We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
You were entirely in the tank, Jacinda ‘Jacinda Ardern has announced she will quit as New Zealand prime minister ahead of this year’s election, saying she no longer has “enough in the tank” to lead’, reports the BBC.
‘Ms Ardern choked up as she detailed how six “challenging” years in the job had taken a toll
Labour Party MPs will vote to find her replacement on Sunday.
The shock announcement comes as polling indicates the party faces a difficult path to re-election on 14 October.’
The only shock was that she chose to jump rather than be pushed. Still, she can comfort herself with the thought that though her support inside New Zealand may have diminished, she remains much esteemed by the great and good worldwide.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
I think she realised her nannying controls over life were beginning to piss people off, although it is depressing how much her views are supported, still, by the allegedly educated classes. She was “sensible” because her bossy approach to certain issues chimes with received wisdom. Take this outright ban on tobacco.
She gets a bit of kudos from the Davos classes because a, she has a vagina, b, she bought into the whole lockdown/net-zero/wokeism on gender sort of agenda. And she managed to do it by playing to the whole “I am an ordinary, middle class Kiwi lass” schtick that folk such as Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, for example, use.
At least the Finland PM knows how to party.
Hopefully, when Labour loses, the anti-tobacco laws will be repealed. Maybe the ex-PM, Keyes, will come back. NZ did well, with him.
Can someone explain to me what’s been going on? The story I’ve heard – entlrely by passive means – is that when COVID struck she sent everyone to their room, New Zealand avoided the pandemic and she became a secular saint. Am I to gather that something else has been going on?
She doesn’t care what happens next. She has enough kudos with the supranational elites that she will move from one cushy role telling us proles what to do to another, all the while feeling righteous.
I’m sure George Soros, Klaus Schwab and the rest of the WEF crew will be singing her praises, so a job with some supranational QUANGO is assured.
Not like us plebs, eh?
I long ago came to the conclusion that any professional politician who uses that line is probably lying about everything else too.
A (British) MP’s basic salary is £84,144. Plus expenses. Plus an extra £10k during the damnpanic. They are not ordinary middle-class people.
Jacinda (an alma mater of WEF) did us all a favour of revealing her inner fascist…..
“I want to send a clear message to the New Zealand public: We will share with you the most up to date information (on Covid) daily. You can trust us as a source of that information.” You can also trust the Director-General of Health and the Ministry of Health. For that information, do feel free to visit at any time to clarify any rumour you may hear covid19.govt.nz, otherwise dismiss anything else.
“We will continue to be your single source of truth,”
Chilling
She did job one – disarm the citizenry. For that, she will be rewarded.
Patrick Crozier writes, “Can someone explain to me what’s been going on?”
My understanding is that Ardern was admired while it looked as if her extremely severe lockdown policies were working, but then they stopped working.
First, the tobacco restrictions probably won’t come in with the next government, but when they finally do they won’t be that unpopular. Smoking is dying fast in NZ because it has been replaced by vaping. Jacinda wasn’t actually very nanny like — NZ has been spared the stupid banning of vapes and most of the war against food.
Jacinda’s government was, instead, remarkably old-school Socialist. The progressive Left outside NZ love her, but that’s because they have literally no idea of her policies.
Her government was rabidly anti-immigration, right from the start. It depresses workers’ wages see. So NZ, which is structurally geared for immigration, is now desperately short of masses of key workers. Old school Socialist, not progressive at all.
Her government was rabidly centrist, though it took some time to become apparent. It started to recentralise things that have long been decentralised in NZ. Old school Socialist, not progressive at all. It tended to be badly done, and wildly unpopular — Kiwis aren’t really into centralisation.
Finally, and incredibly for a country used to non-unionised workplaces, Jacinda tried to return to central bargaining.
It’s hard to find a progressive policy.
Abortion was legalised, but no-one had been prosecuted under the old legislation, so that was an easy win. It literally changed nothing.
She tried to legalise marijuana, but her proposed system was like the Canadian one, bound by so many restrictions that the illegal trade would have continued. I voted for it, but I can see why many voted against.
Not true. NZ has never allowed military style weapons. Nor handguns for that matter. Her banning of certain types of weapons was incredibly popular, and really cannot be made her fault — I have pro-gun friends who supported it. Indeed she would have crucified publicly if she hadn’t done it. It sure as hell won’t be one of the things that the new government will reverse. I doubt they will even consider it.
