Club Politique by Che Tibby

Following Russell's lead, I will henceforth no longer deign to call myself a 'public intellectual'. Firstly, there's a chance I might end up being associated something like the élite intellectuelle, to grab a phrase from an online translator. And we can't have that.

Secondly, and more concerning, is that I might be associated with someone like Tammy Bruce, a 'cut and paste' intellectuel dragged out here by someone in the ACT Party. Sorry guys, nothing can save you. What also set warning bells was this OpEd piece. Say no more.

I particularly liked two lines.

I have seen first-hand how the agendas of feminism, black power, multiculturalism and gay advocacy have been consciously used to break down morals and values that the activists saw as obstructions to their achieving, first, cultural acceptance and, ultimately, cultural domination.

The left relies on multiculturalism to isolate groups so that there is no unity and they can maintain a victim sensibility

Now, the 'morals and values' we're talking about in this instance are in all likelihood the Christian values that kept women like Bruce in the closet in the first place. And as for cultural domination, I'm not entirely sure what she's talking about. In all likelihood, this phrase is just indicative of the armoury of dog-whistle terms Sandra quotes in the second link above.

A great example is where Sandra quotes Bruce linking paedophile priests with gay blokes who can't keep it in their pants (To summarise). There's one major problem there, not all paedophiles are gay. The two things are entirely different. But, as a dog-whistle, the two ideas are easily linked by persons wanting to vilify gay men.

The next dog-whistle is this multiculturalism. What really warned me about Bruce was her limited take on this issue (sexuality politics is not something I'm at all well-read in). Linking 'ghetto' and 'multicultural' is a very, very common conservative tactic. And is, COMPLETE. AND. UTTER. BULLSHIT.

Although trying to pose herself as a liberal, Bruce is in fact a conservative. Maybe she is of the more lenient side of the conservative spectrum, and seems to use her sexuality as a means to validate her conservative opinions, don't be fooled. I call her a 'cut and paste' intellectual because, based on a cursory reading of the newspaper reports, and my gut instinct, Bruce seems to have constructed a kind of mélange of fact and opinion that is pitched at an audience who's already made up their minds on the things she discusses.

As I say, the multicultural thing is a great indicator. There is no liberal democracy I'm aware of that utilises multiculturalism to construct 'ethnic ghettos'. To claim that the policy does this is little more that a lie. A BIG lie.

Australia, who you've seen me criticise at length, is one of the globes most successful multicultural stories. A conservative Government adopted multicultural policy 30 years ago as a means to better bring minorities into participation with the Australian nation. As it was, without multicultural policies and programmes migrants were not effectively integrating into society. Today, while there are obvious issues to be resolved, the great majority of second and third generation migrants have successfully nationalised as Australians.

Multiculturalism is aimed at EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE to minorities having a victim mentality. Once again, Australia in 1975 was a deeply racist and xenophobic society. But, in spite of that they brought in policies that asked minorities how they could be better integrated. In other words they consulted with the minorities about what needed to be done to make things better for them. Sure, minorities said, "We want to build little colonies here, just like you British did." But, the majority said, "No can do, how about we just make things comfy for you until your children and grandchildren are dinky-di Ockers?" To which the minorities said, "Well, better than a poke in the eye". The rest is history.

So, what do I want to be if not a 'public intellectual'? Good question, but I'm going to have to take my lead from Mr. Brown, who at the launch of the book the other day described me as something else altogether. Oh, and I got his and Jim's autograph, that means I still need Tze Ming's and Mr. Lange's.

So from now I shall no longer be an intellectuel publique, but instead, an intellectuelle bogàn. Kind of fitting really.

But of course, suggestions from someone who actually understands French would be welcome.

I'm right there supporting sporting personalities including Richard Hadlee and Colin Meads who would like to see the New Zealand flag changed for something a little more recognisable to non-Kiwis, and agree that The Flag is far too similar to any number of flags world-wide. But it does kind of make you wonder though what this guy would say if he cornered either sporting great in the pub.

Frankly, it’s apt that Mr. Howard should wade into the fray at this small juncture in New Zealand’s ongoing nationalistic debate. With the mounting ruckus over what is and is not mainstream, it’s good to see reactionary old monarchists getting wheeled out for their opinion too. Here’s a gem:

When we see the Union Jack on a flag we can make certain assumptions about that country: that English will be spoken, that there will be parliamentary democracy with a free press and freedom of religion, that there will be a strong Christian tradition of tolerance and charity, that the rule of law will apply including habeas corpus, that ideals of public service and loyal opposition will be fundamental political concepts.

