On The Curious Un-Death Of Kim Jong Un - Schrodinger's Dictator

So for the past 48 hours, I've witnessed a lot of excited chatter about the alleged incapacitation of Kim Jong Un. First it was because he'd had surgery and was having a tough time of recovery; then it was because he was in a coma; then it was a vegetative state (which some wag imputed to mean he'd just sampled his first vegetable); and then it was a death, with his sister poised to take over and make totalitarian autocracy the equal-opportunity sport it had always longed to be.

Except here's the thing. There's no actual proof that this has occurred.

What there is, are a range of predominantly American news-sites, falling over themselves to report that he's dead, on the strength of what appear to be unconfirmed rumours.

Meanwhile, South Korea - who are both figuratively and literally closer to the situation than just about anyone - have expressed considerable skepticism, and believe everything's basically normal (or, at least, as normal as the DPRK-o-sphere ever really gets).

Now, in fairness, it is possible that Kim Jong Un is dead. It is possible that there's some sort of coup underway and the news he is dead has been put out for some intentionally aimed-for impact. It is possible that Kim Jong Un himself put out the news he is dead, because he saw how much "fun" the whole 'inject disinfectant' thing was, and wants to have a go at "JUST A PRANK, BRO - WORLD LEADER EDITION" himself.

All of these things are possible, although I am not sure how many, if any, are actually likely.
For now, he is Schrodinger's Dictator. The Man In The Box.

And until there is actually some sign one way or 'tuther from the DPRK, it would be entirely premature to actually believe that these "rumours" you're all suddenly placing massive credence in, have a solid ring of truth to them.

[And seriously, looking at the American right-wingers around the place - you people turn on a dime! You go inside 24 hours from claiming the media makes up anything and everything to make a leader you like look bad (potentially by playing unaltered clips of him speaking) ... through to just taking everything that's being said about a leader you don't like (but that your leader kinda likes) at face value because you like how it sounds!]

If one looks into it, it turns out that the DPRK appears to be run by a cabal of necromancers. Because on a reasonably regular basis, we hear a report of this or that general or senior official or music-star that's supposedly been executed in cartoonish supervillain style ways - only to have them turn up alive and well at some function in public view looking surprisingly healthy for a corpse. Particularly one that's supposedly been used as mortar or anti-aircraft gun target practice.

This has taught me to have a reasonable degree of skepticism whenever such claims are made. It doesn't mean that executions, disappearances, or dynastic transfers of power are all an illusion. Only that rumours of some deaths are greatly exaggerated, often by people with an agenda - whether that's to make the DPRK seem more relatably evil as a narrative antagonist, or simply to sell you something, or especially both at once as they both feed of each other. (the shifting stories o some DRPK defectors can also be viewed in this light)

But who cares. Many of you seem to want a "feel good" news story. Because if the death of one is a tragedy and a million a statistic .. the deaths of tens of thousands amidst the present pandemic can apparently be eclipsed by the admittedly rather large figure of one Hermit King in a missile-transporter hearse.

Have a bit of skepticism, and some care - we don't know that Kim is Dead. It's possible that his shade is chilling right now with Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction, instead.

Winston Wronged And HDPA Right - The Unexploded Truth Of The Pension Payment Settling Of Accounts

So earlier this week, two things happened. Winston got his lawsuit result back ... and the National Party started demanding that he pay for it.

Now, in a sense, you could be forgiven (by somebody else) for seeing National's point. The judgement was reasonably clear - the assertion that Paula Bennett and/or Anne Tolley (inter alia) had leaked Winston's pension overpayment details to the media as part of some sort of targeted political hit-job, was unproven. Indeed, would have been very difficult to actually prove in the first place.

So therefore, if Tolley & Bennett were not found guilty - and the taxpayer was footing the bill for the whole fruitless exercise, perhaps some recompense was in order?

Balderdash. There are three salient points to be made here. The first is that the judgement also quite clearly agrees that Winston's privacy was breached, in a highly unusual and improper manner. The only thing it disagrees with is that the culprit could be positively identified.

And that, as it happens, is not necessarily too terrible of a thing. Insofar as, if we cannot actually prove to a reasonable standard that somebody has done it ... then of course the law should not assert that they have.

