said...

One of these characters in the group gave me a stare as if I had wronged several female members of his family and uttered: 'Well yes, but we have so much more now!'

All I could think of was...some mother's do 'ave 'em!

Just about sums up why we half+ our GDP owed in debt every year

Great story by the writer of the quote and very true of our now culture. Rose coloured glasses so you cant see the country sinking in cowshit

Charles E said...


Nah Chris, you have us wrong.
I understand psychological research shows the right care equally to the left, just differently and the right have other significant priorities too. But that is not the point here except in so much as it is even more pronounced as there is no great difference between the moderate right and left in NZ anyway.

No the reason for the current government's success has nothing to do with who cares for whom but it is connected to emotion I believe.
The majority feel relatively positive, or at a minimum neutral about them overall, as one side of the equation. Then on the other side of the equation they feel an unease. It is that simple and therefore it can, and at some point will change.
This comfort & unease keeps getting reinforced week after week, exactly as you wrote well about recently on the Left Foot Syndrome or whatever. Almost like a conspiracy, Labour and the others in opposition feed us silly or tired old non issue alarms that reinforce the majority's view they are not near fit for office. I will not list them but the latest is the crap about Niue.
That sort of amateur politicking is why your foe has that permanent smile, so hated by the left, and so reassuring to the right.

jh said...

Guerilla Surgeon20 April 2016 at 06:57
Hope God not that old crap about the rich creating jobs again. Even business publications know that this is bullshit now.
......
Lots of tourists coming. The Press interviewed this realestate agent and that: that is where the money is being made. And jobs will be created (of the low paid variety).

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"psychological research shows the right care equally to the left, just differently"

Differently indeed. Considering the right care only about themselves.:)

jh said...

Coming late into a souvenir shop the conversation drifted onto the issue of working late ("yes, I realise you have a life to go to") and turned to 1988 and getting rid of the unions. The lady said that she was told if and when she will get a pay rise.
In Queenstown John Key is raving about the jobs that will be created as a result of large numbers of arrivals from the Polluted Republic. It doesn't bother him that these are low paying jobs or that there will be an upward shock to property values (owners of land).
President Obama is praising Angela Merkel for allowing a million plus Muslims to graze on Germany's grass. He uses the same phrasology I hear from the likes of Professor Spoonley: "and who seek a better life". Peter Nunns of the Transport blog says "However, I don’t think the economic case for immigration is as strong as the “moral” case for immigration " . His argument amounts to migrants benefit from migration. My feeling is that the liberal -left duck for cover on the issue of the effect on locals: if you want to make an omlett you have to crack a few eggs. It seems that that is John key's world view but Key is (like a lot of them) in love with wealth. This is suggested by his garbled interview with Campbell Live: And I always thought what was happening in the opposition of politics (of course they would oppose National, that’s their job actually apart from everything else) but it was a bit negative about out place in the world. So we played a bit about whether people coming here was a good or bad thing whether people should invest here was a good or bad thing, or whether we have a trade agreement with parts of Asia was a good or bad thing, but actually in my mind, the reason that I want to say yes to those things is because they are the opportunities that reflect our opportunities to both get wealthier (which is all about what you can do with that money) and then ultimately the oppurtunities for Kiwis. I’d like New Zealanders to feel (after my time as Prime Minister) they have become more confident outward looking nation more multicultural.. In other words the liberal left and John key's of this world are prepared to throw local workers under the bus (but in a good cause) and one of the first lessons an economist learns is I'll be all right.

jh said...

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"psychological research shows the right care equally to the left, just differently"

Differently indeed. Considering the right care only about themselves.:)
....
I don't think that is true. I think the right think in terms of natural systems versus direct intervention.

jh said...

