Sympathy for Amerika: The fall of the US and the rise of Trump explained through superhero comic books

Fiction is like a spiders web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible - Virginia Woolf


Its a tough time being Amerika these days, its no longer as popular abroad as it once was and it cant seem to get its act together at home either, what with all those mass shootings, sexual scandals and racial tension.

It seems like every time I call my brother and friends in Amerika or read the news the sureality of the situation just vomits in my lap as I try to compare what I hear and read about there with what I take for a relatively sane and stable life here in New Zealand.

And the figurehead for all of this Brand-X crazy is President Donald Trump.

However for those readers who are expecting me to now spazm out into some frothing liberal beat-up of Trump and the situation are going to be sorely disappointed as I am in fact going to revisit some of the sentiments from my now infamous rant from my Kiwipolitco days titled Watching it Bern: Why its OK to vote for Donald Trump* and specifically the linkage of ideas that I set down in the final paragraphs to describe the rise of then candidate Trump before his eventual election to El Presidente.

In short it’s the Arab Spring, US style, writ large across Western Democracies as average citizens come to realize that those who are supposed to represent them are not fulfilling the task they were elected to do and are now expressing extreme discontent by delivering spoiler candidates into the fold, not as a genuine alternate (although I think Sanders could have pulled that off until he turned Judas) but as a resoundingly Joker like solution to the failure of the system. As Alfred says in the Dark Knight, “Some people just want to watch the world burn”

And its that weird intersection of comic books and the decline of US democracy that I want to explore a bit further in this post.

So as I sit here sipping a cold Speights to help ward off the residual heat of the day and with the Doobie Brothers and Herbie Mann on the turntable let us go deeper into the initially bizarre idea that the US now has a comic book villain for president but that no hero or heroine in tights and a cape is coming to save them.

Our guide for this acceptably twisted excursion into the tenuous is the idea that fact and fiction has blurred and in the paraphrased words of Marshal Mcluhan the medium has become the message as democracy in the Home of Brave has withered to such a point that a hyper-real media being (that being Senor Trump of the reality TV show The Apprentice fame) has ascended to the top job of president in a such an appropriately bizarre set of circumstances as to be worthy of the plot of a comic book.

And if you think that I am the only one making this connection then guess again, as even if you exclude the obvious form of political cartoonists who must be thanking their lucky stars for being sent such an obvious muse in the form of Trump, there is a whole other range of people who are either noting the repeated appearances of Trump in comic books or using old comic book covers in juxtaposition with actual Trump quotes to highlight how much he actually sounds like a stock comic book villain.

So just as the superbly surreal use of stock cartoon images in David Rees's Get Your War On was used in the 2000s to pick apart and mock then President Dubya Bush and all of US foreign policy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan (hence the cartoons title) so too are the paradoxically subtle, yet obvious, links between Trump and comic books, and specifically those featuring super heroes and villains, are being used to highlight the dark state of the Land of Free in a way that simply speaking truth to power could never achieve.

And it seems highly appropriate that the Fugs Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon Oct. 21, 1967 has just kicked in on the stereo as its exactly that kind of comedic and satirical tone, which has become the tone for the Trump Presidency (as well as its commentators), and the now assured decline of Amerika, that should be kept in mind when trying to fathom who or what Trump is.

Because as much as people like to blame Trump for all the evil in the US today the brutal truth is that Trump is not the cause but the symptom of the disease (as I noted in my KP post) that has consumed The City on the Hill and left it hollow.

And through the medium of superhero comics we can chart the rise and fall of Amerika, Donald Trump and the super-hero comic medium itself by examining the genre, its history and those that were involved in it.

And for me personally, comics, both super-hero and otherwise, were a major part of my youth, teens and early 20s, as they, along with books, music and video games, were the staple diet of my mental life at that time and continue to exert an influence on me (as anyone who has ever visited my house can attest) so to help illustrate my point I will be drawing on four comic book writers/artists who not only had a major influence on me but also the genre.

Jack Kirby

First up is Jack Kirby (1917 – 1994) who is one of the true creators of the medium. And while you may not know who Kirby is its more than likely that you know of the characters that he created, or co-created, such as The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Ironman, Doctor Doom and many many more from watching their exploits on the big screen via the movies of the Marvel universe.

Kirby worked through the gold, silver, bronze and modern ages of comics and was one of the defining creators and shapers of the medium who not only drew his characters but also wrote many of the stories to go with them (my favorite being The Eternals). Kirby was also part of the generation that served in World War Two and helped to draw the famous comic cover of Captain America (another character who Kirby also helped create) punching Hitler.