There are still a lot of guns in NZ, and Kiwis pretty must still hunt very much as they did. If your intention was simply hunting, the “ban” made very little difference. If your intention was to show your “manliness” with some sort of auto-rifle, hard luck. It had the advantage of reducing the weapons our gangs can obtain, which is really a very good thing.
The “she took all our weapons” is very much the nut case end of the spectrum, and a miniscule percentage of the population.
At last!
And neither of her immediate deputies wants the job. They expect to lose the upcoming election.
Multiple polls in December had ACT on 11%. That’s the only consistently principled party in NZ that is in favour of small government and personal responsibility etc — one of very few in the world, for that matter. If they get 11% in a National/ACT coalition government with ~50% of the vote then they will make up a considerable fraction of the government.
NZ might improve, for the first time since 1984-1993.
A hard no on that.
Her fall from grace was because her government was unable to do the good things she promised (building new houses, sorting out mental health) but instead was starting to bring in some incredibly stupid policies.
I know lots of people who were pro-Jacinda/Labour but have gone off her. And not one of them cites the Covid restrictions as the reason. It literally never enters the conversation — indeed most of those abandoning her remain supportive of the Covid restrictions.
Anyone who was opposed to the Covid restrictions on the grounds of liberty never voted for her in the first place. Me, for example.
It is important to remember that NZ locked down hard, but not for very long. Other than the border closing, much of the time we were barely affected by it. We did not have the long tail of restrictions lasting for ages that much of the West had. Other than a couple of minor hassles, like masks in shops, once we stopped locking down we were free. We didn’t have schools closed for years on end — indeed, we still ran external examinations. The only businesses really affected were tourism and hospitality — my wife runs a shop, and it didn’t affect her that much at all.
The idea the Jacinda is “anti-Liberty” doesn’t really match the facts. It’s touted by the right-Right, but there is no traction on the centre-Right and centre, because it wouldn’t be believed.
She never once used Covid lockdowns as an excuse to change standard policy. Her behaviour to protests was completely different from Trudeau’s, for example. She never once painted them as anything but misguided. She did not change laws, and did not bring in the police until after they got violent.
One thing to recall is that Jacinda’s government was only briefly popular. She was personally, and actually remains so. But her government not so much.
She got to power having lost an election. But the leader of NZ First did a dirty on National, for reasons of personal spite, and sided with Labour. The majority of the electorate voted for the right. NZ First’s supporters showed their displeasure when the party support disappeared after going to Labour.
She won the second election on the back of Covid, and because National were simply not trusted to govern. The combination of her popularity, the feel good of keeping Covid out, and the disarray of the opposition made it a landslide, but that should not be taken as endorsement of Labour as a whole. A very little known fact outside NZ is that once it became clear that Labour were going to win, quite a few people voted for them to prevent the Greens being needed in the coalition. Far better to have a pure Labour government than a Labour government reliant on the Greens. I even considered it.
Genuinely popular governments in NZ tend to last nine years — three terms. That this government probably won’t make that, is pretty much a sign that they were never particularly popular to begin with.
This was the first Government to get an absolute majority, under NZ MMP electoral system. Largely thanks to the reaction to the Christchurch Mosque shooting.
That has allowed them to pass legislation without the support of minority parties.
The administration will be remembered for its utter inability to implement any of their big idea policies. Plant a billion trees, build 100,000 affordable houses, “fix” child poverty (Ardern’s stated reason for going into politics) fix the decline in education and address Maori grievances. By any assessment NZ is doing worse on all of these metrics.
Add to that a rather orwellian streak to her world view and some utterly awful decisions around water ownership, attacks on property rights and a level of contempt for democracy that is truly breathtaking.
By all accounts going to get demolished in the polls this year.
A protégé of Helen Clark who has been haunting the UN. Hopefully thats where Princess Cindy goes (as far away as possible)
Well a Big Government person is gone – but sadly the restrictions she put in place, on Freedom of Speech and so on, will remain. Prime Minister Ardern was given a golden opportunity to attack freedom of speech and firearm ownership, by a mass murderer (an Australia) who murdered a large number of Muslim people.
