Atavistic Urges.

Mob Psychology: Deep down inside us dwell all manner of dark and violent impulses. In times of social stress and/or crisis, these “atavistic” urges have a nasty habit of rising to the surface like an insufficiently weighted corpse – and unleashing mayhem.

ARE WE AS SAVAGE as our forebears? Would we still gather in our thousands to witness the public execution of a notorious felon? I’d like to think not, but something tells me that if the opportunity presented itself, far too many of us would be unable to resist the temptation to go and gawk at horror.

The word for this impulse is atavism. Deep down inside us dwell all manner of dark and violent impulses. In times of social stress and/or crisis, these “atavistic” urges have a nasty habit of rising to the surface like an insufficiently weighted corpse – and unleashing mayhem.

Our forebears understood this deep-seated human need to see horror answered with horror; pain with pain. In the crude mathematics of vengeance, it was necessary to balance the outrageousness of the crime with an appropriately severe degree of public retribution.

In this regard, the ancient authors of the Old Testament who demanded an eye for an eye understood their audience a lot better than the impossibly gentle Jesus. To love one’s enemies is the counsel of perfection. Human-beings just aren’t that good at being “kind” – especially to those who don’t deserve it.

Atavism was on my mind this past week, as the public’s fury with the persons responsible for returning Auckland to Covid-19 Alert Level 3 and the rest of New Zealand to Level 2 rose to a level where even Queen Jacinda the Kind felt obliged to echo it.

The gospel of Jesus just wasn’t cutting it anymore: New Zealanders had had enough of their Prime Minister’s kindness; what they wanted to know now was whether she also knew how to be cruel.

No problem.

Jacinda’s fury is the opposite of a raging fire. It’s a cold front straight from the Antarctic. When she enunciates the word “frustrated” it has the sound of an icicle being snapped into little pieces. Her controlled rage is thrilling, but it’s not enough. The Team of Five Million wants more.

A year ago, when the Global Pandemic was just getting its eye in, we huddled together around the bright fire of Jacinda’s leadership like Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers. In times of crisis, there are few atavistic urges more compelling than the terrified tribe’s desire to surrender its will to a strong and trusted chief. Jacinda’s call for “kindness” answered to perfection the nation’s hunger for unity and reassurance. Social divisions dissolved; ideological quarrels ceased; we were all in this together: of course we could be kind!

And how we rewarded her! There was a point on Election Night 2020 (right about the time Rangitata fell to Labour) when I just threw back my head and laughed. The deep roar of that massive red wave sweeping the country was compounded of pride in the tribe, fears overcome, and that huge surge of relief that comes from dodging a bullet. “We” had done it! Kindness Rules!

Or, does it?

Human-beings are good in a crisis – even a long one. Just think of our parents and grandparents, bearing-up under six years of total war. What we’re less good at, however, is going in and out of crises. What Judith Collins, with uncharacteristic verbal felicity, calls “yo-yoing”.

Our rational faculties tell us that with Covid-19 still raging across the planet, and the poor Americans burying more than half-a-million victims; the virus’s occasional leakage into our own communities has to be expected and accepted. Every time we go back into Lockdown, however, our capacity for kindness diminishes.

And when we discover that through either stupidity, sheer selfishness, or both, a member, or members, of the Team of Five Million have upended the lives of their fellow citizens and cost the country hundreds-of-millions of dollars by not following the rules of the game, well, our kindness evaporates altogether.

In those circumstances, the atavistic impulses rising from our psychic depths will be especially dark and dangerous. Having established that somebody has broken faith with the tribe, the tribe will seek retribution – public retribution. It will need to be satisfied that the guilty party’s transgression has received the appropriate punishment.

If we still had stocks, then these malefactors would be in them.

Should the transgressions of these fools lead to unnecessary deaths, however, just watch the public mood turn even darker.

The atavistic cry, then, will be: String the bastards up!

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 5 March 2021.

When It Comes to Covid, the “Little People” Cast a Big Shadow.

All Out Of Kindness: At her post-Cabinet media conference on Monday, the Prime Minister demonstrated conclusively that she could be cruel as well as kind. Those revealed to have breached the self-isolation protocols felt the full force of Jacinda Ardern’s displeasure – and the nation lapped it up.

JACINDA ARDERN KNOWS what she’s doing. Never mind all the “Ardern is faltering” wishful thinking on display from the Right. Ignore all the carping of the journalists, commentators, posters and tweeters. New Zealand is still, overwhelmingly, with the Prime Minister.