The impact and importance of Jack Kirby on the medium of comics and super-heroes cannot be overstated and even today in movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor:Ragnarok his influence can be seen in both the bold use of colors and visual style (a Kirby trademark) as well as many of the ideas and aspects of the stories.

However, at the time Kirby was helping to create the Pantheon of the super-hero universe, comic books in general were not seen as a respectable medium to work in, or read, and were in fact viewed by 1940s and 1950s Amerika as a dangerous and corrupting influence on youth, as detailed in Fredrick Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent.

Comics as a threat to youth

At that time super hero comics were not the dominant part of the comic book medium (that would come later) and characters like the newly created Superman (the first American Jesus) and Batman had to compete with a variety of other characters and comics which covered genres like crime, horror, romance, science fiction, war and westerns and which often included rather dark and adult subject matter in their art and writing.

And in early 1950s Amerika, with McCarthyism, the second Red Scare and the rising specter of the Cold War, its seemed only appropriate to the authorities to clamp down on what seemed like a dangerous threat to the nation’s youth with the introduction of the Comics Code, an ostensibly voluntary code for publishers to adhere to but in reality, for nearly 30 years, a de-facto censor of almost all comic content in the US.

The Comics Code toned down, or removed, all content which was deemed sexual, violent, portrayed drug and alcohol or any issue not deemed wholesome to 1950s Amerikan morals and was used to both suppress and homogenize super-hero comics into a format which often could lapse into stale and generic formulas/plots with cookie cutter villains, and a somewhat boring succession of costumed hero's, each with some gimmick or power but otherwise little else to distinguish them.

An example of this is how Batman was reduced from the hyper violent, ultra-rich, playboy vigilante that he started out as (including using guns), who was himself a toned down copy of another comic book and radio serial character called The Shadow, into the safe, trad and non-threatening character which was portrayed by Adam West in the campy 1960s TV show Batman**. 

The shift from darker and edgier to safe, clean and neat was seen across the comics format at the time and it took over 20 years for the first real breaks with the code to occur which happened in parallel with the social and sexual revolutions that were taking place in the US at that time and while comic creators were always able to find ways to sneak in supposedly subversive content, it was not until the 1970s that the code was first challenged in the mainstream.

Yong Donald

It was about this time that a young man named Donald J Trump was making his first steps into the world. Born in 1946 Trumps formative years were during the 1950s and early 60s and while there is no evidence I can find to show that he read comics what is clear though, from his twitter and TV statements, is that Donald is a creature of media (remember Marshal McLuhan) and not only the medium but also the message with a near 24/7 twitter stream, claims of fake news and a galaxy of statements which bear little connection to reality.

Growing up in 1950s Amerika as the scion of the privileged elite means that Trump not only has those aspects of the baby-boomers which saw them called the "Me Generation" but also was insulated from almost all of the upheaval of the 50s, 60s and 70s by his families wealth, which enabled him to do things like avoid the draft and get the kind of head start in life (a million dollar loan from his father) that only those born with a silver spoon in their mouth can have.

Steve Ditko

While it’s not known if Trump read comics as a child, if he did it is more than likely that he would have been read one of the most famous comics of all time, that of the teenage superhero Spiderman which was created by Steve Ditko (born 1927) and Stan Lee.

Spiderman was a hero unlike many of his contemporaries, who were obvious alpha males, as his secret identity, Peter Parker, was a shy, bookish high school student who would be considered a nerd by any standards and Spiderman himself was often mocked by his foes as weak and hounded by the press as a menace to society.

For readers, the teenage challenges of high school, social pressures and romance were often mixed in with normal super-hero fare where the greatest threat to Spiderman was not always some new villain but whether Peter would be able to take his date to the high school dance.

This youthful focus helped readers identify with Spiderman in a way that they never could with Ubermench characters like Superman or Batman who were clear specimens of peak masculinity, seemingly unbeatable and also untroubled by any morally ambiguous thoughts regarding the worthiness of their cause (as happened more than once with Spiderman).

This combination of teenage struggle and the more normal superhero antics gave Spiderman a depth which was often much greater than characters like Superman or Batman where the action was almost relentlessly on their hero antics with only a bare nod to their characters “normal” lives. Peter had to worry about getting good grades, looking after his aging aunt and later paying the bills as he went to university and worked as a freelance photographer.