The second, is that as Winston's privacy was breached in this way, it's good that somebody took both government apparatus and relevant Ministers notionally responsible to task over it. Bennett has a bit of a history of making improper disclosures about Ministry of Social Development payment recipients for political impact - and previously she has managed to get away much more easily than she did this time. Possibly because impoverished mothers dealing with WINZ are less able to afford High Court lawsuits than veteran pensioner politicians armed with the resources of state.

The utilization of taxpayer money in this way, in other words, while it might seem a vainglorious counter-charge in pursuit of political scalps as part of a personal vendetta ... is actually a safeguarding and upholding of our rights as taxpayers to be treated fairly by our state and government. It is, in short, that thing NZ First has so often claimed to be about - "Keeping The Bastards Honest".

But the third point ... is that I am not sure the judgement as it was, really lets National off the hook. At least, not enough for it to be pompously demanding that the victim - and for all his faults, in this he truly was - of malfeasance, pay back the entire sum total of his costs in pursuit of justice.

Now, I am going to astound everybody - not least of which, myself - by stating that Heather du Plessis-Allan got something right. Not recently, but a year ago, but of fresh saliency and relevance in light of this week's judicial findings.

To quote her - "The reason I say that is because in the weeks before the leak, I was told by the Nats that the nats had the information. 

They told me they were considering leaking it. They told me how they would leak it, the process they would follow to cover their tracks. Without going into details, I can tell you that’s exactly how it played out.

So the chances that the Nats leaked it are about 99 per cent."

That's from a piece upon the subject she wrote in late August of last year. A veritable lifetime ago in multiple senses of the term. But nonetheless, an interesting remark in light of what has just occurred.

For while this is not exactly the sort of evidence that one could viably take to court - partially because it is hearsay, and partially because I suspect a journalist's protections of sources would mean that it would be difficult to compel her to unveil more details that might actually lead to surety about the situation ...

... it nevertheless suggests rather strongly that Winston WAS right to point the finger toward National.

And that what has just happened this week, wherein the verdict has come in, and National are demanding that Winston pay up, apologize, and all the rest of it, is a case of a party who were probably actually guilty of wrongdoing having an incredibly lucky escape and then doubling down on their visage of tortured innocence. Certainly, they have had few strong blows against the Government in recent weeks (for entirely understandable reasons - blow-BACK on the other hand, being another matter), so the chance to actually salvage some shrinking vestige of moral high ground must have proven irresistible.

The fact that Tolley and Bennett have escaped direct and official censure for this gambit, should in no way detract from the fact that Winston has been partially vindicated. It should also not distract from the very real possibility that National remains secretly guilty of the offence that has been charged against it.

It is repugnant for it to be found that Winston was, indeed, the victim of such a breach - and then to expect him to have to pay for the proving that he has been wronged against.

It is also most curious that we can have senior figures of our political and journalistic sphere pretty sure that National as a party WAS actively involved in the leaking which ensued, and because we cannot decisively prove WHICH National high-up it came from, this therefore lets the party as a whole and as an entity off the hook.

National can and will spin this as some sort of grandiloquent vindication. It is nothing of the sort.

On The Escalating Media Demands For A Covid-19 'Wartime' Coalition With National

It's Almost Like The Neoliberals Don't WANT To Survive The Crisis - On Brazen Talk Of "Acceptable Losses" To Re-Grease Wheels Of Economy

There is a quotation often attributed to Lenin, in which it is said that when it comes time to hang the capitalists - they will fall over each other to attempt to sell their executioners the rope.

Now, I do not invoke this axiom to attempt to urge a death-sentence against this Texan. Going by his own words, he seems more than eager to initiate such a thing upon himself, in order to secure the delusory promise of a few days of scrounged together economic 'stabilization'.

For that is all that would likely eventuate were America to turn upon the proverbial dime and ditch physical/social distancing and lockdown protocols to go back to "business as usual" (as Trump appears now keen to do) ... isn't even a temporary uptick in economic activity - it's just a brief arrest of the ongoing crisis-pandemic furthered decline.

