Posts by oga
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Hard News: Meet me at Camera 2: White, in reply to merrica,
Get a bit funny about the idea of privilege. I know it's there...but I don't know if it has quite the influence people say it does.
Said the white male. As another white male who experiences barriers from able-bodied privilege, I find the bike/car analogy to be quite effective in communicating the nature of privilege to people with privilege (white, male, not disabled).
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I hardly need to say that as a disabled customer there is no streaming TV service in NZ that provides captions with its content, thereby driving me to source content that does, i.e., Hulu, Netflix (US), or torrents + srt files. I have the greatest ease with the latter and if I like what I watch I later buy the Bluray set to give my money to the content creators. It's a delayed reward mechanism that works. I watch what I want, when I want, without being subjected to the (poor) decisions made by content distributors or schedulers.
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I've just been reading this fascinating look into cults/cultists, and I can't help but think of the National party and its followers when I read this passage:
As Freud said, the pattern of these kinds of social groupings is always the same, At the center is a charismatic narcissist who “gives permission” to the narcissism of others to come out of its hiding place. This is the pattern of many rock stars, who give the audience permission to exploit themselves once the star puts out the “word”. The party begins, and everyone's private narcissistic fantasy is given expression. A cult is very much like that, sometimes even with the music, sex, and drugs thrown in.
It seems to me that the past 6 years of National rule have succeeded in creating a cult-like hierarchy in the media, society, and the government. -
Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Sacha,
This all brings to mind the works of a master propagandist who was instrumental in getting the National party into power. It was for the National Socialist... oh.
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Whenever I hear about people moving off the benefit, I wonder whether the number of people moving _onto_ the benefit during the same period was considered.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Stewart,
I did a leadership course for a year some time ago. In the process of that course, which took place over one weekend a month, I had the opportunity to meet several people whom the course organizers nominated as leaders in New Zealand. By and large, most of the people were very nice people and talked freely about their roles. Unfortunately I did not go away from the course feeling as though I had learned anything about leadership. Some of these people had been very privileged, others had worked very hard, and many were eloquent orators. But were they leaders? Much depended on personality styles, and the lack of framing for the entire course frustrated me to the extent I am no longer included on the list of alumni for this course (nobody told me they were removing me, but they did - which seems dishonest). In that context, I can easily see John Key being described as a leader (as opposed to a figurehead, businessman, or front person), and many of the people on the course had similar presentation styles (perhaps with less of the smarminess). It appeared to me that we (the course participants) were meant to be awed by these people because of what jobs they were doing. Don't get me wrong, several speakers were frankly inspiring (John Allen comes to mind), but were they 'leaders'? "Leadership" is a very slippery term. While I can see why people admire John Key, I see them admiring him because he is wealthy, privileged, and typical of people in business who make money from leveraging blood out of a stone (or making money out of nothing but ideas and grit and systems knowledge), but admiring him as a political leader? I don't think we can mention him in the same breath as Helen Clark even though they are both right-wing leaders. At least Helen Clark kept part of her socialist heart intact.
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I spoke to an old friend on the street yesterday. He is switching his vote this year to National. I was surprised, so I asked him why he's changed his vote this election. And basically it was because he didn't feel any party in opposition would maintain the current state of the economy (he needs lots of rich people with disposable income to buy his luxury goods, and doesn't want any extra business-related or personal taxes beyond what he's currently being taxed). I asked what he thought about the national debt going from 0 to 10+ billion and he shrugged and said we all live with some level of debt, that's normal. But is it normal to not have a repayment plan for the debt in the budget? Oh, is that right he said. *Cognitive dissonance face* And as for the capital gains, he rolled out the But John Key Donates His Income line. Has anyone ever seriously attempted to determine whether that pre-PM statement had any basis in fact? It seems that he, as a pro-National voter (this year, anyway), has swallowed all the popular disinfo about the state of the economy, etc. It's amazing how sometimes I feel like I am living on a totally different planet to my peers.
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Hard News: Why we thought what we thought, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Thank you, Bart. I suspect that part of the problem with the New Zealand electorate is that the labels that political parties wear don't quite stick on properly. I always felt that National and Labour were too similar in their policy base. I assumed that they were more right leaning than left leaning, but your clarification based on world terms makes a lot of sense.
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Hard News: Why we thought what we thought, in reply to BenWilson,
Is it just me, or is my perception of Labour as being basically a centre-right party that leans to the left correct? I don't think Labour does enough lefty stuff to be considered a centre-left party. I guess my impressions are still tainted by Rogernomics.
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I can't remember ever going to a Bible class at school (during the 70s/80s). Is this a new thing?