And Ditko, like Kirby, worked through the various comic book ages and also like Kirby served his country in the Army before going into comics and while Kirby's visual style was bold with strong colours and simple lines Ditko had a surreal style which often placed the characters he created deep into the uncanny valley but could also burn those images into ones memory, especially in his work in the areas of horror and suspense.

Finally, like Kirby, Ditko had a hand in shaping not only many of the characters of the Marvel universe but also that of Marvels rival DC as well as many smaller comic publishers and helped to make the comic book super-hero genre what it was.

Comic book Super-heroes as Amerikan Gods

Super-hero comics are a uniquely Amerikan art form, similar to Jazz and mass shootings, which are not only a reflection of the culture which created them but also of the time and circumstances in which they were created.

And with the turn of the 20^th century and the monstrous catastrophes of the First World War, the Wall Street Crash and the great Depression, traditional American religious figures such as Jesus and God seemed no longer sufficient avatars to the younger generations and so the time was right for new gods to rise and take their place.

Early super hero comics were almost exclusively devoted to fighting crime and the fact that they wore masks and costume, had miraculous powers and acted outside of the law clearly made them vigilantes in an intoxicating image of an individual taking (back) power into their own hands when the situation demanded it.

But just as in science every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction so to for all the costumed do-gooders out there with each hero or heroine having an equally powered nemesis’s in the form of super-villains. Batman has the Joker, Superman has Lex Luthor, Spiderman has the Hobgoblin and every other cape wearing character worth their salt had someone who acted as their moral opposite and in doing so filled out the pantheon of gods and demons that super hero comics had become.

The decline, fall and rebirth of superheroes

By the 1970s superhero comics were on the wane from their heyday in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. The dynamic of men and women in tights and capes fighting the same endless roster of criminals was stale and comic writers were starting to introduce topics such as drug use, sexuality and racism; issues which the US was then facing, but which were all flying in the face of the comic’s code restrictive dictates.

In 1983, Superman was now 45 years old, so to speak, having first been published in 1938, and the intervening 45 years had seen Amerika shift from Franklin Delano Roosevelt leading the US out of the Great Depression and into World War Two to 1980s Corporate Amerika, the lingering stench of failure in Vietnam, Watergate and the Cold War antics of Ronald Regan yet Superman was still battling Lex, dating Lois as he always had despite the massive cultural and social shifts that Amerika had been through in those 45 years.

The result was the Bronze Age of comics (the period roughly form 1970 to 1985) saw declines in sales and interest as other media, like video games, captured the imaginations of youth while comics and their often staid stories and formats seemed boring as at the end of each story (or story arc) nothing had changed and the comic book dynamic seemed trapped in a limbo of endless repetition.

By the early 1980s comics superhero comics and comics in general seemed to have become mired in a time and space which, while looking modern, seemed to come from the 1930s; with the two big publishers Marvel and DC Comics now corporate entities in themselves and seemingly more worried about the bottom line than their characters or their stories and with the genre, now firmly established and having no new stories to tell, was thusly sliding into boring cliché.

And there is a reason why 1985 is considered the year in which the Bronze age of comics ended and the Modern or Dark age of comics began, and continues to this day as it was around this time that two writers took it upon themselves to revolutionise comics as we know it by not only killing dead some of the core, but restrictive, mechanics of the super hero genre but also by revolutionising super hero comics and pave the way for the current climate where comic book sales can still be dicey but where superhero movies are a worldwide phenomenon.

Killing what you love

First up is Alan Moore and his seminal work Watchmen which is both a deconstruction of the whole super hero narrative as well as a warts and all celebration of what made them so exciting to read in the first place.

In short Moore torn down the very ideals on which superheroes had been built by showing how clichéd the idea of an individual dressed in a costume fighting crime had become and then gave it life again by creating his own superhero characters based of the now familiar archetypes of Jesus-hero (superman), detective-hero (batman), sexy-hero (wonder woman***), the Anti-hero and vigilante-hero; setting them in their own universe (as oppose to the standard practice of placing them in either the DC or the Marvel continuum) and then exploring the logical conclusions of each archetypes and by highlighting the thoughts and motivations of each archetype (for example, think of how young Bruce Wayne witnessing the murder of his parents would have shaped him into batman and what effect that had on his psyche).

By the end of its 12 issue run Watchmen had destroyed the status quo, even if the status quo did not know it, and heralded the end of the Bronze Age of comics. Also, for the record, Watchmen is possibly the first ever graphic novel and even made it onto the Times list of 100 best novels of the modern age. Its effect has lessened somewhat in this day and age by the Zac Synder’s unwatchable move based on the comic and the fact that the legions of comics that came in its wake have obscured that which blazed the trail.

