The Editor of The Daily Blog thinks we're stupid...

HERE'S THE EDITOR OF The Daily Blog , Martyn Bradbury, talking about me and possibly you, dear reader.

I despair at my fellow citizens most of the time. The cruelty that poses as social policy now is a disgrace for a country that once had a proud history of egalitarianism. Mass surveillance lies, Dirty Politics and an abuse of political power unlike we’ve ever seen is ignored by the majority of NZers benefiting from property speculation and Key’s depoliticisation of the role of Prime Minister.

How else can you explain near 50% support for National as their ideological experiments in Charter Schools, Social Housing and Private Prisons fail so publicly…

These comments are just one of numerous attacks made by Bradbury on his 'sleepy Hobbits'. They are mild compared to some of his more caustic 'observations'. If you want to read them - although I don't know why you would - just trawl through Bradbury's posts on The Daily Bradbury, I mean The Daily Blog.

There's an obvious arrogance and conceit at work here. You see, unlike me and obviously you, Bradbury is right. He's always right. The man who thinks socialists are 'unhappy people' knows what the political score is and he's the man with the answers that we all need. Those of us who aren't actually convinced by Bradbury's 'answers' are, of course, cavorting around in a swamp of stupidity of our own making. We're so stupid we haven't been invited to express our views on The Daily Blog.

Bradbury is so convinced of his political infallibility he isn't actually listening to anyone else.

At the last election very few of us voted for his ' progressive coalition' of Labour-Greens-NZ First- Internet Party and nearly a million of us (I was one of them) didn't bother to vote at all.

After Labour's third election defeat in a row you might of thought that Bradbury would have learnt something. But, less than a year later, he's again bagging everyone who won't support Labour. If the political debate starts and ends at the Labour Party then there is no debate at all.

But Bradbury is just displaying an incomprehensibility shared by  the Labour-leaning left that people actually want something to vote for- not just against. For the Unite Union or the International Socialist Organisation to continue to argue that its enough to say that Labour is the 'lesser  evil' simply highlights a huge disconnect from the very people they claim to represent.

However much Bradbury wants us to, we are just not going to vote into office a Labour Party whose idea of an alternative is merely tweaking the macro-economic settings a bit. That's not an alternative - that's just business as usual. As the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in Britain or Bernie Sanders in the United States indicates, there is a thirst for real change - not just a rearrangement of the personnel in the hallways of power.

But its easier just to blame 'stupid New Zealand' that obediently won't vote for Labour. Even when Labour is appointing one of the loyal servants of Rogernomics as its deputy leader it's still easier just to blame 'stupid New Zealand'.

But its not all Bradbury's fault. He's just perhaps one of the more visible proponents of clapped out Labourism. There are, of course, others. Like the bloggers on The Standard. And Chris Trotter - last seen wondering about the photo friendliness of Jacinda Arden, having moved on from his last 'bright' idea of getting hundreds of people to join Labour and somehow taking it over. Next week Trotter will be tilting at windmills.

In the end though Bradbury and his fellow travellers are just participants in the continued disintegration of social democratic politics. That project dominated New Zealand politics in the immediate post war era. Now it is no more. But as the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci said: 'The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.' And one of those morbid symptoms is the Labourism of people like Martyn Bradbury.

*Proud to be one of the many blocked on Twitter by Martyn Bradbury.

1 comments:

Comments are moderated.