Followed by an even more dramatic medium-to-long-term negative impact as the directly attributable result of heightened pressure upon their healthcare system and their workforce through illnesses, disorder, and deaths.

Some Americans in the political and financial spheres, are more afraid of the malaise of a significant downturn in economic activity (or even doing things differently when it comes to economic activity all up), that it is preferable to talk of quite literally "sacrificing" an entire generation in pursuit of its desperate avoidance.

They love largely illusory money (for that is, ultimately, what so much of their stock-market, with its one point five trillion dollar devouring snackatite, actually is), and are prepared to fight to the death to defend it. Human blood and human deaths, in exchange for filthy, filthy lucre.

To be fair and sure, Lt. Gov. Patrick deserves some minimal modicum of 'credit' for being prepared to place himself - rhetorically at least - upon the chopping block.

And the issue is not his own willingness in principle to do something daft for his grand-children; because there is something instinctual in the desire to protect one's progeny and future lineage.

Dependent upon your personal ethical position, you may or may not also have a problem with his endeavouring to force his personal choice in this matter upon every OTHER grandparent in the nation.

But for me, it is quite simple. Doing as these economic right-lemming kinds would wish, does not offer "sacrifice" in exchange for meaningful improvement in circumstances - either for their own generation, or for ours. It shall not leave their country better off a week, three weeks, ten weeks, or twenty eight weeks later from now.

On the contrary, it shall almost certainly extend the misery. Because 'delayed gratification' rather than degraded prefrontal cortex critical-thinking-child seeking pseudoconomic sugar-rush-'stimulus', is not how their minds appear to work in practice.

This, presumably, is a large part of how we seem to *keep* finding ourselves, every few years, crushed under the weight of "too big to fail" billion-dollar outfits and operators who can't seem to keep themselves ticking over between largely self-authored crises sans massive government intervention upon their behalf. A variable that requires no globe-spanning contagion other than the ideological one to repeatedly ensue!

And lest this seem like an anti-American beatup ... it is important to note that many Americans find all of the above absolutely and axiomatically abhorrent. And, perhaps more concerningly, that it is not only an American 'disease' of the mind of which we are speaking.

It was just a week ago that the European Union's leadership was speaking about the necessity of a balancing act between preventing deaths on the one hand (assumedly also encompassing to a certain extent deaths particularly amidst the older and less wealthy or physically hearty - you know, those for whom the capitalist mill has increasingly less use for as time goes on ... both their time in a personal sense, and the general time of the advancement of the economic epoch we presently endure) ... and preserving "The Market" and its accompanying actions and profits on the other.

It may be undeniably true that on a long enough time-line, everybody's survival rate drops to zero ... yet these kinds of "acceptable losses" wherein the time-lines of many are foreshortened considerably in order to secure temporary reprieve for the stock-portfolios of the few, is not so much "natural selection" as it is "utterly inhuman".

Perhaps, in the not too distant and nightmarishly, overbearingly close future, it may be possible for finance-capitalism to exist sans humans. It already seems to do largely well enough with just computers and the hive-like inhabitants of Wall Street, so some might suggest it's endemically close enough.

Yet until that happens - and, indeed *especially* should that happen, it makes no sense whatsoever to value dollars above lives in the manner these demons are proposing.

If there is to be a "sacrifice", turn it around - sacrifice a certain modicum of financier-cheque-book, to support the lives and the quality of lives of many ordinary and older people.

Except most peculiar, curious thing - it never seems to get offered like that, does it. It's always just the other way around.

Trump's Covid-19 Programme: Crisis Response, Turning Tables, and Corona-tion

One of the curious concepts in a crisis is the way in which the 'old rules' don't so much not apply, as seem actively turned upon their head.

We've seen this, just these past few days, in the European Union - wherein Germany's pirouetted from being the most trenchant possible supporter of the (Common) Market Uber Alles for much of the past decade, and particularly as applies Mediterranean members of the Union and the borderless movement of peoples within the Schengen area ... through to its more recent enthusiasm for locking down its borders and endeavouring to prohibit German private enterprise from exporting vitally needed medical products to Italy.