Bringing back the Bat

However it was not Moore that delivered the killing blow to the medium but another writer, Frank Miller, with his explosive four issue series of Batman comics called The Dark Knight Returns.

In DKR Miller did something that was almost unheard of, by letting his character age, and portraying Batman as a 55 year old coming out of 10 years retirement to battle his equally aged foes before finally engaging in a showdown with Superman. In the story Batman is shown suffering the effects of his advanced age on his crime fighting abilities along with the kind of doubts and worries that any person dealing with the generation gap would have.

But Miller did not stop there, as he broke the long established comic book convention of heroes not killing their nemeses (one of the cardinal rules of superhero comics as in doing so it destroys the balance of the supposedly immortal pantheon) by having Batman kill the Joker before donning a robotic Batsuit to beat superman to a pulp (with the help of some green kryptonite) and thus symbolicly destroying another (that of the invincibility of such a character) unspoken rule of the medium as well.

Done in Millers signature style and overlaid with images of a world awash in hyper-media and uncontrolled violence (both crime and war) The Dark Knight Returns was highly influential and single-handeledly brought back Batman as the dark, brooding psychopath that he originally was and served as the inspiration for Tim Burton,s Batman blockbuster film that kick started the modern age of super hero movies.

A new/old model

By the mid-1980s the situation with comics had gotten so bad that many of the artists and writers who had helped create many of the most popular comics and characters of the medium had realized they were being ripped off and moved to form their own companies where they retained creative control and were aptly compensated for their work.

This led to companies like Image and Valiant entering the market and for the first half of the 90s challenging Marvel and DC for dominance before eventually falling back as the speculative comics boom of the 90s proved to be the death knell of super-hero comics until their partial revival in the 2010s with the explosion, and success, of the Marvel Universe movies.

And the 90s comics speculation boom is emblematic of the very worst practices of late stage capitalism which would be late seen in the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008. 

In essence the creator owned studios had, for a time, “a license to print money” and did so by flooding the market with a horde of generic characters and stories which were often written and draw by those that had worked at Marvel of DC but were now simply using their creative freedom to churn out bland knock-offs of the characters they were working on when employed by the Big Two.

Making this worse was the fact that speculators were buying up first editions of these new comics thinking that they would turn out to be as valuable as first editions of Superman, Spiderman and Batman were, while missing the fact that it was often the rarity of said editions which made them valuable and rendered the value of the hundreds of newly printed comics and characters to less than the pulp they were printed on and a practice which remains to this day.

By the end of the 90s Marvel and DC had survived but more as copyright holders than producers of comics and upstarts like Valiant and Image had either broken up or been reduced to churning out the same old generic superhero crap that had proliferated in the 1970s with the big two and thus come complete full circle but with characters no one cared about and no Miller or Moore et al to save them as the public's taste for comics shifted to things other than people running round in their underwear to fantasy, horror and crime (as seen in popular comic lines such as The Sandman, Hellblazer and  the superbly excellent 100 Bullets) and away from the comic book format to graphic novels.

This economic dynamic, that of hype and marketing mixed with market saturation and lack of innovation, led to comics crash and the dotcom bubble at about the same time and were engineered by individuals and companies that might have been in different markets but marching to the beat of the same retarded drum.

So how do we explain the link between superhero comics and Donald Trump?

The answer to this question can be found in the economic dynamics that helped give rise to the artistic restrictions that Moore and Miller were destroying in Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, and which were the same waters from what would emerge the Donald Trump we all know and loath, which is, for want of a better word, neo-liberalism.

Leaving aside the cultural and artistic issues which have bedeviled comics since their inception the biggest problem which comics ever faced has been that of creators rights which do predate the rise of the cult of unrestrained capitalism but which came to the fore in that time, when dodgy business practices built up over the decades before saw publishers like Marvel and DC, as corporate entities, jealously guarding the rights to the characters, art and stories other individuals had created and actively screwing the writers and artists out of their fair share.

Or, in other words, not actually creating anything new but simply gaining rent off a property that they did not really own but had successfully stolen.

Both Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko (along with many others) had to fight to get back art work they created and receive full and fair credit for characters and stories they had a hand in, with both men changing between the big two more than once in their careers before either working with independent publishers or having enough clout to be fully acknowledged for what they brought to the medium.