The fact that there’s no Union Jack on the Canadian flag seems to have escaped Mr. Howard, but there’s little reason for me to be pedantic, and we get the point.

What the use of ‘the mainstream’ seems to represent is a particular type of political liberalism that wants to equate good politics with sameness, the sameness you get when the greater number of citizens are all more or less culturally centred on a limited and mutually acceptable number of factors. Factors like whiteness, Christianity and heterosexuality.

And that’s pretty much what Mr. Howard has provided us with. Further to the same idea, Mr. Howard states:

Critics of our flag claim that it is too similar to that of Australia - but that is no bad thing. Australia and New Zealand have much in common and our similarities and fellow-feeling are often cause for celebration. And although the flags are similar, anybody interested in this part of the world who cannot distinguish our flag from Australia's is clearly intellectually challenged.

One of my favourite moments from TV in Oz was on a show called CNNNN, where they did a vox pop on changing the flag, but waved ours to the punters. People on the streets of Sydney were kissing it, cheering for it, etc etc. Almost as good as the Americans in LA who thought their government should ‘nuke Iraq’. Of course, the map they were being shown and were jeering at was either Australia or the UK with ‘I-RAQ’ printed on it in big black letters, but you get the picture.

The mainstreaming debate seems to be much the same. People are being presented with a manufactured image they’re expected to associate with, and going ballistic because they think opposition to this image is some kind of personal attack on their identity. Or worse, they think that the image they’ve been given is the only way for New Zealand to become.

That’s the catch you see. Nationalism is not always about what a nation is now, it’s more about ‘becoming’, or what you personally think your nation should be like in the future. Mr. Howard, with his adherence to the old traditions of the Monarchy and/or Westminster Democracy, or the Union Jack on our flag, is all about making our future more directly comparable to our past.

But on another level, nationalism is also about indicating who gets to share in pushing the nation into the future, and who doesn’t. Who gets to be the voice we hear on the radio. Who gets to play on the national team. Who gets to be normal, and who gets pushed to the back of the line when government funding rolls round.

These things are all unnoticed parts of the fabric of our nation-building. And it’s a fabric that has more colours than red, white and blue, and more fibres than just canvass (whatever the hell canvass is made of).

But liberal equalitarianism of ‘the mainstream’ variety deliberately overlooks difference in favour of a utopian future of sameness. Sameness to the past. One that tries to boil all difference down into simple red and blue divisions (for example), and suffocates anything too square to fit into the round hole or ‘normality’.

Even worse, it also overlooks that things are already geared for the majority, because our entire system is designed and intended to uncover and deliver what the majority wants. Specifying exemptions for minorities is really just giving them a little breathing room and stops them being shouted down by the powerful.

What's always fascinated me about nationalism is the way it makes people so crazy.

There's something about the way in which we've all been indoctrinated into the idea that a mythological social identity called 'the nation' is so very important that I just can't leave alone. I say mythological with one hundred percent certainty because there are lots of books to back me up on this.

The nature of myths is that they tend to be based on a kernel of truth, but are exaggerated beyond their original meaning into something more appropriate to whatever purpose they're meant to serve. Eventually, the myth starts to assume something like an air of truth as more and more individuals believe it.

There's heaps of examples. The divinity of Christ, the 'We are all new Zealanders' mantra, Buck Shelford's gonads, 2 cups of milk in every block. All these 'facts' are also myths that have taken on lives of their own.

So how does this relate to nationalism? If you take race out of the question then nations are really just ideas that people subscribe to, and all too often get really passionate about. This passion usually isn't a bad thing if it manifests through something like commitment to a national team, or dedication to helping out a fellow national, but seems to go all pear-shaped when you see it in some freakin munter with a death-wish.

And of course I write that to all the kinderfascists out there who dislike anyone non-white from doing at all well. Sure, I’m envious that someone like Tze Ming can write better than I, but I’m never going to stalk her because of it. Or, not again that is.

Face facts boys, if you’re a white bloke with no skills, no education and no prospects, it’s not a Sikh cab drivers fault. He’s just doing the job you’re too freaking stupid, lazy or loaded on P to have done yourself.

But having said this, these fools are hardly less short-sighted than nation-builders of the ‘We are all New Zealanders’ mould. One of the great achievements of the last twenty years has been the project to diversify New Zealand out of the social rigor mortis that was the Muldoon years. All that borrowing for flashy election promises was insane, and something that ‘the mainstream’ did not pay for.