Yet European Union hypocrisy is nothing new nor especially remarkable. An escalating crisis was always going to place some considerable strain upon the ideological adherence to principles which didn't make sense for many member nations and their populaces even in the 'peace-time' of relative calm.

What's rather more interesting are recent happenings within American politics - wherein we've witnessed an almost lightning-speed enactment of that famed maxim so often misattributed to Gandhi : "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win".

Consider the case of Andrew Yang. A year ago, he was virtually unknown even inside politihack/beltway circles. He'd gathered a small but enthusiastic following in the memeosphere thanks in no small part to his UBI concept - the so-called "Bag" of a thousand dollars a month to every ordinary American adult.

For the first year and a half of his candidacy (he filed to run on the 6th of November 2017), both he and his signature policy were either ignored or just flat-out derided. As he made his way further into the secondary-shade of the side-of-stage spotlight, the mockery only intensified. It didn't matter that he'd put together a frankly impressive case for his vision in book form or via a string of alt-media appearances. What he was selling was too far outside the 'acceptable' and the reasoning for his cause - while intellectually understandable by anybody capable of thinking a few decades into the future - seemed too remote, so far abstract in concept as to basically be science-fantasy for many.

A situation deliberately not helped by various political commentators and candidates going out of their way to vocally disparage or more subtly insinuate against him and his Bag as he gradually began to gain more prominence.

In fact, he wasn't even just derided as an also-ran by a number of his fellow Democrats. He began to be presented as almost actively dangerous in a not entirely dissimilar manner to the DNC Establishment's take on Bernie Sanders - somebody pushing an ideological platform that the Republicans would rip apart come November as barely-reconstructed post-Soviet "socialism". Or something.

But, like I say - in a crisis, the 'old rules' don't so much cease to apply as they quite rapidly appear to be turned outright upon their collective head.

It was therefore only slightly surprising to hear that some on the American right wing of politics had started to see the sense in Yang's UBI proposal once the threat of Covid-19 became more pronouncedly apparent. To be fair, they were simply picking up upon something that Democratic Congresswoman (and fellow Democratic Presidential aspirant) Tulsi Gabbard had put into her proposal for a Corona virus response package - a UBI to assist ordinary Americans through the crisis, rather than simply shoveling money into top-down stockbroker-caste oriented 'stimulus' in the vague hopes that the rising tide of customary platitudes would somehow lift all boats.

That didn't necessarily mean that the entire spectrum of American politics had suddenly shifted upon the issue, however - and it was frankly astonishing to see GoP guys like Mitt Romney come out in favour of the full-scale UBI proposal (at least for the duration of the crisis), and find themselves effectively opposed by Democratic darlings like Kamala Harris (who belatedly wound up engaged in a bidding-war of a sort, attempting to argue DOWN the level of the benefit should it be put through).

Yet the real head-turning was still to come.

Donald Trump, the same man who just a few days before had been castigating Bernie Sanders as 'crazy' for being a "socialist" [or, in rest-of-the-world terms, a relatively moderate social democrat] put forward his support for ... well, let me put it this way. He hasn't just supported the rollout of a short-term UBI (something I'm suspecting even a few weeks ago many Republicans would have castigated as "far left" "failed economics" "welfare dependency" or something had anyone else done it), a suspension of housing evictions and foreclosures, or a notable expansion in leave entitlements and other workers' rights as a result of the crisis ...

... he's actively invoked the Defense Production Act, a piece of Korean War era legislation itself consciously enacted as a resurrection/continuation of the FDR-era full-scale Government-directed mobilization of the American economy and society in order to establish and maintain a war footing. As in, a total-war footing, not the general war-for-fun-and-profit skirmish-level stuff by comparison that America treats, quite literally, as "business as usual".

What does this mean? To put it quite simply, the President is now in Command of the U.S. Economy.

As in, subject to the conditions of the Act, the President now has the legal power (and, in fact, legal duty) to direct the allocation of resources in relevant sectors, and under terms dictated by the state. To be sure, the bits which would enable the institution of price and wage controls are rather less available for use than they were in 1950 (as they're no longer a Presidential auto-power under the Act, but require Congressional approval); and similar legislative lapsing has meant that the previous ability to nationalize businesses and even entire industries, is now commuted down to the mere ability to make them offers they are literally (with the exception of the production of biological or chemical weaponry, except if the President specifically demands it) not allowed to refuse.

