In a world run by almost unimaginably selfish and corrupt old people - mostly men, who does not like to see a young, female 30-something breaking through the demographics barriers and become the face of a major First-World nation?
And right there is where the trouble begins...
Because followers of my blog should be well aware that a politician is just a face: a public persona to absorb attention and to distract the populace from where the real seat of power lies - in money. But, unusually for me, this isn’t primarily a money-themed post, it’s a socio-political one.
I don’t believe that Jacinda Ardern is a bad person or that she harbours malicious intent, quite the opposite in fact.
BUT - make no mistake - she is leading her nation down a dark path and it will almost certainly end in tears.
I’ve made the controversial statement (well - controversial to those who follow a mainstream way of thinking), so now the onus is upon me to justify it.
The “Why?” is an ambiguous “Why?”. It’s actually a conjoined twin “Why?”. I will address the twin in its two parts:
Part 1: Why is Jacinda doing what she is doing?
Part 2: Why is it a “dark path” which will “end in tears”? (or am I just trying to be overly-dramatic?)
To answer that, you first need to know what it is that Jacinda is doing. Perhaps you already know this, but for the sake of those who don’t, let’s recap:
Jacinda is making large populist strides in the direction of a progressive society.
Ooh! That’s so evil!
Not by design, but the end results are... We’ll get back to those later, for now, let us look at why Jacinda takes these populist strides towards “progressiveness”.
Jacinda is a Millennial. She is from a generation who grew up soft (generally speaking of course) in a world of plenty. Hers is a generations of rights, freedoms and individualism. In other words, her background and values are those of a typical Liberal. Sadly, this also makes her part of a generation which took things too far; simple example: it invented countless new genders, genders who believe that their dubious “rights” can force everyone else into calling them things which they are not. Put simply, if you think that I have to learn and use a plethora of recently invented gender pronouns just to make you feel happy, then I’m sorry buttercup, you’re sadly mistaken. As this is where the wheels start to fall off the cart of liberalism.
Because a societal group which becomes so lost, so caught up in the nonsensical individualist “rights” of a minority group that it thinks it can bully the majority into its way of thinking - well that’s nothing more than a group of autocrats, isn’t it? If you think you can force me to be “Politically Correct” because it makes YOU feel better, then you have a lot to learn. But Jacinda’s generation DOES think that. They have been taught that “PC = Right” instead of “Liberty = Right”, a most dangerous state of affairs! Anyone who rejects the PC narrative is labelled a “fascist” - a most remarkably ironic case of projection!
It bears mentioning that the PC culture trickles upwards too. Confronted by seething Millennials who accuse you of infringing upon their “rights” to e.g. a “Safe Space”, most Gen-Xers and Boomers capitulate, choosing the easy way out rather than wearing the “fascist” label. It is a sad reality that the anti-confrontational nature of the common man is universally exploited, but a reality it is.
Obviously there are numerous exceptions to the generalisations above, but Jacinda is not one of them. All she is is the stereotypical example of one of her generation: a poster child for a “progressive” society ushered in by liberals and Millennials. It is vital to note that this does not make her a bad person, nor does it make ANY Millennial inherently bad. You can’t blame a victim of circumstance for the circumstances in which they find themselves. Jacinda didn’t ask to be born when she was. She didn’t ask to be taught that “PC = Right” or that fellow Millennial [insert name here] who identifies as a triple-gendered-pansexual-centaur is perfectly normal. She didn’t ask to have those beliefs reinforced for decades by the majority of her peers. She could have questioned those beliefs, but she didn’t. And do you know what? That doesn’t make her “bad” either, that makes her perfectly normal.
In fact, by her actions and statements we observe that Jacinda is genuinely trying to make the world a better place. She is genuinely trying to be a good leader.
And herein lies the tragedy, because through her actions, well, read on...
Perhaps Banksy says it best with the words: “There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place.”
Hooray! Four day work week!
This progressive step of Jacinda’s is a good one. I strongly agree with a shorter work week, as well as shorter work and school days and a greater focus on quality family time and minimising stress on individuals. So ordinarily I WOULD have agreed with Jacinda’s shorter work week, BUT...
Why now? Why didn’t we see this when she first came into power?
The obvious answer to that is that it is part of her Covid-19 responses. And it is here that things really fall apart. Because doing the right things for the wrong reasons is still wrong. If you try to execute an innocent person with a sniper rifle, but you miss the shot and instead you hit a hidden person who was out to stab your target, then you still didn’t do a good deed!