Let’s face facts, when the big drive to cut public spending was made in the 80s the people who suffered were not ‘the mainstream’. It was Māori who saw unemployment double when they were laid off from government departments in droves. It was vulnerable people on benefits who found themselves eating Weetbix for dinner. I still hate those things.

What careful years of study has proven to me is that a concept like ‘the mainstream’ is not the all-pervasive panacea it is meant to be. In reality, ‘the mainstream’ is a band of citizens within the overall New Zealand nation. ‘The mainstream’ is actually an exclusive set of self-referential identity markers you can usually sum up with the phrase, white, male and middle-class. But, as a rallying point for nation-building it’s just Orwellian enough to have a wide purchase. Or, put another way, it is a myth.

The National Front is just the very extreme (and one might say insane) end of the same nationalism the use of the term ‘mainstream’ also represents. But the latter by gentlemen in well-cut suits.

To go back to the books, ‘mainstreaming’ is a synonym for ‘civic nationalism’, an idea that is used to argue that ‘the mainstream’ is culturally and morally neutral, or of representing a ‘broad church’. This idea has however been debunked by a large number of authors, because something like ‘the mainstream’ will always exclude some people. Consequently, the inclusive society ‘the mainstream’ is meant to represent ends up leaving all sorts of people out of the picture.

Or even worse, it acts to force all people who don’t fit into ‘the mainstream’ to have to conform to the so-called neutral values of the majority. And sorry, ‘the mainstream’ has never spoken for or to me, and never will.

It’s going to be a long three years...

Do you ever worry that there might be more to life than a constant battle with dandruff, bad hair and late 70s fashion sense? There’s always the problem of money of course, but the problem with money is you can never have enough, even if you’re on a good wage. You know, the spend expanding to fit the content of the wallet problem? Frankly, if they gave me a pay rise, or dropped me to a lower tax bracket the first thing I’m buying is a freakin’ boat. Or maybe a flasher pair of shoes to get to work in.

Sure, I don’t actually need a boat and have nowhere to put it, and the shoes I have are just fine, but if I’m ever going to have the flatmates truly respect me I need to ‘pimp my ride’ as it were. Maybe some overpriced wingtips or imported loafers would impress them… Mind you, I could always get those old basketball boots with the pump inner soles so I can really ‘jump’.

Yes, the extra cash would be nice. Maybe if I’m earning a little more they’ll go and increase my VISA limit, and I can continue my downward spiral of uncontrollable debt in the truly self-serving fashion I demand. I could pay the barber for a better haircut to minimise the bad hair days, and buy a better 2-in-1 to deal to the flakiness.

Ah well. It’s bound to happen sooner or later, what with society’s current demand for money on tap. Like I say, there’s nothing like realising you’ve been spending way outside your budget and then waking up to the fact you don’t have the ability to pay it back. Of course, you can always blame ‘the gubbermint’, but lets face facts people, no one held a gun to your head and demanded you buy a plasma TV.

Hell, I’m hardly one to talk, one look at a few pretty-coloured fisheys and I’m spending 400 smack on a customised suit, some flash dive fins and a trip 20m down to see the wreck of the Eliza Ramsden (Nineteenth Century, amazing). It’ll take me years to crawl back all that money once the creditors start adding their cut. It’s like feeding your dealer. Tax, tax, tax.

The important thing is that I got a quick kick though! And as long as they sack maybe fifteen people with families working above me I’ll soon be in the money. What do they need it for I ask you? Pesky damn families with their kids whining in the supermarket and getting the flu and soaking up my taxes on GP visits. If those little tackers miss a day of school and fall behind in their edumacation it’s not my damn fault. They should have worked harder to catch up, after all.

My next concern is these dickheads demanding we keep out poor ethnic types. People, what in the hell are you thinking?! Ban all the poor immigrants and who is going to drive my taxi on the way home from the pub after me squandering my paycheque on booze and fine dining? Who is going to run the kebab shops that provide me with a 3am lamb sandwich? Who is going to come around to my flat and pick up after me while I’m out enjoying my single-person income?

Get white people doing these jobs and the first thing they’ll do is form a union and demand more cash. Live in the moment people!! Get your act together and exploit immigrants for cheap labour like you’re supposed too… you munters.

