Posts by Dennis Frank
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to mark taslov,
I can empathise somewhat, having been brought up via victimhood (chronic thrashings). Identifying with other victims comes easily to me but I realise it's all relative to one's social niche so we can't really generalise.
Hager's comment only goes so far. Seemed too shallow an analysis. Ross has formed a public identity as whistleblower, and Hager fails to factor that in. The political psychology of that new identity derives from being the sole player vs a team of 55 in the Nat caucus. The power imbalance ramps up his speaking truth to power to the tipping point of his breakdown. The pressure is vastly higher than for other politicians.
Then he gets taken into isolation by agents of the state. Even after release, still no direct evidence yet that he has regained agency. We don't know why he no longer had his cellphone. Not a peep out of his lawyer. All extremely suspicious.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Neil,
Haven't seen that reported yet. The authorities have been suspiciously quiet, seeming to be pursuing a strategy of denying public access to as many relevant facts as possible. Understandable, since it's the only way to make a cover-up successful. Privacy law is proving to be an extremely useful tool to cover up political wrongdoing.
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What we need is a Supreme Court decision that privacy law cannot be used to eliminate civil rights and defeat the whistle-blower law. The authorities can only get away with it as long as everyone lets them. Collusion with the National Party is obvious to anyone who can read the pattern, but just perception until privacy is no longer able to be used to eliminate freedom of speech, and we can get the facts.
Word on the street (as it were) is that Mitchell called the cops to initiate the sectioning. He had been given the task of operating as minder for Ross earlier. Slater wrote on his blog that it was a National MP who called them in. Inasmuch as Mitchell, Collins and Ross have all been clients of Lusk, one would expect Slater to get the inside info on stuff like this. An interesting nexus.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to mark taslov,
Mark, I'm glad you raised the question of his agency. I've discussed it in various comments on The Standard, often drawing fire from those who have a single issue focus on privacy law. As a group, such people are hot on using the law to deny the right of free speech of others (such as myself) who feel it is vital to frame things in an holistic view rather than their reductionist perspective. One even denied that he's a whistleblower!
So I'd be interested to hear your take on this dichotomy. As a whistleblower, being taken by state agents into a situation of total control (without his cellphone according to friends and we still haven't been informed if the state confiscated that) you'd feel your agency had been totally eliminated, eh?
So is this really going to be a relief for him, such disempowerment? I doubt it. And if his lawyer is gagged by privacy law (haven't heard a whimper out of him) it's hardly surprising that many of us see Ross as the victim of totalitarianism. Does privacy law really trump both civil rights and our whistleblower law?? I'd love to see our Supreme Court decide against that!
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Toby Manhire's compilation of 33 grenades lobbed by JLR, solid evidence that someone can be extremely potent and effective at the top level of politics despite mental health issues!
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/21-10-2018/100-hours-of-turpitude-jami-lee-rosss-grenades-across-an-incredible-week/ -
Great stuff, thanks Peter. "What’s certain is the powerful influence advertising can have in shaping our aspirations as a society." Not just the aspirations! Throw in the economy and democracy as well. Advertising was far and away the most influential usage of propaganda during the 20th century. Beat the usage by communist regimes and nazis into second and third.
Credit Edward Bernays for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
I remember back in the seventies often wondering how come I was having a professional career crafting propaganda for the capitalists - kinda weird for someone who lived on a commune awhile - rationalised it as inadvertent bad karma. But a decade making television commercials with folks like Bob Harvey & Roger Donaldson got me seeing things from their perspective somewhat. The lure of the imaginal. Extremely potent!
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Legal Beagle: Last call on the Electoral…, in reply to simon g,
😎 good one, Simon. If they don't manage to get JLR into a coalition partner for National, or re-insert the stray sheep into the fold, and if TOP fails to get over the threshold again, and Winston retires, Nats will have to transform themselves into a progressive conservative party to ever have a hope of working in coalition with the Greens. Big if.
