Inaugural

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me the last few weeks have felt very similar to 2016, except worse because 2016 felt like a horrific accident and this time feels like calculated, deliberately inflicted horror.

The word inaugural means the first time a thing has happened, a beginning - which feels incongruent with the fact we’ve been here before, in the echoes of 1930 and the lessons we should have learned from 2016.

The symbiotic, transnational nature of the current far right political movement means the echoes or the ripples or the intent to drown everything in favour of profit and power is growing into a clarion call in Aotearoa.

We know what we’re seeing.

We’ve been here before.

There’s a lot to speak up about, and the chaos is deliberate so that Opposition, advocates and media do not have time to amplify all the things there are to be concerned about, like the Social Security Amendment Bill which closed with a whimper and almost no roars.

Like the falsehoods surrounding the Treaty Principles Bill, where David Seymour “told Stuff the volume of submissions was an “exciting” signal about interest in this topic.

“Even people who don’t support my bill appear to be supporting the idea of mass participation in what the Treaty means in 2025. I think that is very, very exciting.”

The logical fallacy in this statement is false equivalence because David Seymour suggests that the large volume of submissions, regardless of whether they support his bill or not, indicates widespread support for “mass participation” (or a referendum.)

The fact people might submit opinions against the bill does not mean they support his broader idea of a referendum. These are two separate issues: one being the specific bill, and the other being the concept of mass participation on the topic of the Treaty.

By conflating them, Seymour creates an illusion that opposition to the bill is actually support for the broader concept of a referendum, which is not a logically sound connection.

It’s also an illusion that repeating Seymour’s words verbatim without context or critique does little to banish.

Like the fact newly-installed Health Minister Simeon Brown wanted to record the number of abortions people had as a proposed amendment to the Abortion Legislation Bill (which wasn’t added), in case we needed any further evidence that power and control is always the goal.

Brown also celebrated when Roe v. Wade fell in the US (note the likes bottom left.)

With similar ideological persuasions to Luxon getting key portfolios and a demonstrable record of erosion of norms across the board, we should be paying attention to what happens next.

If ever there was a time for those in Opposition to speak up, it’s now, but lukewarm seems to be the temperature (with some exceptions) and the name of the game seems to be waiting for the pendulum to swing back around, despite the fact very rich men are bolting it down, despite the evidence to date that silence means implicit acceptance.

Canaries in the coal mine from vulnerable communities are pleading for statements on public health, on equity, on how we’re on a precipice looking for an ambulance that is nowhere to be seen.

You cannot normalise the kind of incalculable damage currently benefiting those causing the harm under “business as usual”, but we’re apparently doing our level best.

What is there to conclude but that some things are seen as not worth the effort?

Following the recent American example, what is there to conclude but that enough of us voted to allow the coalition to form, and not enough of us felt there was a strong enough option in the other direction to vote for it?

Moira Donegan wrote this about the US Inauguration, which felt very familar:

“There is something broken in the soul when such spectacles can no longer shock you. But I confess that they no longer shock me. America is ruled, now, by men who are extremely psychologically transparent: their resentment and greed, their desperate, seeking needfulness, their insecurity and rage at those who provoke it; these things seep off these men, like a stench. They are evil men, and pathetic ones: mentally small, morally ugly. They are relentlessly predictable.”

The second part to this may be “when people show you who they are, believe them”.

Another kind of beginning might be here. US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently commented that in chaos “moments emerge” as possibilities.

Maybe now is a beginning - deliberately seeking out and creating those moments.

Maybe now is a first - deliberately ensuring moments of change grow to become the kind that’s no longer a pendulum but a compass.