Would she be pushing back so hard against the claims of the KFC worker if she didn’t know that a very large chunk of the country wasn’t saying: “Give her a smack from me while you’re at it, Jacinda!”?

You only have to register the change in the Prime Minister’s tone between Saturday night and Monday afternoon. In the course of just 72 hours it was made very clear to Jacinda that “kindness” just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Kiwis were pissed-off – really pissed-off – and they expected the country’s leader to acknowledge and endorse their rage.

Jacinda received their message loud and clear. At her post-Cabinet media conference on Monday, the Prime Minister demonstrated conclusively that she could be cruel as well as kind. Those revealed to have breached the self-isolation protocols felt the full force of Jacinda’s displeasure – and the nation lapped it up.

Not the journalists in the Press Gallery, of course, and certainly not the keyboard warriors on Twitter and Facebook. They knew too much about the messaging shemozzle that had caused the young KFC worker to believe that she was allowed to go to work. Clearly, there had been a major communications failure between the Ministry of Health’s frontline staff and decision-makers all the way up the chain-of-command. Prime Ministers are only as well-informed as the advice they receive, and, in the case of the KFC worker, at least, the advice she received was bad.

Not that it matters. What they’d heard from them during the first Lockdown, left most New Zealanders with a very sour opinion of journalists. Or, should that be – an opinion even sourer than usual? As for Twitter: well, the opinions and judgements available on Twitter matter tremendously to the people who tweet them, and the atypical New Zealanders who read them. Neither of these groups is very large, however: certainly not large enough to make the Government do anything it has already set its face against. That the journos and the Twitterati all knew there had been a serious communications balls-up didn’t really count.

Why? because New Zealanders weren’t remotely interested in the minutiae of who said what to whom and when. What they were saying to themselves was something along the lines of:

“ Jesus! What rock was this girl living under that she didn’t know Covid was loose in her community, and, because Covid was loose in her community, she should stay the fuck at home? All her friends at Papatoetoe High School were being tested and told to self-isolate. It was all over the news. How could she not get it?”

And when it came to the guy who got tested and then went to the gym? Well, you can just hear Middle New Zealand’s explosion of rage, can’t you?

“For fuck’s sake! Who the hell could be that bloody selfish? Surely there’s got to be some sort of punishment for rule-breaking on this sort of scale? Come on Jacinda – you can’t be kind to pricks like that!”

These are the messages that Jacinda was giving heed to – not the whining of the Twitterati. The huge surge of outrage that followed the public’s discovery of the reasons why they were being ordered back into Covid-19 Alert Levels 2 and 3 was not something any sensible politician could ignore – and Jacinda didn’t.

There will, of course, be many (but not that many) who will seize upon the circumstances surrounding the latest Lockdown and spin them into a cloak of shame for the Prime Minister and her government. They will do this because they simply cannot believe that anybody is any longer “fooled” by Queen Jacinda the Kind; because they fail completely to comprehend that people who think like them represent an insignificant minority of the population; because they just can’t fathom why their advice on how to handle the Covid-19 Pandemic has been routinely ignored for so long.

For nearly 40 years these characters have grown accustomed to the opinions and interests of the majority being treated with something pretty close to contempt. Little people were expected to do as they were told, and to accept that the big people telling them would always know much better than they ever could what was good for them. These elitists found it hard enough to endure the nearly-nine-year reign of John Key – who displayed an altogether unhealthy regard for public opinion. Under Jacinda, however, everything has gone from bad to worse. She actually seems to care – really care – what little people think. It’s simply outrageous!

What the elitists want is for New Zealanders to “learn to live with the virus”. In their view, all this “yo-yoing” in and out of Lockdown is wrecking the economy. Pursuing an “elimination strategy” is, therefore, unsustainable in the long term. The country just has to harden-up and wait for the steady roll-out of the vaccine to deliver the “herd immunity” required to set the world free. As far as they’re concerned, all this is self-evident. The Government must see it – and act accordingly.

Except that what the “little people” want looks nothing like the “big people’s” preferred strategy. Far from believing that things should be loosened-up, most New Zealanders favour an across-the-board tightening of the whole anti-Covid apparatus. The Elimination Strategy, so derided by the elites, has served them, and their country, amazingly well. Just how well is made clear to them every time they hear, see, or read about what’s happening in the USA, the UK, and just about everywhere else on the planet. What they want is to be kept safe: to see the borders made so tight that the “tricky” Covid virus is permanently kept at bay. Yes, they feel sorry for the tourism and hospitality industries, but not sorry enough to risk the virus running amok because Jacinda and her government stopped listening to “us” and started paying heed to “them”.