Yeah, good old New Zealand. We see one country of strip malls and fast food living high on the hog and driving itself broke with foreign debt and we think we should be able to do it too. Sure, families here are often doing it tough, but when haven’t they? Kids are freakin’ expensive people, REALLY freakin expensive. That is after all why almost none of my peer group have bought any yet. Combine that with the student debt the baby boomers loaded us with none of us have had to time do anything as financially hazardous as pro-create.

Thank heavens for ‘the maoris’. After all, they’ll be paying the taxes that keep my pension topped up when I’m finally allowed to retire in 2045.

Ah well… I need a snack. I’m off to the vending machine for a fix.

PS. Remember to check out The General and his campaign to get young Republicans to enlist and help fight for global freedom. He's in fine form. After all, Ranting is safer than enlisting.

As you all well know, the phrase ‘a boys weekend’ is usually a byword for unprecedented levels of hedonism, outrageous behaviour better practiced by teenagers and/or morons, scantily-clad young ladies and loud music, or the death of wildlife.

You can imagine my disappointment when it was all rather civilised.

At one stage someone offered me a CUP OF TEA for christssakes.

I don’t know what in the hell to say. What has happened to the best of Kiwi masculinity? Whither the sitting up till 3am drinking? Whither the starting drinking before noon? Whither the getting loaded on kava and wandering around the alpine forest looking at flora? Whither the watching ultraviolent films about football hooligans and calling each other a foul name for a beautiful thing?

Whither the masculinity that once prevented me from using the word ‘whither’?

Nah, to be honest, none of the above things happened. None. None at all. There was also no burping, farting, friendly abuse, jokes at others expense, whining about hangovers, steak dinners or near-misses on vomiting out of the windows of a car hurtling up mountain roads.

But having been a fan of the central north’s finest landscape, the mountain, there’s no way I could turn down hanging out in a lodge, drinking beer/whisky in extreme moderation and pretending to be able to talk about skiing like I actually know how, between conversations about art and literature. To be honest, I prefer my water in the ocean, full of potentially dangerous/bitey animals, and moving not frozen, but to each their own.

As it was, instead of getting onto the slopes a few of us hung out near Ohakune and didn’t spend the heaps of $$ required to make it onto the “snow”. I may have mentioned in the past that as my discretionary spending for this (and probably next) year was squandered on scuba gear before I left Melbourne, Kapiti Island is likely to be the next domestic sporting trip. Buying or renting ski gear would drag me into ‘profligate’ territory. Buying a surround-sound amp was close enough. Ah, excessive consumption...

And damn that Ruapehu is a great place to visit. Ignoring the carbon-loaded atmosphere we contributed too by jaunting about the place self-satisfying with scenery, it’s one of those places you really have to get to when you can.

Over the years I’ve been past the mountain on the desert road many times, but there’s something really satisfying about setting foot on truly majestic things, and walking all over them potentially damaging the environment.

To be honest the Department of Conservation seems to be doing a great job maintaining the various walkways and the like, I’ll admit to thinking seriously about doing better and longer day trips during the summer for example. What impressed me most was just the sheer variety of plant-life clinging to the mountain in places, and flourishing in others. What didn’t impress me was the near-complete absence of bird-life. It is spooky as all hell.

In Oz, we had Rosella’s and Rainbow Lorikeets living in the tree outside my flat. There was a flock of Myna’s that used to compete for the space, and every day the parrots would put on a ritual display of fighting them off. Then there were the bats that lived in the botanic gardens and would fly over the house every day at dusk.

But in the bush in New Zealand? Cicada’s in the summer is what I remember most of all. Maybe the occasional Tui. When I stayed with a girlfriend in Central Victoria, there used to be flocks of dozens and dozens of Cockatoo flying over every single morning. Noisy buggers they were too.

Here over the weekend? Nada, no birds at all governor.

My other impression was the way that in large part the Mountain is covered in weird, little plants. So what you have is a spanking great pile of rock, and a contrast to itty-bitty lichens, small daisies, miniature conifers, stuff like that. Fascinating, and needless to say, Wellington is something of a contrast again.

The good news is that here in the city you can actually get a decent meal in the middle of the day, and more shops are open to keep us all happy on the crappy days. Actually, speaking of which, I’m trying to find a place that sells decent and relatively fresh seafood. Any suggestions? That place on Cuba Street is all I’ve seen so far, and I need some fresh whole squid. Tips welcome.

PS The first paragraph had to be reworded. If i have to explain, you won't understand.