Fighting The Fear Virus.

The Sum Of All Our Fears: What we should all be fearing and hating, right now, is Covid-19. And if we must rage against something; if we must blame something; then let it be this frighteningly adaptive coronavirus. Because it is only in New Zealand’s – and the World’s – collective rage that the intellectual and moral energy for defeating this deadly virus and conquering our anxieties will be found.

 

WHAT IS THE SOURCE of this awful social poison? The evidence of its presence is everywhere. In the abuse hurled at nurses and check-out operators. In the contemptuous defiance of social-distancing rules displayed by the young couple striding down the footpath. In the commentary threads of Twitter and Facebook. In the inexhaustible malice of talkback radio. And, most disturbingly – from the perspective of someone who has spent his life writing about politics – in the almost complete absence of social solidarity amongst this country’s Opposition politicians.

 Is anger the cause as well as the symptom of this anti-social behaviour? Are we being poisoned by rage? And if that is the answer, then what, or who, is brewing it?

 The psychologists would tell us that the emotion fuelling all this belligerence is fear. We hate what we fear, and many of us are filled with an overwhelming desire to destroy it. And if we cannot destroy it? Why then, we hate it all the more! Worse still, we begin casting about for someone to blame.

 It is easy (and very tempting) to condemn hate in all its forms. The rage which hate inspires can certainly be terrifyingly destructive – and all too easily inspire the very fears which give it birth. It is not, however, an invariably negative phenomenon. The great Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, writing about lives lived well and badly, and the fear that Death’s inevitability ends up making a mockery of both; rejected all counsels of passivity and acceptance:

 Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

The trick, it would seem, lies in knowing what to fear. What to hate.

 What we should all be fearing and hating, right now, is Covid-19. And if we must rage against something; if we must blame something; then let it be this frighteningly adaptive coronavirus. Because it is only in New Zealand’s – and the World’s – collective rage that the intellectual and moral energy for defeating this deadly virus and conquering our anxieties will be found. Some of us have scoffed at the slogan “Unite Against Covid-19”. Our cynicism is, however, misplaced. Uniting against the virus is exactly what we should do.

 And yet, so many of us are not uniting against the virus. Instead, frightened and hateful people are lashing out in anger against their fellow citizens, and against their government. Rather than grasp the brutal – if humbling – truth that, notwithstanding their overweening pride and self-confidence, human-beings are not in absolute control of the biosphere, many are determined to give this global disaster a human cause. It’s China’s fault. It’s Bill Gates’s fault. It’s Jacinda Ardern’s fault. They’re the ones to blame!

 It’s but a small step from believing that Covid-19 is a human creation, to deciding that it isn’t even real. It’s all a hoax – a way of placing us under the One World Government’s thumb. Why can’t people see it? Why is everyone so blind!

 That Twitter and Facebook are awash with these mad conspiracy theories is bad enough, but when their paranoid style is borrowed by talkback hosts and “opinion formers”, then the situation moves from bad to worse. And when the Deputy-Leader of the Opposition starts dog-whistling the same looney tunes? Well, that’s when we should put our fear of Covid-19 on “Pause”, and start worrying about the National Party!

 Clearly, the fate that the National Party fears much more than Covid-19 is another three years on the Opposition Benches. Equally clearly, it is their belief that the most direct route to victory lies through political fields sown with mistrust, suspicion and rancour. What need is there to offer the electors detailed and persuasive policies, when your own frightened and angry supporters are so obviously desperate for someone to blame, blame, and blame again – all the way to 17 October?

 Were it not for the presence of Dr Shane Reti in the National Party caucus, I would be close to despair. His calm, rational and generous performance, carried on RNZ’s Morning Report only two days after Gerry “I’m only asking questions” Brownlee’s conspiratorial sonata, was profoundly reassuring. Like Prime Minister Ardern, Dr Reti understands that the only antidote to social poison is social solidarity, and that the only thing New Zealanders have to fear – apart from Covid-19 – is fear itself.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 21 August 2020.

The Juggler: National’s Future Has A Name – Dr Shane Reti.

The One To Watch: Clearly, the MP for Whangarei, Dr Shane Reti has decided that, to have any kind of future, the National Party must abandon the notion that it is under no obligation to prove its fitness to govern. Even if, in the minds of the leaders of both major parties, all the central issues of economics and social policy have been settled, the need to demonstrate wisdom, empathy and steadfastness will always be critical to political success.