Or, phrased another way ... all of that "crazy" "Socialism" which the Republicans have been up in arms about all these years, has just in legal principle come back out of the Cold [storage].

If you were being coy about it, slash you were in the unenviable position of being a Trump-associated or Fox-appearing spin-doctor, you'd counter-claim that the state having the ability to command (not just regulate - command) economic activity and dictate to private enterprise isn't "socialism", with the maintenance of contract and private exchange meaning that capitalism is still in force in Corporate America. And this is not incorrect, in much the same way that notionally private enterprise in post-Deng People's Republic of China makes it a somewhat pantomime market economy.

Although given the way the Trump Administration's taken to using the word "China" over the past few years, they'd probably not appreciate that as a talking point.

In any case, in their hearts of hearts (insofar as they may have them - probably in jars on shelves in their crypts/offices somewhere), the right-wingers of America who're fundamentally OK with what's just happened because it's Trump doing it rather than an openly centre, centre-left, or *gasp* self-declared "socialist" ... are probably psychologically adjusting to it because they never really believed in the downright libertarian "free markets and free men" claptrap anyway. [I've often, as an aside, noted that that's exactly the wrong way around as a statement of priority - free markets and then, almost as an after-thought, free men; but, then, with some Hannah Arendt in head and positive freedom as a concept in mind, I'd probably argue that "free markets and free men" is a contradiction in terms anyway. But then I digress]

Instead, the same mouths which so aggressively decry the American equivalent to the "Nanny-state", are actually quite enthused about all manner of social and economic control elsewhere. They'd like to think of it, no doubt, as the Stern Father State instead.

Although the typology for most of them that instead comes to mind - for me, anyway - is what somebody once declared to be the "Rich Uncle State" [as in, more removed and less compassionate or caring than a direct parent, and mostly concerned with moralizing at you except where it benefits them personally. The example given being regulating and shaming the sexual conduct of young women via a combination of direct laws and related constraint of funding for medical elements that might be thought of as relating to same ... except when said Rich Uncle State-eers are the personal beneficiaries of the conduct in question, of course].

So how does this pertain to Trump? Well, while he'd previously seemed at least vaguely amenable to Steve Bannon's proposition to recongeal the Republican Party as a Workers' Party (seriously - that was his vision. Maybe Republicans as gun-toting "socialists" isn't just something from the Spanish Civil War after all), following the latter's ouster, a lot of that seemed to be on the back-slide; sacrificed 'pon the altar of "progress" for measures more popular with the business class.

That created something of an 'opening' over on the relative (and I stress the relative) left of the American political spectrum, for the Democrats to try and reconnect with the ordinary people they theoretically already represent; which was largely, predictably, squandered in earnest in favour of chasing after other priorities - but nevertheless DID manage to further empower a formerly fringe candidate by the name of Bernie Sanders, amongst others.

This may or may not have amounted to anything come November, but then this sudden onset of Crisis emerged; and Trump found himself in the ineluctable position of having spent the past few weeks conspiciously talking down as a non-issue and non-event, something that had just swallowed most of the stock market gains made during the course of his presidency in a matter of hours, and devoured a $1.5 trillion dollar directly-aimed Wall St rescue package for a between-courses additional-appetizer.

What could he do? What should he do? Avoid at all costs being known as a Herbert Hoover in the early phases of the Depression, or more pointedly perhaps - a Nero at the Fire of Rome.

Net result? We now have Trump taking the concept of the "Imperial Presidency" to a whole 'nother level and openly pushing policy-planks that the Democratic establishment (ever mind the Republicans) would have (in fact, were) attacked as absurdly left, just a week or two ago.

And being actively cheered for it by much of 'right wing' America, because at the end of the day, everything in their (and most other) politics is made up and only the sports-team branding actually seems to matter. It's probably not even a case of "only Nixon could go to China" anymore.

