Disputing a Dominion-Post correspondent’s assertion that the Prime Minister was “a celebrity and not much else”, a Trevor Tofts wrote,
“If a celebrity can handle a massacre, White Island disaster and dealing with Covid… she must be a PM of substance”.
How many times have we read this absurd claim? It’s now getting up there with the hoary old, “our men fought and died so we could…” (have a free education, vote, sing, stand on our heads etc.) various nonsense assertions I’ve read a thousand times since the end of the 2nd World War.
The reality: our men fought and died for none of those reasons asserted but instead because they were conscripted.
So too with the claims about Jacinda.
With the massacre she went to Christchurch, hugged some Muslim women and expressed sympathy, just as would have any Prime Minister.
The White Island claim is particularly baffling. What specifically does Tofts say Jacinda did? Give the volcano a scolding and make it stop erupting or personally rescue buggers trapped on the Island? I don’t know yet we read this nonsense all the time.
To the best of my knowledge she did nothing for the very good reason there was nothing she, or anyone else could do after the event.
Finally, it’s a matter of record that our covid response simply copied that already underway elsewhere. New Zealand’s isolation and island nature, plus small population made combatting the virus spread relatively easy.
However, whether history will record this standard lockdown response as wise is too early to say.
This is not an attack on Jacinda but it certainly is on the too many mindless amidst us who trot this nonsense out.
Deification of Labour leaders by the Party’s dumber supporters simply reflects the left’s dependency mentality.
Even that lumpen dullard Kirk copped it in 1973-4 but history shows such worshipping has little durability.
Muldoon was the only National leader to ever receive that treatment, but only from 1974 for about 3 years and as with Jacinda, to such a degree as to draw support from traditional opposition voters.
Democracy is currently under pressure everywhere, in many cases through popular support for dominant autocrats, whether Hungary, the Philippines or Turkey to name but three. History says such faith invariably ends in tears.
Mike Moore was fond of arguing that by definition the voters are always right. I often debated this with him but it’s a tricky one.
I would argue is it okay that an obese bugger with dangerously high blood pressure and a weak heart, exercising his free will in the cake shop buying four pies and a bag of cream buns, doing the right thing?
Mike would say yes, if that’s what he wants, despite knowing the consequences.
The fact is voters normally vote where they perceive their personal interest is best served. When they do that, by and large, for all democracy’s flaws, the result is satisfactory.
But their judgement becomes clouded if driven by a mis-placed adoration of a leader. That’s clearly happening with Jacinda worshipers.
That’s not to say don’t vote Labour if that is where one sees one’s interest best served. That should be the sole consideration.
Leave deification to skybayers who abandon reason for the lazy copout of faith.