Ironically the mass murderer actually wanted the government of New Zealand to bring in more restrictions on freedom of speech and private firearm ownership – because he was (indeed is – because he is still alive in prison) an “Accellerationist” – someone who wants everything to get as bad as possible as fast as possible, to bring the collapse forward.
Accellerationists and the left have a weird symbiotic relationship – as they both want the same policies, more government spending, restrictions on freedom of speech, enforced “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”, more restrictions on firearm ownership – and-so-on (although for different reasons).
As for Covid – New Zealand is hundreds of miles away from anywhere else, if an isolationist policy on Covid was going to work anywhere it was going to work in New Zealand.
However. Prime Minister Ardern assumed that when the “vaccines” eventually arrived she could just have all the population injected and then open the borders – job done. But there are increasing indications that the injections themselves can lead to injury or death – which is a bit of a problem for politicians who pushed them.
If the left were clever they would start attacking President Trump for pushing the injections in the United States.
You can always tell the current state of the vax reputation by listening to my Minnesota friends when they call them either “Biden’s vaxxes” or “Trump’s vaxxes.”
Right now, strangely, they’re trending back to “Trump’s vaxxes.” I just laugh.
Thanks, Chester for explaining the situation. There was a lot there I didn’t know.
The surprising thing is that her party is not doing that badly in the polls. The British Tories would kill to be only about 6 points behind.
Thanks to Chester and SkippyTony for the local reporting. I might add some comments and ask questions, if they care to answer, after a good night’s sleep.
Meanwhile, here is an article indicating that Jacinta’s agri.policies are even more insane than Mark Rutte’s .. although still much less insane than the Sri Lankan policies.
>It is important to remember that NZ locked down hard, but not for very long. Other than the border closing, much of the time we were barely affected by it. We did not have the long tail of restrictions lasting for ages that much of the West had.
Exactly. I think this is hard for people in North America or Europe to understand. For a full 15 months from May 2020 to August 2021 someone who woke from a coma in NZ would have had no idea there was a pandemic on in the rest of the world. The border was closed (or at least very heavily managed) but inside the country everything was open as usual, there were no masks to be seen. Our Hoult family Christmas went ahead as planned, with about 70 of us gathering in Rotorua for three days.
Here’s a timeline I kept as things progressed:
– 2019-12-28 I flew San Francisco – Munich – Moscow to visit friends and colleagues I hadn’t seen for nearly two years
– 2020-01-02 I got the worst “flu” I’ve ever had, stayed in bed in my hotel 2/3/4. This may or may not have been COVID. It started 5 days after travel.
– 2020-01-13 back at work in San Francisco
– 2020-02-02 travel restrictions from China to NZ
– 2020-02-06 laid off, with 80 others
– 2020-02-23 bought ticket home to NZ (SFO – AKL – WLG) for late March
– 2020-03-19 NZ border closed to all foreigners
– 2020-03-23 NZ announces and moves to “Level 3” lockdown for three days, to be followed by “Level 4” from the 26th, in which everything except supermarkets and pharmacies will be closed and people are not allowed to travel outside their suburb
– 2020-03-23 I contact by email a motorcycle dealer in Wellington with a 0 km 2019 Honda CRF250L Rally advertised for $7995 including on-road costs. I offer them $7250 which they initially refuse (with a counter-offer), but then accept. Normal price $9295 + ORC (it’s the last of the old model)
– 2020-03-25 The shop gets the bike plated and registered in my name, ready to pick up when I can.
– 2020-03-26 start of Level 4 lockdown
– 2020-03-27 it is announced that you can no longer take domestic flights to your place of isolation (14 days) after arriving from overseas. I phone Hertz NZ’s hq, the only company that still seems to be renting cars in Level 4, and tell them I want to rent a car one-way from AKL to WLG the next morning. Is this ok? Yes, yes, that’s fine. I make a booking.
– 2020-03-28 I arrive in Auckland from San Francisco and go to Hertz when they open at 07:00 (?). “No, no, we can’t rent you a car. Government business only”. “But you said it was ok yesterday”. “It changed”. So, back to the police to take up their kind offer of a free stay in a 4 star hotel in downtown Auckland.
– 2020-04-05 After eight days in the hotel I’m taken to a chartered Air NZ A320. “The plane is stopping at Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin. You can get off at which ever one you want”. I get off at Wellington and a nice policeman gives me a ride in his Commodore to the unfurnished flat I’d arranged when I was still in San Francisco.
