Mythanthrope: Gutted

“Living is easy with eyes closed

Misunderstanding all you see….”

Lennon and McCartney

The Beatles song begins with “Let me take you down…..” and the 2014 general election results certainly did that. I am still feeling sick to the heart – and stomach. Gutted is a fair description of the way I and my friends are feeling.

First the brave Scots weren’t brave enough and then this massive King Tide in Aotearoa has inundated the Left, leaving only the very hardy Greens standing.

I feel utterly alienated from 2/3rds of my fellow citizens. These Right-leaning voters appear to be anti-intellectual, devoted to ball games and boat races, woefully and wilfully ignorant and uncaring of how power works.

John Key has a cloud of suspicion hanging over him, regarding his involvement in mass spying on his own citizens. He has clearly been lying to the public and as well, has been involved in gross smear campaigns against anyone who disagrees with him. He mangles his vowels and his diction is embarrassing. He seems to me a man of very little brain, but gifted with a specious charismatic charm that hides a prodigious cunning.

He is a mediocre man of bad character, a banker who trades away his own peoples’ rights as if they were currency, to big business and global interests.

Tissot's The Blind leading the Blind

Yet he holds the zeitgeist hostage and the group mind lumbers after Key, following him blind. Over a million slavish consumers voted for Team Key. We get in behind him at our peril – there’s a cliff ahead of our own making.

Now we have 3 more years of -

climate change denial;

favouring global big business over New Zealanders’ rights by signing the TPPA;

tax cuts for the rich and for corporations;

keeping the minimum wage as low as possible;

selling more of our state assets;

killing off the Maui Dolphin;

mining our National Parks, our sea beds and fracking our farmland;

blaming and punishing the poor;

watching food prices go on rocketing;

Nova Pay fiasco dragging onwards;

more charter schools; less money for public education;

more casinos;

dirty water and toxic rivers;

cutting health care;

legalising spying on New Zealanders;

more homeless;

more children in poverty;

privatising prisons and anything else they can;

closing rape centres;

conducting smear campaigns and backroom deals behind closed doors.

Driven by a deep-seated fear of change coupled with a deliberate blindness to see what is happening before their eyes, the electorate has granted the National Party the right to rule alone (for first time in our MMP system). 14000 people gave the tick to the toxic, discredited Judith Collins! They just popped the blindfold on their own eyes and pinned the tail on the donkey all by themselves.

Ship of Fools

Kiwis hate sheep jokes, but the truth is that we are just like the sheep that populate our farmlands. We’ve been rounded up, dipped in toxins, and transformed into a product for the establishment to do with us what they will.

History will deliver the ultimate verdict of this ‘victory” of Team Key. The Wheel of Fortune will turn fast and furious. It won’t be a pretty picture.