It has been suggested that for many a key narrative player in public life - you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. In Trump's case, pending how well the rest of the Corona / Covid-19 response goes of course, it's possible that he's avoided (politically) dying a Nero - and may yet see himself live long enough to become a Patrician.

And who knows. I'm a little surprised to find myself saying this - but if it leads to a genuine and maintained shift away from the neoliberal economic perversity of modern American socio-financial life, particularly as applies the beginnings of a genuine UBI ... maybe that's not an entirely terrible thing. Certainly, his continuing to do worse-than-nothing could hardly be something to be welcomed.

Oh, and speaking of "heroes" and complexly curving narrative arcs ... where is Andrew Yang now?

Being requested by the White House to go along and help them with the rollout of their UBI effort.

It's not how he intended to get there, of course; yet less than six weeks after he suspended his Presidential campaign, Yang might yet find himself and his concept the 'hero we need' right now, all the same. 

Bridges' Response To Government Corona Package Case Of Ideological Shiver Looking For Spine To Run Up

I must say, I'm a little surprised at Simon Bridges' response to the Government's Covid-19 package.

Not because it's petty opposition-for-the-sake-of-opposition-alism during a time of ostensible national crisis. After all, presenting himself as the self-appointed and self-important prevaricating poodle perambulating upon the pant-leg of our democracy has basically been his modus operandi since he took over as leader of the National Party.

But rather due to the main thrust of his attack: that the Government's response-package is hopelessly 'ideological'. Because it includes a not insignificant amount of money for beneficiaries, and he feels that this means 'medium-sized Kiwi businesses' have been shut out.

In fact, the Government is provisioning exactly the same amount of money for beneficiaries - $2.8 billion - that it is for changes to business tax. Perhaps this is what Bridges is alluding to when he calls the Government's response a case of "confuse priorities" - attempting to do two things at once (and more besides - such as the $5.1 billion in wage subsidies to affected employers) in a bid to look after both business and those no longer employed by same, rather than only corporates of an appropriately middling-and-up magnitude.

Now, there are two reasons I find it perplexing that Bridges is castigating this as "ideologically" oriented.

The first is that it's pretty non-ideological to look at a situation of sustained global economic turmoil, featuring specific impairments for industries and nations whose activity is primarily contingent upon long-distance travel and/or tourism ... and conclude that this is going to lead to job-losses. You don't even have to think about it as a theoretical. You just have to read the news going back over the past several weeks and follow the headlines. Three thousand jobs from Air New Zealand just a few days ago, haemorrhaging work-crews from the primary sector employers like forestry for some time before that. A situation which has already persisted, and is inordinately likely to persist, for some time.

That axiomatically means there are GOING to be greater numbers of New Zealanders who are not just out of work for the moment, but are likely to be out of work for the reasonable, and perhaps even foreseeable future. Because it's the nature of this kind of crisis. It doesn't just take out one employer or one industry - it affects, directly or otherwise, almost everything. It's pointless (in the short and potentially medium term) expecting newly-unemployed Kiwis to just go off and find a job somewhere else or retrain for vacancies that haven't come back yet.

Even despite the aforementioned multi-billion dollar package for employers - both in terms of tax-code alterations, and direct subsidies to keep people in work - that have already been announced, we are quite simply going to have thousands more Kiwis unemployed. They must be provisioned for.

What would be "ideological" in this situation, I suspect, would be pretending that this isn't going to occur; or, as was done during Ruthanasia and its aftermath, ratcheting down benefits and their accessibility in a futile bid to force New Zealanders to go out and get into employment that simply wasn't there (and, in the process, further weakening those remaining domestic operations that DID still have some viability by removing the income-streams of much of their clientele).

What would also be "ideological", would be insisting upon putting as much Corona money as possible into already-reasonably sized businesses and then hoping that the benefits would trickle down to those who'll otherwise now be on benefits. Various experiences with bailouts and absolutely cyclopean-scale interventions by governments overseas during times of recession, have amply demonstrated that this doesn't tend to either especially work, or be particularly good value-for-money.