– 2020-04-05 Vodafone NZ tell me they can get a 4G fixed base wireless internet modem delivered to me next day. And do so. I organise “My Food Bag” to deliver groceries.
– 2020-04-10 my 14 day quarantine ends, I can now walk 1 km down the street to the nearest supermarket. Only a limited number of people are allowed in the store at one time, people queueing outside are spaced 2m apart, but there are no masks.
– 2020-04-28 COVID alert is reduced to Level 3, which allows travel within your region, but not to another city. I get a friend to give me a ride to the motorcycle shop and pick up my new Honda.
As we later learn, 2020-04-28 was also the last day on which anyone was infected with COVID from a domestic contact for the next 15 months.
– 2020-05-14 COVID alert is reduced to Level 2. I take an Uber to downtown, hire a car, drive to Napier (325 km), eating dinner at a restaurant in Dannevirke on the way, and stay in a motel. That’s five things that were illegal the previous day.
– 2020-05-15 I test drive a used car (2008 Subaru Outback 2.5XT Eyesight), buy it, and drive it back to Wellington
– 2020-05-18 Schools reopen
– 2020-05-21 pubs and clubs reopen
– 2020-06-09 Level 1
Except for a couple of brief lockdowns in Auckland only, the rest of New Zealand stays in Level 1 or Level 2 until…
– 2021-08-17 the first Delta case in NZ is detected
– 2021-08-18 Level 4 lockdown
At this point, 18% of NZers already had 2 doses of Pfizer, and another 14% have had 1 dose.
I got a 1st dose on 2021-08-20 and 2nd on 2021-10-20, with a booster on 2022-02-15 as Omicron was starting to hit.
NZ was COVID-free by the end of April 2020, and stayed that way — and with no restrictions within the country — until it proved impossible to keep Delta and then Omicron out. By that time the vaccination program was well under way, and about 90% of the population was vaccinated by the time Delta was getting well-established at Christmas 2021 / New Year 2022.
We completely missed out on the hugely tragic initial pre-vaccination waves that most other countries experienced.
Official COVID deaths currently stand at 2437, or 475 per million population. The UK stands at 3200 deaths per million, and the USA at 3340 per million.
Chester Draws – why would a government have to “build homes” in New Zealand which, as you know, is the size of the United Kingdom but has less than one tenth of the population.
Surely people should be able to afford their own homes in such a situation – as long as one stays away from Auckland (the local outpost of the world Credit Money financial economy), land prices should not be high. What has gone wrong?
Bruce Hoult – yes, as New Zealand is surrounded by many hundreds of miles of ocean it proved possible to keep Covid out, till the virus had evolved into less dangerous forms (which is, of course, nothing to do with the injections).
Would such an isolationist policy have worked in the United Kingdom? As the government can not (or rather chooses not to) stop people crossing the channel – the answer has to be NO, such a policy (sadly) would not have worked here.
Early Treatment of Covid would have worked in the United Kingdom, as it did some other countries, but Early Treatment was not followed in the United Kingdom – indeed it was smeared.
Any “Covid Inquiry” worth a damn will have to reveal why Early Treatment was smeared – why so many people, who could have been saved, were allowed to die.
By the way, Prime Minister Ardern did (not did not) change the laws on firearms and speech and so on – perhaps some people wanted even more restrictions than the lady herself imposed, but Prime Minister Ardern was certainly no friend of liberty.
bobby b – so they are going back to calling the injections “Trump’s vaccines”.
Ouch! That means the left have worked out that the injections can lead to injury and dead, if they blame them on Donald John Trump (“Operation Warpspeed” and so on) then he is trouble.
Yes – he was acting on advice (from the vile Tony Fauci and others) – but it is still the name “Donald John Trump” on the documents, and he was quick to take the credit – before problems started to emerge with the injections.
Unlikely if the right get in. ACT will make it a condition of their coalition, and it won’t be a hill National is prepared to die on.
It did work.
Our death rate is far lower than any of Europe — 470 per M, vs the UK’s 3,200. Maybe 10,000 Kiwis are alive today as a result of our policies.
Sure, “liberties, liberties” yadda, yadda, but if the UK had been able to do the same, then perhaps 160,000 fewer would have died. That’s scarcely peanuts. And it’s not like our long term liberties suffered anyway, as they did it under previous laws for the most part.