Coming into the hotel a bus with a trailer is blocking the entrance. There is plenty of room to move up but he is busy inside and no where to be seen. The driver of the second bus can only just get off the main road. Hotel staff come in and out looking around with troubled faces. Eventually a Chinese driver saunters out casually twirling the keys around his finger. "There I told you it would be a Chinese said one driver watching. "letting those buggers in was the worst thing that happened to this country" says the other. The porter says "did you hear what he said": "what are you moaning about?".

Guerilla Surgeon said...

That little :) meant it's a joke.

But: "This finding fits with previous studies showing conservatives (relative to liberals) to be more responsive to threats, more resistant to change, and more likely to see the world as a dangerous place – all of which involve some form of negative attitudes, be they about the past, present, or future."

And""...[P]olitical conservatism is promoted when people rely on low-effort thinking.

And:" In five studies with more than 5,000 participants, we found that liberals think more analytically than moderates and conservatives."

Not to mention: "Conservatism is focused on preventing negative outcomes, while liberalism is focused on advancing positive outcomes. "

It just goes on.

Anonymous said...

As Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker documents in his 2002 book The Blank Slate (Viking), belief in the mind as a tabula rasa shaped almost entirely by culture has been mostly the mantra of liberal intellectuals, who in the 1980s and 1990s led an all-out assault against evolutionary psychology via such Orwellian-named far-left groups as Science for the People, for proffering the now uncontroversial idea that human thought and behavior are at least partially the result of our evolutionary past.

There is more, and recent, antiscience fare from far-left progressives, documented in the 2012 book Science Left Behind (PublicAffairs) by science journalists Alex B. Berezow and Hank Campbell, who note that “if it is true that conservatives have declared a war on science, then progressives have declared Armageddon.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-liberals-war-on-science/

Anonymous said...

In Monkeys on Our Backs, Richard Tokumei thoroughly explains how the policies endorsed by liberals, who believe in evolution, not only go against its principles, but, because they do, are doomed to failure. Policies endorsed by conservatives, on the other hand and unbeknownst to them, are actually derived from the principles of evolution which they publicly denounce, and, because they are, they have a better chance of working than liberal policies. The book is full of such astute observations, peppered with a sense of humor.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201104/why-liberals-and-conservatives-are-both-wrong-about

E.G Gareth Renowden and others can't see the role of population in refugee crisis's (Kiribati, Syria).

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Steven Pinker also said that as human beings, we are not necessarily bound to follow the so-called laws of genetic inevitability.
The book by Tokumei" – words fail me. It's written by someone under a pseudonym, self published, by someone allegedly with degrees in "humanities and psychology." His knowledge of evolution, according to reviews by people who know something about it is abysmal.
Not to mention that evolutionary psychology – as described by an evolutionary psychologist – is "inundated with fucking morons".
While I would say very little about evolutionary psychology, I wouldn't accept the argument from a book published under these circumstances. In other words, the anonymous Mr Tokumei (which is Japanese for anonymous, roughly) is just making shit up.

Anonymous said...

"Racism is the ideological belief that people can be classified into ‘races’ ... [which] can be
ranked in terms of superiority and inferiority ... racism is the acceptance of racial superiority … It is often used to refer to the expression of an ideology of racial superiority in the situation where the holder has some power. Thus prejudice plus power denotes racism in the modern sense ... racism is essentially an attitudinal or ideological phenomenon. … A dominant group not only holds negative beliefs about other groups but, because of the power to control resources, is able to practice those beliefs in a discriminatory way ... This ideological concept structures social and political relationships and derives from a history of European colonialism. The idea of ‘race’ has evolved from its use in scientific explanation (now discredited) and as a justification in the oppression of
colonised, non European people "
Professor Paul Spoonley (a blank slate liberal intellectual)

Guerilla Surgeon said...

And if you are the anonymous that posted the stuff about 'Tokumei' – what the fuck has that got to do with the topic under discussion. Maybe some of you anonymous's can start thinking and writing rationally? I mean what on earth response to you want from me to a definition of racism from Spoonley? All I can say is I pretty much agree with it. But it's got absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. Yet again.