I also think it would be rather "ideological" to be demanding significant further subsidies for private sector entities - which doesn't mean I'm intrinsically opposed to this in all cases - just that after so much apparently empty rhetoric about "picking winners" and "Polish ship-yards" and "corporate welfare", it seems a bit curious that all that, and ONLY that, has ceased having the ring of truth to it for National's speechwriters.

But the second reason I find it a bit perplexing that Bridges is seeking to attack as "ideological" the Government for putting cash in the hands of ordinary people rather than just their corporate overlords ... is due to the lack of issue other (right-wing) political entities which Bridges usually quite likes have had with doing exactly the same thing. Providing payments to now-unemployed workers, I mean - not the incendiary claims of "ideological" non-responses for doing so, that is. Strange times, eh?

In fact, the measures that've been put into force by each of Australia's Scott Morrison-lead Government, and the Trump-presided-upon Republican Party of America, are actually, if anything, more generous than what we've seen put forward thus far under Labour here. Perhaps, as the old political illumination/rummination has it, "Only Nixon Could Go To China."

Now I certainly think that ScoMo and the Notorious GoP act with "confused priorities that do not deal, non-ideologically, with the issues" of their respective countries, on a basis so regular that you can't set your watch by it because it's a present-continuous now. I.e. ALL THE TIME. [Trump, for what it's worth, I don't think really acts ideologically - but instead, slathers himself with an ideological-like substance as he feels like, to present a false veneer of consistency or coherency to ... whatever somebody told him to do that morning, up to and including authorizing missile-strikes on Syria because of a photo his daughter saw on Twitter]. But that's not the point.

It's also not the case that simply because several other countries do something, that somehow makes it 'non-ideological'. It may just mean that it's a new ideological consensus. Which is not necessarily a good or a bad thing, either. If compassion and greater economic self-reliance are some kind of new ideological trend, then it's one that should heartily be encouraged. We might even get a sort of post-modern Post-War Economic Consensus out of this. Somehow.

Yet the idea that the Jacinda-lead government (we really are all operating on a first-name basis these days in Kiwi politics) is committing some sort of cardinal sin of "IDEOLOGY" [*sniff*] because it's proposed to look after those who are soon to be jobless, as well as those who had formerly employed them ... rather than focusing more exclusively upon corporations and hoping that all shall be well ...

It isn't even "let them eat cake". It's "let their bosses eat cake,  how DARE we have a community food-bank!"

We're in an Election Year, and it is often alleged that parties engage in a lolly-scramble to attempt to buy themselves a constituency and consequent support. National's attack upon Labour is that. Both in terms of the nature of the charge - which comes with the familiar smack of "Labour bribes beneficiaries for their support" and somehow extorts the business and upper classes to do so.

But also with the implicit promise that under National, things would be the other way around - i.e. if you're from a sector of society that feels it's under-served by several billion dollars of corporate tax code alterations and could do with Tiwai Point Rio Tinto levels of Government support for your medium (and up) sized business, then blow Blue.

Yet in times such as these, I don't think it's a "lolly-scramble" to try and support either business or beneficiaries. Or, as Labour/NZF/Greens have done - attempt to support both groups, and keep thousands more still in work as well.

I think it's those rare combinations of virtues in politics - compassion, consideration, and vision.

It's incredibly unfortunate that it takes a crisis and the shadow of looming, oncoming disaster to afford space for some 'rebalancing' of our economy and our society toward something potentially more just.

But if each Election is something of a referendum upon the direction of our ship of nation, and a plebiscite upon the values which we wish to see represented in our government and its leadership ... then a response-package to a calamity which emphasizes compassion, care, and comprehension - well, taking that into account when we vote later this year isn't being bribed.

It's declaring what ethos we see in ourselves, in our society as it could and should be, and as we want it to be lead by on into our post-2020 future.

But, then, maybe I'm being "Ideological".

"Are you OK, Boomer?" Countering The Chronophobic Malaise That's Grown Up Around Covid-19

This is rather important.

I've been pretty disquieted about some of the rhetoric that's been going around the place along with Covid-19. Yes, we know that the health impacts are disproportionately severe for people over sixty. Yes, we know that in many Anglosphere countries, there is an occasionally pretty understandable annoyance on the part of younger people against the regrettably not-always-that-imaginary stereotype of Der Boomer.