Our economy was far less affected, because we were open longer. Our schooling was far less affected. Our lives were less affected.
The government never pretended we weren’t going to ever get it, and over-rode the bed-wetters who wanted to go down China’s route. Basically with vax rates high, once Omicron came in Jacinda didn’t even try to stop it.
Sure, we have advantages that allowed that. But it is foolishness to pretend we suffered anything like as much as places that couldn’t isolate.
there were no masks to be seen.
You must have been living in a different NZ than me then because I saw bloody masks everywhere from early 2020 right through to 2022 and many places I walked into in Auckland demanded that I wear one, like the local Swiss Deli shop. Until the mandate was dumped in late 2022 it was an act of considered defiance not to wear one. Even now one sees plenty of people, usually old, still wearing them, including the classic ones driving their car alone.
Each of the Level 4 lockdowns were among the toughest in the world, especially the first where The People themselves helped by glaring at unmasked people walking in parks FFS. Plus cops booting people off the beach who were swimming, al la California. It’s safe to say that compliance for the 2021 lockdown was a lot less, but it was still tough and screwed with endless numbers of events that got canned (like my 40 year university hostel celebrations and the graduations of two of my kids). It’s quite a thing to have to drive through a Police checkpoint merely to go to the Waikato, where I worked in late 2020/early 2021.
And that second lockdown came because the incompetent government had not pushed vaccinations hard enough through 2021 and got caught with their pants down on Delta. Then of course came the vaccine mandates, which alone should be enough to condemn her. Our Bill of Rights was a joke.
But I’ll agree with one thing that Chester states, and that is that most Kiwis were perfectly okay with all this and actively helped the authorities enforce them. Even as he lived in NZ Karl Popper said that we were the most easily governed people in the world – and he didn’t mean that as a compliment. And of course there’s this:
@Chester Draws January 19, 2023 at 8:10 pm
You are factually wrong. There were no restrictions on ANY military style “weapons” (other than needing a firearms license), either bolt action rifles or self loading rifles. It was the Aramoana incident in 1990 () which saw the useless “E Category” licence requirement introduced where semi automatic rifles having cosmetic features were put into this category (flash hiders, bayonet lugs, free standing pistol grips etc.). You could buy and possess an identical rifle without those features under the A category license. I must admit that I have never heard of a drive by bayonetting but there y’go. Wise of the politicians to spare the country that hooror,eh? Alternatively you could possess a firearm such as a Ruger Mini 14 which did not have those cosmetic features that made those eeeeeeeeeevil, scary looking black rifles such a danger that a special category was needed and have the same functionality. It is like saying that a car with a 2.5 litre engine with a bonnet scoop and certain types of alloy wheels is dangerous and must be restricted but the same car without those features can be freely owned.
Handguns were always more highly restricted with much more onerous conditions (such as attending a range at least 12 per year, only being permitted to carry the handgun to and from an approved range and only being authorised to use the handgun on specified ranges etc.) which is stupid because of all the firearms in the world, handguns are the most difficult to master and the least effective due to their innate lack of power and accuracy potential. Handguns were never completely banned.
Two points – it was not universally popular as you claim and many of my non gun owning acquaintances and friends were baffled why the law abiding were punished, particularly once the truth came out that the police neither followed the requirements of the existing law or their own internal policies, procedures and work instructions when they decided to grant a firearms license to the Christchurch shooter. They were supposed to interview him at his home (they interviewed him at his place of work), they should have ensured that his two referees had known him well and for a long period – one was from an internet chat room, the other he had met 10 times only. It also turned out that the police “misappropriated” (which is the posh word for stole) half of the fees paid to process the applications for other purposes so did not devote the resources to properly do their job. Now the police are claiming that the ONLY cause of their failure was that the fees were not high enough.
You must have some very odd gun owning friends as none of the people I know via the gun clubs and the NZ Deerstalkers Association have mentioned anything which could infer that they even grudgingly accepted the new restrictions. Indeed, the MP’s are admitting that it will do nothing to prevent another such incident. “Something MUST be done, this is something, let’s do it” never,ever produces a good result.