Trump as comic book villain and comics as cultural capital

And it’s finally here where we can start to look at the larger economic and political system in the US and see the rise of an individual like Trump to president and the shift from comics as things that you buy and read to heavily trademarked and copyrighted characters as having connections and correlations.

Are they hard core links, no they are not but I as I have said before Trump is not the cause but the symptom of the disease, or to use a another phrase, Trump is blowback, Trump is the consequence of the gutting of both the US economy and political system for vested interests that operated like that of a parasite or cancer on its host just as the state of super hero comics today is a product of the industries own crappy dealings and practices.

Comics in this context are billion dollar industry today in every area except the actual sales of comics. The movies and the licensing of long established characters to products and games is a highly lucrative area but comics themselves are now a niche medium. With no new super heroes, and not even existentially god awful shows like the Big Bang Theory can fix that.

Comics have become a billion dollar plank that is helping to prop up a failing Hollywood studio system and US economy but is no longer creating anything new or innovating.

Comics, and their characters are an image, not a thing, they are an intellectual property that has morphed from something real that is produced or made to a highly restrictive intellectual property that no longer lives and breathes but is instead being milked, like a Fonterra dairy cow, for all it is worth before being cast aside.

And in this sense Trump is exactly the same, the idea of the presidency has be successively undermined over the last 50 years by dodgy presidents, their creepy minions and illegal acts that ate away at the trust of the public while money infested the system and left it a hollow image with no substance and ripe for buyout by large corporations that create nothing but simply exploit their property for the rent it can generate.

Just as comics were bought out and exploited for their image so too has the office of the president been bought out and exploited and Trump is just the poster boy for that, the Gordon Gecko for politics if you will.

The fact that Trump behaves and acts like a comic book super villain only just adds to the turgid image that the presidency has become.

*-And for those with the stomach I recommend the comments section of that little saga to actual see the verbal play by play as I effectively cross swords with Pablo from KP and blog my self right of KP, which in retrospect turned out as a good thing as otherwise I would not have started this blog

**-That said I grew up watching Batman and still love West’s both comedic and subversive portrayal of Batman and the show which could appeal to both children and adults.

***-whose image as an empowering superhero for women was undermined by her BDSM origins.

Sharks in the goldfish bowl: Anatomy of the Golriz Ghahraman “Scandal”

Have a listen and lend and ear

Here’s a song now if you care

We can all just hum along

Words don’t matter anymore

Adhesive by Stone Temple Pilots

In the wake of the recent election I had been enjoying my sabbatical out of the piss filled paddling pool that is NZ politics until I was rudely disturbed by the growing cacophony that we can now title the Golriz Ghahraman “Scandal”.

And it’s important that readers note the quotation marks around the word scandal lest they think that this is actually a scandal and not just another hype fuelled week of media manipulation because the facts of this attention grabbing distraction are rather simple and can be summed up as follows.

Yes, Golriz did serve on the defense team for a Rwandan genocide criminal BUT the cornerstone of any rule-of-law based legal system is the right to a fair trial which includes defense counsel.

On the flipside however Ghahraman was definitely not clear in her previous statements about what she was doing in Rawanda and posing for smiling photos with a genocide war criminal is not a good look for any peace-loving Green MP (perhaps a National MP but not a Green one).

Also not good looking for a Green MP, is her involvement in defending another Rwandan war criminal, currently hiding in NZ (along with two other Rwandans, wanted for war crimes, in which has now become the worst kept secret in Wellington) and her actions in this area would be much more newsworthy that what she did at the Hague.

So there you have it, lawyer acts in the defense of war criminal at their trail BUT fails to clearly establish her exact role in that trial AND continues to have links with the war criminal community in NZ (of which there is more than you would suspect). 

So while it’s not a good look for her, it’s not exactly scandal material is it, and in fact, such hypocritical behavior is par for the course for politicians/lawyers/car-salespeople of any stripe (her and the Greens now included since their +5 magical cloak of morality has been removed thanks to the Greens pre-election failures and screw ups).

What might be more newsworthy, in this instance, is how and why former Labour staffer Phil Quinn decided here and now to fire off the fatal tweets that started this clickbait time waster as none of the information about Ghahraman was particular new so why did Quinn choose this time to take her to task for her pervious behaviour?

And while we are asking questions how exactly did his tweet come to the attention of the media (is his twitter feed the only one in Wellington worth reading?) and why did they run with this story, at this angle rather than any other (like the questions I have just asked) before deciding to make this a front page item and start the inevitable swarm that followed.