Most of all they want the Team of Five Million to stay solid: to play by the rules; and to make sure that those who flout the rules pay dearly for their lack of solidarity. While kindness can be shown to work, they’ll be kind. But, the moment kindness stops working, the world will be amazed at how cruel ordinary New Zealanders can be. And how cruel Jacinda can be – in their name.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 4 March 2021.

Happy New Year?

But Will She Keep Smiling? Kindness is as kindness does. And the one thing kindness cannot do is force people to be kind. Understanding that was the single most important factor in the Prime Minister’s success at stamping out the Coronavirus. She took New Zealanders with her; she encouraged them to “Unite Against Covid-19” for their own good. Now, in 2021, she must encourage them to do the same against poverty and homelessness.

WELL, IT’S GONE! The 2,020th year of the Common Era. The year of the global Covid-19 pandemic. The year of bubbles and lockdowns and Zoom. The year Donald Trump lost – badly. The year Jacinda Ardern won – bigly. Gone. But, we’re still here, celebrating the first day of the first month of 2021. A good time, traditionally, to hazard some guesses as to what the next 364 days may bring.

My most confident prediction is that Covid-19 will feature as prominently in the next twelve months as it did in the last.

By the time most New Zealanders begin to see the effects of the mass vaccination campaign against Covid-19 more than half of 2021 will already be behind them. Over the months remaining, those same New Zealanders will become increasingly impatient with the sizeable anti-vaxxer movement and its profoundly anti-social delusions.

Pressure will grow for the Government to make vaccination against Covid-19 mandatory. Should compulsion fail to move the hardliners, then the ugly punitiveness which lies just below the easy-going exterior of the average Kiwi is likely to erupt in spectacular fashion. Refusing to be vaccinated may be classed as a form of criminal assault, and denying the benefits of vaccination to one’s children may see the offending parents prosecuted as abusers.

If we’re very unlucky, the outrage of the anti-vaxxers will merge with the rising stridency of the “Free Speech Union” and the undiminished frustration of the country’s gun-owners, into a single, very angry, “Freedom Coalition”.

Jacinda Ardern’s government will be portrayed by this group as dangerously dictatorial: a collection of woke virtue-signallers prepared to unleash the full powers of the state against any individual citizen who refuses to acknowledge their obligation to serve the greater good.

The strength of the Government’s position on the issues of Covid-19 vaccination, curbing hate speech, and comprehensive gun-control should be sufficient to marginalise these critics. What could weaken its position, however, is the Ardern Administration’s apparent unwillingness to acknowledge its own obligation to serve the greater good.

Sharp rises in the number of families living in poverty, and the intractability of the housing crisis, could well see the Government facing serious charges of hypocrisy. In the name of “kindness” citizens are expected to swallow their objections to enforced inoculation, watch their language, self-censor their opinions, and submit their firearms to state regulation and control. That same state, however, acknowledges no obligation to show kindness to the tens-of-thousands of beneficiary families living in poverty: no duty to advance the collective wellbeing of the nation by redistributing wealth and intervening directly in the “free” market.

Both the Act Party and (if it can summon sufficient intellectual energy) the National Party will seek to exploit the issues arising out of vaccinations against Covid-19, hate speech and gun control. From the other end of the political spectrum, the Greens and the Maori Party will chime in against poverty and homelessness.

A self-confidently “centrist” government, assailed from both the right and the left, has little to fear. With most voters happy to position themselves somewhere in the “middle”, support for the Government is unlikely to be shaken by attacks launched from the political extremes.

Of much more concern to Jacinda Ardern and her colleagues would be the emergence of a political force willing to combine the arguments of both the right and the left into a single devastating critique of the Government’s policies.

For most of the period between 1993-96 this was precisely the strategy adopted by Winston Peters and his NZ First Party. While that particular soufflé may not rise a second (or should that be a third?) time, the option remains open for anyone with sufficient charisma to launch a radical populist party.

A “Freedom Coalition” committed not only to the individual’s “freedom to”, but also to securing people’s “freedom from” poverty, homelessness, discrimination and exploitation, could attract the sort of double-digit support that gives incumbent governments nightmares.