A shorter work week does NOT stop viral spread. Nor does it reduce the presence of blatant government abolition of the freedoms of individuals. Nor does it prevent the economy from stalling. And a Covid-19 response which does none of those things is NOT a good response!
Remember those “large populist strides in the direction of a progressive society”? Well this is one of them. It’s a Public Relations move, nothing more!
But still, that alone does not make the path “dark”. Where is the true darkness? Where will the tears come from?
Across the world I have observed three main dimensions to the lockdowns/stay-at-home orders.
1. Viral transmission.
2. Economic effects.
3. Socio-political effects.
Those three facets are probably the best place to start when looking at the consequences of Jacinda’s actions.
I don’t want to belabour this point. This not an attempted cop out, it’s an acknowledgement that this topic is a broad and detailed one, the details of which are not pertinent to this article. So I’m just going to give you the “Executive Summary” version.
A lockdown slows viral transmission.
BUT.
It has very little effect on the final percentage of people who will be infected.
To remain uninfected one must theoretically isolate until either such a time as it becomes statistically insignificant that you would contract the virus from someone else, or until such a time that an effective and safe vaccine is available to all in sufficient quantities. Since it is highly improbable that either of those eventualities are going to occur for at least the next year, a lockdown does not make sense from a viral perspective!
Similarly, “allowing the health sector time to prepare” and/or “flattening the curve” either make no sense when health services overload anyway, or reveal a blatant lack of pandemic contingency planning on the part of the government in question.
Nevertheless, Jacinda took the populist approach and implemented a lockdown, and a rather stringent one at that.
Well the “Greater Depression” is now here. (My phrase, but you can use it. You know who to pay the royalties to!) Contrary to optimistic media reports about recovering share prices, ramping up production and single-figure GDP declines for the year, the economy of the entire world is in seriously dire straits! With the entire world effectively running on a USD denominated economy, nobody will be spared from this disaster. However, individual nations can greatly improve their fate by doing whatever they can to minimise the effects of this major international economic slump. A country like Sweden will do better than its neighbours because it hasn’t locked down its citizens. Yes, it will still experience supply-chain issues and find that its trading partners have a lot less money to spend, but the average citizen will retain his or her job, the average business will stay open, the average mortgage won’t default and the average bank won’t collapse.
Jacinda stopped her people from working.
No matter what monetary or fiscal policy tell you otherwise, once you stop producing goods and providing services, you stop making money! No amount of QE, junk bond buying, money printing, business bailouts etc can create even a single dollar worth of GDP.
When you shut the economy down, you get poor.
Fast.
The reason that so many people remain upbeat is that they are not yet directly affected. What they (and almost every major economist and journalist our there) fail to appreciate, is that a broken economy has a domino effect. the disruption of a single sector can cripple the entire economy! We’ll return to this later...
Despite the horrors we have witnessed - everyday citizens being arrested for e.g. standing on a beach, cycling or walking a dog, police beating individuals to death or attacking crowds, Judge Dredd style acts of inhumane torture been meted out on the spot - I have enjoyed seeing the heavy-handed approach of Western Society governments around the world. I think this is (or at least SHOULD BE) an ENORMOUS wake-up call to those who have (mis)placed their trust in the greedy hands of politicians for way too long.
We have now witnessed first-hand how constitutions have been swept aside unilaterally. We’ve watch governments ignore due process, courts and any of the devices put in place to assure the rights of the individual. We have seen with our own eyes for our precious Freedoms and Liberties are worth NOTHING! I laugh at the USA: “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” - the “Free” are locked in their own homes, the “Brave” are fearful either of the virus, or the state authorities, or both. They might as well melt Lady Liberty down for her scrap metal value. She’s worth nothing!
In short: it has been VERY clearly revealed to all that the man on the street is merely a pawn, and that ALL power lies with government. In other words: The farce know as “voting” and the farce known as a “Representative Democracy” have been laid bare! There is no Democracy in a Representative Democracy! - as I have been telling you all along.
Jacinda is no exception to this. She could have given people the right to choose for themselves, instead she made tyrannical decisions for them. She could have educated them about the virus to keep them safe, instead she put boots on the ground. She could have been democratic, instead she was an autocrat. A nasty little liberal not only telling other people what to do, but physically forcing her will upon them. Disgusting!
Part 2 of 2 now available here: "The problem with Ardern – Part 2 of 2"
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