Friday 11 August 2017

Tales From A Possible Future: Avenge Metiria!

Never forget, the best way to avenge the wrongs of the past is by seizing control of the future!
 
IT WAS SHORTLY AFTER MARAMA DAVIDSON’S impassioned appeal to Metiria Turei’s devastated supporters, that the “Avenge Metiria” meme made its first appearance. No one’s entirely sure who started it, but pretty soon it was all over social media. Then the ideas for action started pouring in to the Green Party HQ. Though expressed in a multitude of ways, the message was clear: “If Metiria is to be avenged, then we have to get her supporters to the polls!”
 
Over the next few days, dozens of IamMetiria volunteers began texting their friends and neighbours with news that “Avenge Metiria” meetings were being organised around the country. Posters featuring Metiria’s image started going up all over New Zealand saying, simply: “Don’t mourn – organise!”
 
The meetings attracted hundreds of people. Among their very first decisions was a vote to ban the mainstream news media from all further “Avenge Metiria” gatherings. Some wag even sent a message to the television networks: “Stay healthy, guys – stay away!” Gang members offered to provide “security” for the rapidly growing movement’s leading organisers.
 
When Marama Davidson announced that the Greens would accept an invitation to address the rally being organised by the South Auckland chapter of “Avenge Metiria”, it soon became clear that the turnout would be huge. And when word spread that Metiria, herself, would be speaking, the organisers were forced to secure a bigger venue – a much bigger venue.
 
Metiria’s speech, carried live on social media, was electrifying. Freed from the constraints of her co-leadership role and with nothing left to lose, she spoke from the heart about the need for those who had been silenced by poverty and bureaucratic oppression to find their voices. To take on the system with the objects it feared the most – their votes.
 
“Don’t do it to avenge me!”, she cried, “Do it to avenge yourselves! Do it to avenge all those New Zealanders whom the greedy and the cruel have driven into the shadow world of poverty and despair. For the ones still living in the dark. For these lost souls, I am asking every one of you here tonight to become a light-giver. Never forget, the best way to avenge the wrongs of the past is by seizing control of the future!”
 
On Election Night 2017, puzzled political scientists reported a huge increase in voter turnout. For the first time since 1984, more than 90 percent of registered voters had cast a ballot. Equally confounded were the mainstream news media’s leading political journalists. All of whom were at a loss to explain the unprecedented level of support for the Green Party.
 
“The polls gave us no inkling of this”, complained one baffled pundit. “We simply had no idea it was happening!”
 
As it became clear that Labour and the Greens were racking-up an historic landslide victory, a new meme mysteriously appeared on social media – and almost instantly went viral.
 
“Metiria Is Avenged!”
 
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 10 August 2017.

15 comments:

Kiwiwit said...

I used to think you had your finger on the pulse of what was happening politically in this country, but you have completed misread this issue ever since the story broke so it is no surprise to see you are now going full fantasy. I hope the left adopts your imaginary slogan to 'avenge...the greedy and the cruel' as that will guarantee complete electoral annihilation. And if it doesn't, the image of gang members providing security at political rallies would certainly do it.

Polly said...

IMO Metiria has rort our political system for personal financial gain.
Her family would not succumb to her lies.
More to come on this matter.

Nick J said...

Polly, I am not sure that rorting is Tureis crime, the real issue is that she entirely miscalculated, and appears to lack any reticence for how she went about this. Consequently the electorate have questions:
* what the hell was she trying to achieve by opening Pandoras box?
* who the hell was advising her?
* did she / her advisors not realise that Caesars wife has to be above reproach?
* was she "framed" by the dirty tricks department investigating her past?
On that note as I totally agree with her message about the treatment of the massively expanded underclass in NZ, it is time for me to traverse the numerous beggars of Lambton Quaywhose presence speaks so loudly to the truth in her core message.

GJE said...

How does voting for the greens avenge metiria when she was effectively forced out...

Red Fish said...

One way to avenge Metiria is to replace her with Marama. I find her deeply inspirational.

Anonymous said...

Nick J
The numerous beggars you are seeing have fairly recently cottoned on to the idea, it's a fashion imported from overseas.

Whereas overseas it may be necessary for many, in NZ it is just a (sometimes very lucrative) supplement to whatever benefit they are already on that allows them to sit all day doing nothing else productive.

Some may be mentally ill but for too many it is just a scam and others are gang organised.

Don't blame social welfare for hoards of main chance scammers.

Nick J said...

Anon @18.02 I suggest you talk to a few of them and get it from the horses mouth. I'd also suggest that you attempt to deal with the welfare agencies and try to live on it. You might then have evidence confirming your contention. I'm hoping you are right, somehow I very much doubt it.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Gang organised beggars? That sort of beggars belief, considering that they get sweet FA. It's not as if they're raking in hundreds of dollars a day that gangs are going to be interested in that rather than something like methamphetamine. Have you seen how much people give them? Get real.
And on what basis or evidence do you make this claim? Or is it something as usual that Conservatives managed to drag out of their collective arse. I get tired of this assumption, when people who actually work with the homeless and know what's going on get ignored by people like you in favour of fairy tales.

Whanganui said...

I hope this tongue in cheek Chris Trotter?

Whanganui said...

And if it isn't tongue in cheek it is Seacliff Lunatic Asylum for you Chris Trotter!

greywarbler said...

Anonymous at 18.02
You are a main chance scammer yourself. You are using this site to put your bit in and spread your negative prejudices around though you are a nobody, an anonymous so uninterested in standing behind what passes for thoughts but really is just regurgitated simplistic cant, that you can't even bother to give yourself a handle. You just want to lie around the place waiting for someone to flick you an opinion so you can enliven yourself to scoff at it.

Anonymous said...

GS

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/88264521/west-auckland-beggar-makes-up-to-150-a-day

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/78908873/Wellington-beggars-tell-of-the-etiquette-and-dangers-of-life-on-the-street

There are other articles if you wish to do your own research.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Wow, one guy claims to be making $150 a day – one guy – claims. Another one says he got $190 on his best day at Christmas. So yeah, I think we need a little bit more research into this before we jump to the conclusion that they are all getting rich.

sumsuch said...

How exhilirating the '93 'bugger the pollsters' election was, when the electorate out of the blue rejected Richardson's thrust. The commentators went silent and Bolger stopped emphasizing every 2nd word, for weeks on end. In Hawke's Bay there was a huge rainstorm and in the morning it felt like the earth was purified.

It wasn't.

I still love to hear the commentators go quiet. It's a good sign. To hear the self-believing 'Best' fall quiet, it's the vale where the people can speak.

Darren K said...

Chris Trotter
The current furore over Trumps speech is because he gave the debate wider context. It is like the motte and bailey doctrine where the left has the argument confined to the motte and Trumpp takes it to the bailey. Think of the Duke Boys Robert E Lee?

It is all mirrored here in this:

Ella Henry* is appalled by the (1) widening gap between rich and poor in Aotearoa. But, she writes for the RNZ series My NZ, she is heartened by those of (2) all races and creeds who share her love for the country.

(3)I am perpetually flummoxed by the idea that the land which is in my bones and my very being, this whenua, the moana, its mana, mauri and wairua, received its name from some white man on the other side of the world.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/mynz/story/201836542/my-nz-'inequity-and-sheer-awfulness-is-beginning-to-emerge‘