Kindness is as kindness does. And the one thing kindness cannot do is force people to be kind. Understanding that was the single most important factor in the Prime Minister’s success at stamping out the Coronavirus. She took New Zealanders with her; she encouraged them to “Unite Against Covid-19” for their own good.

Now, in 2021, she must encourage them to do the same against poverty and homelessness.

This essay was originally published in the Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 1 January 2021.

Killing The Nats With, Of All Things, Kindness.

Powerful Connection: Neoliberalism is the antithesis of everything that has traditionally been associated with the feminine aspects of human nature. Kindness and compassion, nurturance and inclusiveness: such qualities have no place in the neoliberal order. When Jacinda proclaimed her determination to practice the “politics of kindness”, she was, wittingly or unwittingly, raising a revolutionary banner.

WHY ARE THE RIGHT so very, very frightened of Jacinda Ardern? Are the fears of the Mike Hoskings of this world driven solely by the fact that she is a woman? Or, is it about something deeper than that? Is it actually driven by the fact that, as a woman, she is given the cultural space to deploy ideas which would, were she a man, be denied her?

From the moment she became New Zealand’s prime minister in 2017, Jacinda’s signature theme has been “kindness”. Theoretically, there is absolutely nothing to stop a male politician from adopting the theme of “kindness” as his own. The fact that so few – anywhere around the world – have done so is, however, instructive. To elevate kindness and compassion over all the other traditional political virtues, such as strength, sound judgement and decisiveness, is not something 999 out of 1,000 male politicians would do. Why not? Because in the minds of far too many voters such a move would be interpreted as effeminate and weak.

Recall the fate of David Cunliffe? With rare emotional honesty, he responded to the shocking domestic violence statistics presented to him at a conference of Women’s Refuges by telling the assembled delegates that there were times when he was “sorry I’m a man”. How well I recall the evening of the day he uttered those words. My drinking companions, all of them good, card-carrying “progressives”, had their heads in the hands. Male or female – it made no difference – everyone around the table knew that Cunliffe’s heartfelt admission would sink Labour’s campaign. Socialists, feminists, socialist-feminists: we all knew that no New Zealand male, much less one intent on becoming prime minister, could so openly cast aspersions upon Kiwi masculinity and be forgiven.

So ingrained is this fear of being branded weak and effeminate that even female politicians have made it their business to present themselves as the best man for the job. Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Jenny Shipley and even Labour’s own Helen Clark: all of them worked tirelessly to come across as tough, strong, decisive and, yes, ruthless politicians. Each of them, in their own way, echoed the words of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth:

Come you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full

Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait upon nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry ‘Hold, hold!’

Tellingly, it is no great stretch to imagine Judith “Crusher” Collins smiling grimly at Lady Macbeth’s terrifying repudiation of the feminine. Equally tellingly, it is impossible to credibly attribute such sentiments to Jacinda Ardern.

It is Jacinda’s refusal to “thicken her blood” that has caused such fright among the Right. In spite of its apologists’ protestations to the contrary, managing the neoliberal order requires very thick blood indeed. And although neoliberals would recoil from the description, “direst cruelty” is precisely what the free market inflicts upon those lacking the resources to engage with it successfully. In other words, neoliberalism is the antithesis of everything that has traditionally been associated with the feminine aspects of human nature. Kindness and compassion, nurturance and inclusiveness: such qualities have no place in the neoliberal order. When Jacinda proclaimed her determination to practice the “politics of kindness”, she was, wittingly or unwittingly, raising a revolutionary banner.

Jacinda’s response to the Covid-19 Pandemic has proved particularly difficult for the neoliberal order to swallow. Her refusal to place the needs of the few ahead of the needs of the many continues to enrage its defenders. For the first time in 35 years, the New Zealand State has told its business people: its employers, bankers and landlords; that their interests must take second place to those of ordinary working-class New Zealanders. Billions have been – and continue to be – spent to keep the nation’s households functioning. Rights have been constrained, not, this time, in the name of “labour market flexibility”, but in order to keep the whole population safe. For the first time in a long time, the New Zealand government has instructed its people to be something other than “competitive”. For the first time in a long time, it has asked them to treat each other with “kindness”.

The Mike Hoskings of this world are telling New Zealanders not to believe the numbers thrown up by Newshub’s Reid Research poll. They simply cannot accept that the social solidarity which was asked for, and given, during the period of Lockdown has paid such handsome political dividends. Clearly, they are no historians.