And yes, there is an ongoing politico-economic reshaping that has already begun, both of the world that the generation of our parents is bequeathing to us - and, in some areas, being actively pushed back against by some persons including those of a similar age range to them [c.f current debates in the US Democratic Primary around public healthcare - wherein, as somebody put it, the preponderance of boomer-aged voters *against* public reform, versus the preponderance of millennial aged voters *for* such reform, may look like the latter desperately endeavouring to hold back the former from jumping headlong over a cliff of its own ultimate devising through its previous several decades of political choices ... insofar as you actually have "choice" in a system as hidebound by health-insurance money as the US Political one].

But frankly, eagerly cheering on, or being amusedly indifferent to the plight of anybody retirement-aged and up during these present circumstances is reprehensible.

Being over a certain age doesn't automatically make you a villain outside of the circumstances of Logan's Run. Being under a certain age, and/or finding yourself lucky and well-placed enough to avoid the virus's ravages ... does not axiomatically render one a saint, either. [although being a saint, may for obvious reasons, help in such circumstances as we currently find ourselves embroiled in]

It must be scary as hell being an older person in Italy right now - a fear that can only escalate as you move up the age-brackets, past the "Boomer" generation and into the Greatest. Even if you've got some sort of semi-justified ill-feeling toward your parents' generation in abstract (if not necessarily, or perhaps necessarily, your specific parents themselves) ... have a thought for Grandma.

I'm a little biased about this, perhaps - my parents are older than many others of my generation, and seemingly quite different to the stereotypes that often seem to accrue for persons across the Anglosphere of their age. I also spent the formative years of my adulthood working with quite a number of older citizens, who were militantly in favour of the kind of economically just policies that are quite popular with many young voters today - not through a hopeful idealism, so much as having the actual, tangible recollection of them being in force some decades before.

... although the instances I ran into of older New Zealanders opposed to animal testing of synthetic cannabinoids and other party drugs, and instead volunteering themselves for it, was ... a little unexpected, to say the least.

These days, in my theological line of life, many of the people I engage with are also older. In no small part because they're the ones who can *remember* old ways, who have the wisdom of grandparents and are so eager to see it passed on - even if it has to skip their own children's generation through lack of interest, to be passed on more directly to their grandkids.

To be sure, I *do* think that an array of the stopping and tacking stock of our politico-economic situation as a result of what's going on with the Corona virus, is a necessary thing, and something that's been quite a long while coming. I have reasonable hope that the world we wind up with as a result of some of this, some three to five years down the track (after which, if history has proven to be a guide, we'll probably have started forgetting the lessons again, in earnest) shall be a more resilient and rational(ized) one in some ways, also, as a result. Paying more attention to looking after people and less to just-in-time buckled bottom lines and empty, pointless, performative "work"; for a start.

But I don't think that means we start celebrating a human cost to changing direction like this. I think it means, more than anything, that we are to be motivated to make damn sure that obvious problems with obvious solutions are *sorted* so that unnecessary deaths, weeks of worry, and lifetimes of lingering impairment *don't take place* in the first place.

So that the grief of a preventable and systemically avoidable spate of familial bereavements, as this virus and the milieu which has supported and enabled its promulgation and spread ... is spared as far as possible not only to us - but also to the generations that come after us, and which will, most certainly and without a doubt, be thinking of us "millennials" or "zoomers" or whatever it is that we are these days, in similar terms to how many seem to think of "Boomers" and the Greatest Generation today.

Now is not, for obvious reasons, the time to hug your parents, your grandparents, physically closer for fear of losing them prematurely.

Yet metaphorically, I think that's *exactly* what is required - closer mental and emotional engagement, mutual support .. from a physical distance .. and ensuring that contra to the memery flying around the place at the moment, that they are not only not forgotten, but not painfully, shamefully derided into the bargain as well.

"As you are, we once were. As we are, you shall be", indeed.

Perhaps, instead of the "Ok, Boomer" that has become such popular (and occasionally quite apt) parlance these days, "Are you OK [boomer]?" might be the better ethos du jour.