No it’s really the media, and their predictable seven day media scrummage around these things, which is what this post is about because in a week where the Police decided not to prosecute anyone for the 123 people dead in the CTV building collapse and things like the TPPA (and its noxious provisions) are still lurking around (followed by a cross party spat in select committee) what one Green MP did in the past pales by degree.

But, once the NZ political media engages its gears and focuses in on an issue the whole kit and caboodle starts churning and starts a cascading media avalanche which cannot be stopped and has predictable consequences and outcomes for those caught up in it.

Note: the following four paragraphs are best read while listing to or imaging the musical theme from Jaws playing (link provided for your entertainment).

First it’s the initial round of mainstream headlines that "frame" the scandal and put the scent of blood in the water. Then the issue is picked up and sent round the local internet via a torrent of quick links in emails and texts before the local blogs sink their teeth in and start laying out the range of acceptable opinions and positions for people to take and late spout to their friends and co-workers.

Next the media seize their prey and drag them down for interviews and opinion pieces (think the well paid talking heads that pollute your screens in the morning or near the letters page in the paper) while other lesser predators (think some of the more vitriolic and partisan blogs and talk back radio) move in to snatch at any scraps that remain.

Then the whole thing starts to get torn apart in a frenzy of media blurts, via Twitter and Facebook, as other parties are caught up in the feeding and dragged, kicking and screaming, into now swirling mass of thrashing, bubbling red water (think James Shaw deciding to take the blame for Golriz’s bio on the Green website and Quinn’s denial over his “genocide denier” claim).

Then the whole things catharticly peaks before people lose interest and begin to prepare for their weekends (as these stories have a habit of always kicking off at the start of the week and playing themselves out by the Friday) leaving behind nothing but a fading red stain in the water, some bits of flesh which rapidly sink out of sight and the fading strains of John Williams score.

Therefore the questions remain: why did an ex Labour staffer decide to take a Green MP to task over her previous career (and lets not get hung up on the "Phil Quinn was in Rwanda narrative" too much) and why did the NZ political media decide that this would be the “Big” story of the week and not focus on the larger issues (like the CTV building, TPPA or actual Rwandan war criminals hiding out in NZ)?

The answer to these questions can be found in the simple facts that, like any good tabloid, sensational headlines sell better than more mundane ones and that the 24/7 cycle of news demands an ongoing stream of push button journalism to keep the punters attention from flagging and Phil Quinn’s inflammatory comment that Ghahraman was a "genocide denier" was more than enough to set this thing off and push any other story back off center stage.

And the worst offender, in this instance, was Stuff which seemed to have devolved to verbatium “reporting” of the story rather than elevating its focus while the NZ Herald, in this instance, seemed to be able to have some perspective on things while the best of the lot was Duncan Garners interview of Ghahraman which did in fact touch on some of the larger issues here but still found time to sensationalize it for the stay home parent crowd.

However it’s also telling that the original “source” for this story (note those quotation marks again) is an "ex Labour staffer" (because almost every article on this led off with that very important qualifier) who just happened to be taking a shot at a member of the Green party in the wake of the same Green party saying they won’t be supporting the Labour government over the TPPA (and potentially forcing Labour to face up the highly unpalatable option of linking sweaty hands with National to pass any TTPA legislation) and thereby right out of the gate weakening the foundations of what labour had thought was a sown up coalition government.

In fact Quinn seemed to be taking his cues from the Media Whores handbook (ala Trump and much of the US political media) by first firing off inflammatory tweets labeling her a “genocide denier”, then later denying he had said such a thing (incredibly stupid in the age of internet) before later admitting that he had, which then sunk his credibility on the matter to zero.

But the NZ Political media circus is also very complicit (2017 word of the year) in this behavior by deciding that this week’s talking point was going to be a verbatim regurgitation of Quinn’s tweets, knowing full well (and with obviously endorsement from their editors) that this was going to play out as it did and suck up the public's limited attention for the five days while they were distracted from other, more important, matters.

Of course, by the end of the week, Quinn’s retraction of his genocide denier claim or revelations of Rwandan war criminals actually living in NZ has had no effect on the original style and substance of the story (or its smear effect on Ghahraman and the Greens) as it’s too late, the damage has been done. 

And the more I think about it the more this has all the hall marks of a carefully orchestrated political hit on the Greens to remind them of their place in the coalition pecking order (that being the bottom) but also to keep them on the back foot by slinging more post-election mud onto their already fragile political reputation when the Shaw is desperately trying to keep his head down and rebuild the party.