COMETH THE HOUR, cometh the man. There will be many in the National Party offering up a silent prayer of thanks that there is at least one rational human-being left in the National Party caucus. His name? Dr Shane Reti.

 

First on RNZ’s Morning Report and then, again, on the floor of the House of Representatives, Reti delivered performances that were calm, measured and generous. For the first time in a long time, New Zealanders were provided with evidence that a spokesperson for the National Party knew what he was talking about. More importantly, one sensed a strong moral core. That combination of high intelligence, broad experience and the all-important ability to put oneself in the shoes of others, is what’s been so conspicuous by its absence in the recent run of National leaders. 

Yes, there were flashes of it in Bill English. Remember his 2011 statement that the building of new prisons represented “a moral and fiscal failure”. It reminded us that there was a thoughtful and ethically rigorous side to English that, sadly, he kept hidden from both his colleagues and the wider public. For those with the wit to read it, English’s reticence was a sign. Better to remain silent and be thought a moral pigmy, than to say something thought-provoking and shame the rest of your caucus! 

Clearly, Reti has decided that, to have any kind of future, the National Party must abandon the notion that it is under no obligation to prove its fitness to govern. Even if, in the minds of the leaders of both major parties, all the major issues of economics and social policy have been settled, the need to demonstrate wisdom, empathy and steadfastness will always be critical to political success. 

Exactly when such qualities ceased to be regarded as important is unclear. Perhaps it was when Dean Parker’s famous line from his stage adaptation of Nicky Hager’s The Hollow Men: “The most important thing in politics is sincerity: when you can fake that, you can fake anything”; began to sound more like political science than satire. 

Forty-five years ago, the second-wave feminist and poet, Adrienne Rich, wrote bitterly about the male-dominated world of politics: 

“We assume that men are without honour. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandal of their politics. Not that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political life.” 

It is part of the triumph– and tragedy – of the second feminist wave, that we now know that there are women, too, without honour. That they can lie as well as any man. 

Clearly, Reti has looked to the women in charge of Labour and National for inspiration, and drawn what he needed from the most obvious source. Which political leader does this quote from Reti’s parliamentary speech of Tuesday, 18 August, remind you of: 

“Sometimes, in situations like this, with huge complexity and many balls in the air, one of them gets dropped. When that happens, this Opposition will help pick up that ball and put it back in its correct place. There will be a time to understand how the ball was dropped, but first we will help put it back, and then we’ll figure out how not to drop it again.” 

Judith Collins or Jacinda Ardern? 

In the atmosphere of fear and tension which the Covid-19 Pandemic continues to generate, New Zealanders are looking for precisely the sort of principled interventions which Reti is offering. They want to feel that their Government is being held to account – but not denigrated or undermined. In this regard, Collins has repeatedly proved herself incapable of striking the right note. Reti’s ability to ask the hard questions, while radiating warmth and generosity, is simply beyond her. 

There are still a few National MPs with the wit to grasp the long-term political significance of Collins’s and Reti’s sharply contrasting performances. Other caucus members will be recalling with considerable chagrin exactly why they were once so determined to prevent the Member for Papakura from ever coming within a bull’s roar of the National Party leadership. In this respect they will have been helped enormously by Collins’s decision to refer to Reti as “Doctor Shane”. Such patronising language might be expected from Donald Trump, but not from the leader of a major New Zealand political party! 

It is to be hoped that, in addition to wisdom, empathy and steadfastness, Reti has also been blessed with plenty of courage. Intentionally, or unintentionally, he has not only shown up his leader, but also a fair swag of his colleagues. In Julius Caesar’s famous words – supposedly uttered as his legions crossed the forbidden Rubicon river – “The die is cast.” It is victory, now, or defeat. No other options are available. 

Has Reti got the grit? That is what we are about to discover. He certainly has the ambition. But, he’s got something else, too. It is difficult to name, but you know it when you see it. It’s evident in Reti’s decision to return regularly to his Whangarei medical practice: his way of keeping himself grounded in the realities of his constituents’ lives. It has also equipped him to see the current crisis in the right way: not as a chance to “crush” National’s opponents; but as an opportunity to demonstrate the social solidarity out of which genuine patriotism is fashioned. 

There are, of course, minuses as well as plusses. One National insider warns that he has yet to reach the prime-ministerial standard of being able to make important decisions on the basis of highly imperfect information. That’s an important criticism – but not an insurmountable one. Anyone who can master the imperfections of general practice, can master the imperfections of politics. Indeed, one could argue that an MP who has grasped the need to draw the strength he needs from the people he represents has already mastered them. 

