The full headline ran … Incompetent Ardern …
someone pointed out, R. I think, that we don’t get journalism of the above quality because Murdoch does not own our media.
…
not only are they reptilian satanist pedophiles, they’re shapeshifters! 3’30” here
It’s not that David Icke does not support his claims or that there’s bucketloads of evidence to the contrary (just like there are against those stupid beliefs that economists cling to Mark Blyth talks about), it’s rather that his claiming personally to know in manifesting the original seduction of the patently untrue repeats it, producing effects on the real world (just like those stupid beliefs economists cling to).
(Do people prefer stupid beliefs? Is belief a category which it remains heretical to question? So that a personal belief is an intimate part of the individual, somewhere between personality and sexuality, which may in fact be quite impersonal. (Although, Lingis points out with sex we are at our most vulnerable; so to be questioned sexually–even when it is just a matter of words–invokes that vulnerability we physically experience, we physically experience each time.
((And this would also link sex and defecation, not with a primal shame and not in organic unity, engaging the same parts, but with an original compromise–a squatting dog knows it is in a compromising position, like a human caught short.))
on the question of political courage:
The political will to economic courage … this is the subjectline under which I sent Mark Blyth’s three lifts for a post-COVID world to the office of the then PM before the present PM—who are the same person—before the election and before the election her office answered I could be sure that Jacinda would see it; whereas when I sent it to the Mayor of Auckland—as well, come to think of it, as Grant Robertson—silence.
Today, the last day of October, the Rt. Hon. Ardern announced her cooperation agreement with the Green Party, which also made history. The Labour Party having done so for doing what is not supposed to happen—pulling the sword of absolute majority from the stone of MMP, as one cartoonist depicted it—the Greens did it mostly through the personality politic worked brilliantly by Chlöe Swarbrick.
A journalist put it in Q&A to PM Ardern that, with the absence of NZ First holding the balance of power, this might lead us to expect a more transformational government, mightn’t it?
Might it not? might it?
What would a transformational government look like?
I have become interested in the process of applying for a position in a local theatre, run under a charitable trust: a ten year plan / vision statement is a requisite of the application—meanwhile the theatre’s website is all bragadaccio about, well, transformation & disruption. There’s even a bit about between bangin’ art and bangin’ profit choosing art every time. The position currently pays between $90 and $100K. The French have a word for this: bobo. Bourgeois Bohemian. Les bobos sont au pouvoir.
The question I have, looking at the faces of the bobos, is can transformation really be that easy? to sit on a salary of see above and preach bangin’ transformational shizzwazzle?
… of course the same cannot be said of the Ardern government, despite Chlöe Swarbrick saying politics should not be fucking boring, should not be a chore.
So the statement made by Labour of cooperation with the Greens makes no demands for transformation of either, of either … politics or business. After all, did the Greens ever stand on the transformation which would be required to avert climate change being passed into law?
…
— You will be able to ask questions as well so that you understand what is going to be involved, and to help you participate fully in the decisions.
— You will be able to ask questions, not to be enabled to participate fully in the decisions, but so that you understand what is going to be involved.
— You will not be able to participate fully in the decisions, but you are going to be involved, so ask questions so that you understand.
— You are going to be fully involved in the decisions so ask questions as well on the understanding that this will be your only participation in making them.
— As well as being involved in the decisions which are made, your questions enable it to be understood that you have fully participated in submitting yourself to them.
— Your questions participate fully in the decisions involving you as well as help you to understand that you have voluntarily submitted yourself to them.
— As well as understanding your involvement to have resulted from your decision to participate by being able to ask questions, your questions help you to adjust as well.
–You will be able to ask questions as well so that you understand what is going to be involved, and to help you participate fully in the decisions.
…
“This is the first in an experimental Media Tropes prison,” said the governor, “designed in order to make inmates feel that they are not being brutalised by a barbaric and outdated system of incarceration, but involved in something more along the lines of a reality TV show.”
“I’ve heard of this,” I said, looking around curiously.
“The layout on the wings is just one of the many TV Prison Tropes that are promoted here at HMP Leominster,” said the governor. “You’ll find the prison is pretty much as you’d expect: the guards are generally mean and unpleasant–except one who is meek and easy to manipulate. The prisoners, instead of being those with a shaky grasp on the notion of consequences, mental health issues or having the misfortune to belong to a marginalised minority, are mostly pastiches of socio-economic groups mixed with regional stereotypes. And rather than fume about the vagaries of providence that got them here before descending in a downward spiral of depression and drug addiction, they prefer to philosophise about life in an amusing and intelligent manner.”
“Does it work?”
“Recidivism has dropped eighty-six per cent,” he said, “so yes, it seems so. It’s certainly a lot easier on the prisoners unless you get caught up in Gritty Realism Month when it all gets dark and dangerous and we have riots and people end up getting shivved. That’s just been, so you’re fairly safe for another ten months.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Don’t count your chickens. Understated violence that counterpoints a wider issue in society can break out at any time, and we have the biennial Prison Break Weekend in eight weeks, so if you want to be part of that, you have to prove yourself with the right crowd.”
— Jasper Fforde, The Constant Rabbit (2020), pp. 271-272.
… “if you think about it,” says one of the characters in Fforde’s The Constant Rabbit, a talking rabbit, “talking rabbits spontaneously anthropomorphised have a chance-factor of around 1 x 1089, which, while not totally impossible, is about as likely as the universe spontaneously turning into cottage cheese. The fact that we’re here suggests that tremendously unlikely things can happen–which would make Gaia reappearing to tweak a few things for the better not so very daft at all.”
“You’re formulating a mathematical proof for the existence of the primordial earth mother based on talking-rabbit probability?” I said. “Wouldn’t that make everything possible?”
“Within the multiverse,” said Kent [the talking rabbit talking], “everything is possible.”
— Ibid., 252.
“You’re trying to run a twenty-first-century world on Palaeolithic thoughts and sentiments.” [another rabbit said.]
“I think it’s in our nature.”
“I disagree,” [said the rabbit]. “Humans have a very clear idea about how to behave, and on many occasions actually do. But it’s sometimes disheartening that correct action is drowned out by endless chitter-chatter, designed not to find a way forward but to justify petty jealousies and illogically prejudices [Mark Blyth’s ‘stupid beliefs’]. If you’re going to talk, try to make it relevant, useful and progressive rather than simply distracting and time-wasting nonsense, intended to justify the untenable and postpone the real dialogue that needs to happen.”
Sometimes it takes a non-human to say what it is to be a good human.
— Ibid., 300-301 {I have included these last two excerpts because they relate to themes I explore in my other writing not because they are indicative of the style or humour of Fforde’s book, which is one of his good ones, one, as can be seen from the prison excerpt above, that as well as making me laugh, I also found moving. And not for its sentimental stereotypes: here they are turned to satirical effect … although sometimes leak around the edges.}
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