Again, I wish to say that the real story regarding Ghahraman is her defending of a Rwandan war criminal hiding out in NZ (and the how and why said war criminal even got here) and not what she did at the Hague while the larger issues of Rwandan war criminals hiding out in NZ or the Police not prosecuting over the CTV building should have been what stirred the media pot this week.

So in the end the NZ media (and their respective news cycle) are likes sharks packed into a goldfish bowl, a media frenzy over some tiny goldfish while the real catch gets way, again.

Elections 2017: We are all socialists now, Comrade!

Welcome Comrade, to glorious October revolution of Democratic People’s Republic of New Zealand!

Here, we have smashed chains which shackle us to oppressive capitalist system and freed our brothers and sisters from servitude to decadent bankers and corrupt real-estate agents.

Now is time of glorious worker utopia where housing cheap and Kiwi can be free forever.

In Democratic People’s Republic of New Zealand running dog capitalists and their puppet forces have been driven into the sea by power of people, never to return*.

Of course the above four sentences are probably causing confusion among some at this time.

Firstly because I am off my meds (doctors’ orders) and as such I have lapsed back into my political junkie habits, like a National party member at a Chinese buffet stuffed with Renminbi, so what better way to sum up the recent election outcome than with some sort of over the top screed which is clearly not true but fun to write.

Secondly, because more astute readers will have noted that those first four sentences are complete gibberish as they have not happened, yet; and the third group will be confused why I am unable to recognise the danger such a revolution poses and have not joined them mounting a counter revolution.

And depending on which one of those confusions you have will be how you view the outcome of the 2017 election.

This is also the last post in the Elections 2017 series and as such it’s time to turn from the how and why of the election to considering the future of this government, and by proxy New Zealand.

What, you didn’t see this coming?

Last month in October Winston Peters finally got off the pot and decided that he was going to back Labour and announced this by saying that “capitalism needed to regain its human face”.

On the face of things it was an extraordinary statement to make in this day and age, let alone at a press conference announcing a new government, as many people only know capitalism in the same way that a fish knows water and by extension could not even conceive of or criticize the very element in which they swim or even more heretical consider that there might be some sort of alternative (which for a fish would be developing lungs and legs and walking on dry land while for capitalists it would be effective regulation and not prioritizing economics over people).

I was almost expecting him to rip open his trademark double-breasted suit to reveal a Che Guevara T-shirt underneath and then don a red beret, mirrored sunglasses and a bullet belt while strutting about the stage pointing out how the CIA sponsored Bay of Pigs** invasion force had been stopped at the beach head.

Of course he had signaled the same no less than a few months prior by shooting down the “irresponsible capitalism” of other political parties but no one was taking him seriously then, at least not in that context. 

No, the only thing which mattered then was which way would Winston jump come the election and nobody (myself included) was thinking that we were going to have to factor some ideological component into what has always been the highly capricious decision making of Winston Peters.

Yet there he was, making it clear that he had been a socialist all along and as such would be siding with his brothers and sisters in Labour (and the Greens) in forming the new government.

I suppose that after letting his populist mojo run itself out in the last 15 years, Winston has found it again, with a vengeance.

Ve came second!

It was of course at that moment that some reported the faint but audible sound of screaming coming from the offices of Bill English as the political rug was pulled out from under his feet and he fell (still screaming) into the political abyss, because up to that moment Peters had been playing his cards very very close to his chest, leaving both public and the media guessing, in all but the most obtuse and opaque ways.

So National was pipped at the post and for a few days there were some rather pissy comments from them; rumblings of a stolen election and how “they had won the most votes” along with some moaning from the public about MMP before the shock wore off and the next stage in the grieving process began.

And to be fair National had a point to complain…oh now wait a minute NO they didn’t!

National (or anyone else) moaning about the election outcome based on them getting the most single vote share would be perfectly acceptable in a FPP system. However we are not in a FPP system and have not been for 21 years so Bill and the B Team griping about their 44% not being enough sounds like Germany refusing to accept losing in WW2 by saying “Ve came second.”

But more seriously, what really killed Nationals chances were far more personal than Winston turning out to be a card carrying member of the Fourth International, as his recent serving of legal papers on the party and others shows.

Nationals following the advice of right wing political consultants Crosby Textor to hurl as many dead cats on the table as possible in the final weeks of the election turned out to be the kind of low rent brainless stunt that loses you the election because it did not thing but piss him off, get his blood up and drive him straight into the arms of Labour.