Ardern is an out and out communist – look at her Wikipedia entry. She was President of the International Union of Socialist Youth – an organisation set up by the second international in 1907. I refer you to Conquests 2nd Law of politics – an organisation, unless specifically right wing, will become more and more left wing over time. Do you think that a communist organisation, set up to indoctrinate young people with communism will become LESS left wing? Her appointment is an important and essential stepping stone to her achieving high office or position in any communist government. It would be like me asking that nice Mr. Hitler of I could become Reichsjungendfuhrer Hitler Jungend … not without being a long standing and committed Nazi party member, I won’t. Same with Ardern.
One of the first things that any communist government does is ban firearms. They need to do this because they know that they are planning things that will get them shot unless people are rendered defenceless beforehand. However, you are correct in that none of the political parties, particularly National, will examine what happened, think about what is sensible and revise or revoke the legislation. They are two cheeks of the same arse.
WRT “lockdowns”, I tend to agree with the thesis that Jacinta was not as insane as Boris, let alone Mario Cuomo. If you have to have a “lockdown”, then the sooner, the better. TIMING is of the essence in an epidemic, as in a war.
OTOH it turns out that you did not need to have a “””lockdown””” in 2020. I know, because i live in a country which never had stay-at-home mandates, or closures of non-“essential” businesses.
On the gripping hand: I am willing to give a pass to Jacinta ON THIS ISSUE (and IN THE 1st WAVE) for her over-reaction; just as i am willing to give a pass to the Swedes IN THE 1st WAVE for their under-reaction.
Nobody knew how to fine-tune their reactions in EARLY 2020.
Chester Draws – you are quite correct about the isolationist policy reducing the Covid death rate in New Zealand, I (although with many other people) noted that a couple of years ago – although I do not think it would have worked here, as the channel is not very wide and the U.K. government is unable (or unwilling) to keep people out.
I am still puzzled by the house price problem you mentioned – I am not doubting what you say, I am just puzzled as to WHY it is so. After all New Zealand is at least as big as the United Kingdom and less than a tenth of the population – there should not be a major housing problem, so what has gone wrong?
Not really Snorri – it was not a matter of “over reaction” in New Zealand, the country is surrounded by hundreds of miles of ocean, a policy of “keeping Covid out” was possible in New Zealand (at least for some time – whilst the virus evolved into less lethal forms), it just was not possible in Sweden (or here).
The Swedish authorities did neglect the Early Treatment of Covid (and, yes, that cost a lot of lives) – but many countries neglected Early Treatment. Indeed in some countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, Early Treatment was systematically smeared – and, at least in the United States, some medical doctors were punished for the “crime” of saving lives – punished by losing their jobs, and by being smeared.
What the last few years have shown is that Corporate Medicine (as well as the government “public health” bureaucracy) in the United States is deeply political – concerned with pushing various international political “agendas” and indifferent to the life and death of individual patients, even to the point of allowing very large numbers of people to die, who could have been saved.
As for the public health bureaucracy in the United States – when they made an exception on “social distancing” to allow, indeed to encourage, BLM and Antifa riots (with all the looting, burning and murdering) on the grounds that “racism is a public health emergency” they shocked even me.
But then the American medical associations, at least the American Psychological Association, define the virtues (and they are virtues) that created civilisation as “Toxic Masculinity” and “Whiteness” (which has nothing to do with skin colour – but they seem to think it does) and teach that such virtues should be exterminated – which would lead to the collapse of civilisation, mass death.
It is all very well going on about how Frankfurt School Marxist, and other Collectivist (Saint-Simon and other) ideas dominate the government and corporate bureaucracy – but it is a shock to see it work out in practice.
Whether it is children, especially boys, being taught evil nonsense, or people being left to die who could have been saved – it is all a bit disturbing.
I remember reading some of the attacks on Dr Brian Tyson when he was trying to get elected to the House of Representatives from California in 2022 – what was interesting was that most of the left did NOT deny that he had saved lives (although they did dispute how many lives he had saved) – their line of attack was NOT that Early Treatment of Covid did not work, but rather that it “divided our community” and led to a “loss of solidarity”, and “undermined faith in State and national leadership – undermining our society and our democracy”.
These attacks were effective – Dr Tyson got only about 10% of the vote in the first round of the election, and thus was eliminated.
It seems that most people, at least in this Congressional District, value various “Woke” political and sociological concepts more highly than they value human life.
Given how they value things, what their priorities are, the way they behaved makes sense.
It is no good explaining to people how Early Treatment would save lives – if that is NOT what they are interested in.