The important thing now is that Dr Reti keeps all of his balls in the air. For what else is politics, if not a juggling act?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 20 August 2020.

Fighting The Fear Virus.

Poisoning The Social Bloodstream: so many of us are not uniting against the virus. Instead, frightened and hateful people are lashing out in anger against their fellow citizens, and against their government. Rather than grasp the brutal – if humbling – truth that, notwithstanding their overweening pride and self-confidence, human-beings are not in absolute control of the biosphere, many are determined to give this global disaster a human cause. It’s China’s fault. It’s Bill Gates’s fault. It’s Jacinda Ardern’s fault. They’re the ones to blame!

 

WHAT IS THE SOURCE of this awful social poison? The evidence of its presence is everywhere. In the abuse hurled at nurses and check-out operators. In the contemptuous defiance of social-distancing rules displayed by the young couple striding down the footpath. In the commentary threads of Twitter and Facebook. In the inexhaustible malice of talkback radio. And, most disturbingly – from the perspective of someone who has spent his life writing about politics – in the almost complete absence of social solidarity amongst this country’s Opposition politicians.

 Is anger the cause as well as the symptom of this anti-social behaviour? Are we being poisoned by rage? And if that is the answer, then what, or who, is brewing it?

 The psychologists would tell us that the emotion fueling all this belligerence is fear. We hate what we fear, and many of us are filled with an overwhelming desire to destroy it. And if we cannot destroy it? Why then, we hate it all the more! Worse still, we begin casting about for someone to blame.

 It is easy (and very tempting) to condemn hate in all its forms. The rage which hate inspires can certainly be terrifyingly destructive – and all too easily inspire the very fears which give it birth. It is not, however, an invariably negative phenomenon. The great Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, writing about lives lived well and badly, and the fear that Death’s inevitability ends up making a mockery of both; rejected all counsels of passivity and acceptance:

 Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The trick, it would seem, lies in knowing what to fear. What to hate.

 What we should all be fearing and hating, right now, is Covid-19. And if we must rage against something; if we must blame something; then let it be this frighteningly adaptive coronavirus. Because it is only in New Zealand’s – and the World’s – collective rage that the intellectual and moral energy for defeating this deadly virus and conquering our anxieties will be found. Some of us have scoffed at the slogan “Unite Against Covid-19”. Our cynicism is, however, misplaced. Uniting against the virus is exactly what we should do.

 And yet, so many of us are not uniting against the virus. Instead, frightened and hateful people are lashing out in anger against their fellow citizens, and against their government. Rather than grasp the brutal – if humbling – truth that, notwithstanding their overweening pride and self-confidence, human-beings are not in absolute control of the biosphere, many are determined to give this global disaster a human cause. It’s China’s fault. It’s Bill Gates’s fault. It’s Jacinda Ardern’s fault. They’re the ones to blame!

 It’s but a small step from believing that Covid-19 is a human creation, to deciding that it isn’t even real. It’s all a hoax – a way of placing us under the One World Government’s thumb. Why can’t people see it? Why is everyone so blind!

 That Twitter and Facebook are awash with these mad conspiracy theories is bad enough, but when their paranoid style is borrowed by talkback hosts and “opinion formers”, then the situation moves from bad to worse. And when the Deputy-Leader of the Opposition starts dog-whistling the same looney tunes? Well, that’s when we should put our fear of Covid-19 on “Pause”, and start worrying about the National Party!

 Clearly, the fate that the National Party fears much more than Covid-19 is another three years on the Opposition Benches. Equally clearly, it is their belief that the most direct route to victory lies through political fields sown with mistrust, suspicion and rancour. What need is there to offer the electors detailed and persuasive policies, when your own frightened and angry supporters are so obviously desperate for someone to blame, blame, and blame again – all the way to 17 October?

 Were it not for the presence of Dr Shane Reti in the National Party caucus, I would be close to despair. His calm, rational and generous performance, carried on RNZ’s Morning Report only two days after Gerry “I’m only asking questions” Brownlee’s conspiratorial sonata, was profoundly reassuring. Like Prime Minister Ardern, Dr Reti understands that the only antidote to social poison is social solidarity, and that the only thing New Zealanders have to fear – apart from Covid-19 – is fear itself.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 21 August 2020.