Eighty-two years ago, an equally flinty-faced National Party described Labour’s Social Security legislation as “applied lunacy”. The Prime Minister, Mickey Savage, responded that all his government was offering the people of New Zealand was “applied Christianity”. Mickey could say this, of course, with complete confidence. New Zealanders in the 1930s were an actively Christian people. The injunction to “love they neighbour as thyself” constituted the beating heart of the Christian religion. “Humbug!” cried the capitalists. “Amen!” shouted just about everybody else.

The secret of Christianity’s power has always been it’s capacity to integrate its unashamedly feminine values with the all-too-masculine impulses of the classical and feudal regimes it tamed and civilised. For two millennia, frustrated patriarchs have railed against the womanly weakness of this “slave religion”. Everyone from Gibbon to Nietzsche has lamented its tendency to soften and re-direct the all-important will to power that makes societies such wonderful places for men to live in.

New Zealand is no longer the Christian country it was in Mickey Savage’s time, but “kindness” makes a pretty good substitute for “applied Christianity” nonetheless. I strongly suspect that Jacinda knows to the decimal point the mighty harvest of votes her predecessor reaped in the general election of 1938. The 55.8 percent given to Labour for its “applied Christianity” isn’t far off the 60 percent currently being offered for Jacinda’s “kindness”. Right now, though, I’m pretty sure our young prime minister, who is modelling a whole new way for women to do politics in the Twenty-First century, would happily accept either figure!

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 28 July 2020.

Harrowing Statistics: The Left’s Supposed To Shrink The Social Hell Of Joblessness – Not Expand It.

The Politics Of Kindness?  Such work as young workers are able to get tends to be indifferently rewarded and undertaken in conditions of considerable precariousness. Even those with impressive tertiary credentials struggle. Those without credentials find themselves consigned to social limbo. A  living purgatory, inhabited by persons of no economic value beyond that of holding down the wages of the working poor.

THE RISE in the unemployment rate, from 3.9 to 4.3 percent, may not sound like a lot – but it is. Not only because it represents a further 10,000 New Zealanders officially without work, but also because it’s the sort of news no genuine progressive government ever wants to hear. If progressive government is about anything, then it’s first and foremost about constantly expanding the number of citizens in good jobs with good pay. Any progressive government confronted with a steadily rising tide of joblessness should expect to drown.

Nor is it simply the raw percentage figure of 4.3 percent confronting the Coalition Government. Much more significant is the concomitant rise in the number of young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEETs). This number now stands at just under 100,000 15-24 year-olds, or 14 percent. A record quarterly rise.

The picture painted by these statistics is not a pretty one. It shows a country in which secure, well-remunerated employment is fast becoming (if it has not already become) the preserve of people over forty. Not only that, but a labour market which has effectively become “grandfathered”.

There is an ever-decreasing layer of the workforce which enjoys good money and good employment contracts – and will go on enjoying them until retirement. For the rest of the workforce, however, simply growing older and more experienced no longer guarantees better pay and conditions. That particular conveyor belt: the one which their predecessors in the workforce rode to a secure prosperity, has been dismantled.

Such work as these younger generations of workers are able to get tends to be indifferently rewarded and undertaken in conditions of considerable precariousness. Even those with impressive tertiary credentials struggle. Those without credentials – the NEETs mentioned above – find themselves consigned to social limbo. A place of living purgatory, inhabited by persons of no economic value beyond that of holding down the wages of the working poor. Those who have not become criminals, addicts or mentally unwell, float like ghosts through a society which has been taught not to see them – because they are not real.

There is absolutely no long-term future for a progressive government which allows this state of affairs to persist. The joyful and unanticipated resurrection of the Left and its ascension into government – which forms the core of Jacinda’s redemptive political narrative – has unmistakeable echoes of the “Harrowing of Hell”. This is the religious tradition that has Christ, in the period between his crucifixion and resurrection, “descending into Hell”. According to the tale, the Son of Man prevails against the Gates of Hell, overcomes its infernal defenders, frees the imprisoned souls, and leads them into the light.

Nothing less is expected of progressive governments. Those locked-up in the social hell of joblessness, mental illness, addiction and economic impotence are supposed to be the very first item on the Left’s “to-do” list. The infernal defenders of Capitalism are supposed to be confronted and defeated, and the imprisoned ones uplifted into the dignity of labour. Only then can the Left’s resurrection be considered genuine.

In the most prosaic political terms, it means that the number of people out of work; and most assuredly, the number of NEETs; must fall – and fall decisively – if the Left is to rise, and stay risen.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 8 February 2019.