This scenario could push Simon Lusk to hunt down & dispose of a few players in the game - or emigrate to non-greener pastures. Such as Oz, an extremely non-green place mostly, where nutball fruitcakes are highly-valued.
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Mitchell, Collins & Ross are/were all clients of Lusk, according to various media reports. Two of the three are leading contenders to take over from Bridges. Seems an extremely sound basis for a conspiracy theory.
The doctrine of plausible deniability suggests use of `were' in respect to relations with Lusk is the sensible way for Mitchell & Collins to go. Lusk may have already suggested as much to them.
The old wolf in sheep's clothing strategy. Position yourself as centrist, get elected by the center-right combination of voters, then gradually drag National incrementally to the right, sufficiently slowly that centrist supporters don't panic.
On this basis, makes sense to keep Ross in parliament to maximise damage to the current center-right leadership. Lusk plays the long game. Farrar is already suggesting on Kiwiblog that a deal could be done with Ross. One scenario is for him to join a support party eventually. Alternatively, after a change of leadership, he could be invited to rejoin. Resignation to pre-empt expulsion would then be seen by commentators as sensible, evidence of the long game being played.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Neil,
Huh. Not implausible, but doesn't fit with my experience. Plus his conversational style in interviews and press conferences has been entirely natural. He listens to whoever is talking to him and responds with easy rapport. Narcissists don't do that. They talk at people, not with them.
National MP Nicky Wagner called him "psychotic", quoted in a recent media report I saw. If he really was a narcissist he'd obviously already be suing her for defamation. Threat to reputation is threat to ego. First button in the psyche that gets pushed.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to simon g,
Indeed. Eight out of ten. "‘Politics should be about policy and values,’ is a sentiment we’ve heard from a few commentators in response to recent events; an understandable reaction to the torrent of malice and lies vomiting out of the many orifices of the National Party. And that’s all very well and good, but for professional politicians ‘values’ are mostly just a form of marketing".
That last bit sums up a significant part of my ongoing irritation with the Green Party modus operandi (I've been a member since the 2014 election, and was a member 1990-95). I think I'm a typical kiwi in preferring politicians to be non-robotic. "When two of the Green Party’s backbench MPs quit the caucus during last years’ election campaign, they didn’t know how to send a press release or log on to social media, or when the tv deadlines were." Old-fashioned men, but at least they had a conscience & were averse to being hijacked by a primadonna.
"Ross, by contrast is a media-trained front-bencher for a major party, and it shows. He dominated the news cycle for three solid days, outperforming his leader during his standups". My impression too. Not what we expect from a narcissist or a psychotic, the labels applied to him by his NP colleagues. You ever see a prominent narcissist confess to having had a mental breakdown before? Don't think I have. Egotism normally prevents admission of weakness.
So, watching the Nats trying to paint him as delusional, I find their performance unconvincing thus far! I'd go for suprisingly competent instead. "He was a supporter of Judith Collins, a friend of Cameron Slater and Simon Lusk, who has been advising him through this trainwreck. They comprise the core of the nihilist faction of the National Party". Mitchell, most likely to replace Bridges, is also a client of Lusk according to the media. Conspiracy theorists have a sound evidentiary basis upon which to proceed.
Which could rather explain JLR's effortless sure-fire performances, eh? Such confidence and assuredness is more likely to derive from anchoring his dissidence in a peer-group context than from narcissism. "Lots of politicians from across the political spectrum resort to unethical tactics to achieve their goals, but what was so unusual about the Dirty Politics crowd is that they didn’t seem to have any goals". Danyl's nihilism thesis. But what's wrong with power for its own sake?
He identifies the "gift economy" as "a form of corruption that’s very palatable for our political class." Nat/Lab collusion on amendments to our electoral law making it possible would validate that. Nats have done plenty, haven't seen evidence Labour has yet. But it could be why Labour isn't criticising National for using the loophole in the law to funnel the 100K through. "It’s rare for the major parties to break the laws around political donations because they get to write the law. It’s designed to work for them, to allow them to solicit money while concealing their funders."