It might have worked in a highly partisan political climate and a FPP system but in NZ the targeting of Winston, via his superannuation underpayments (as well as idiotic moves like Steven Joyce claiming he had all the economic facts when every other economist in NZ was saying he did not know what orifice he was speaking out of) were clearly the kind of motivation Peters needed to make up his mind and showed that National had no idea of what the inevitable logic of targeting the king maker with muck was.

As Omar Little from The Wire says, “You come at the King, you best not miss”.

National and English have made a brave front of things by saying they will hold the new government to account and that English will lead the party into the 2020 election but not even the most hard core party member would be hard pressed to believe that English will be fronting the party in 2020***.

Radical or Sensible Left?

The late Rodney Bickerstaffe was once asked what kind of Leftist he was (with the assumption being that he was a radical leftist because he was a Prominent Union Leader who had fought for fairer wages and denounced inequality). His reply was that he was “Sensible Left” which summed up his (and his unions) position perfectly.

Sensible Left could also be used to apply to apply to the current Labour/Greens/NZ First government as its clear that despite the potential for personality clashes there has been a rather pragmatic understanding all round of the reality facing them, not just politically but socially and economically.

And the core of this understanding is that it’s not just enough to form a government and rest on ones laurels but rather there was more ideological common ground than there was not and that if egos could be put aside (or at least toned down) then this troika of political parties not only had more in common than not but that they were all closer to each other than to National.

But in an election process where the loyalty and scruples of James Shaw and the Greens to the leftist cause was brought into question while Winston and NZ First has walked out of the teargas like a Greek riot-dog nothing could be taken for granted so it was an unexpected surprise that not only did Winston go with Jacinda but that the Greens were not cut out of government (like had been feared); proof if ever there can be that miracles can occur.

However it’s the next three years that will reveal the real flavor of this rather unusual political Ice-Kachang and I don’t expect that time to pass without incident or issue but as long as the core ideals behind the union of those three parties remains then this government can work.

Thus despite reported strains of freak-out, both before and after the election, that Jacinda was a “communist” or that “a Labour/NZ First government will be bad for business” because of their “smash the market” ideals the reality is that there is a strong narrative behind what they are doing as Winstons re-introduction of “capitalism” back into the NZ political lexicon shows.

So for the immediate future The Road to Serfdom is off the political book shelf and replaced with a new copy of The Great Transformation which for those who are CBB:DNR means that the narrative of an unfettered market and deregulated government is over while market regulation and interventionist government are back on the agenda.

And as V from Vendetta so eloquently explains there is more beneath the mask than just flesh, there is an idea and “ideas are bulletproof”; so for members of the John Key fan club (previously known as the ANZ Board) the biggest threat to them is not an angry mob breaking into the winter palace and dragging them out to the street (although it would be nice to see for once) but the ideas that provide the words which are the fire of revolution and resistance and with Winston declaring that capitalism needs a face-lift the revolution in little old NZ has begun.

The Empire strikes back!

Yet for every successful revolution there is always a potential counter-revolution in the works. We have not woken up from Smiths Dream just yet and I expect both National and members of the business community to keep on hurling deceased felines onto the table in an effort to shock the public into a backlash that can be milked for a political comeback in 2020.

But for that game to work the current government arrangement has to not only fail but also not be seen to try and deliver on its promises and so far (granted it is early days) Jacinda, Winston and James seem to want to continue as they have started with a raft of new policy ideas which are all clearly aimed at rectifying the previous imbalances in NZ society brought about by National and Neo-Liberalism, at as soon as possible and not by 2040.

If there was some sort of ideological schism that National could exploit then it would be even odds of National in 2020**** but so far there is no schism and the language and syntax of the three parties are mostly in alignment (if having their own distinct core issues and overlapping side interests) due to their harmonious articulation of Nationalist vs Internationalist sentiments.

I am sure that Bill English, when not prying the made in China knives out of his back, will be doing his best to attack this new government but all this beautiful three headed creature has to do (and as Jacinda has already done) is point out that the problems that they are solving were created by National and their nine years of mismanagement and Bills words will turn to ashes in his mouth.

So Sensible Left it is and the only radicals in sight are National and ACT still trying to pretend like its 1993.

Back to life, back to reality, back to the future!

However you want it or need it the mood of the nation is not one of Trump like dissent or Brexit discord in the wake of the 2017 election, nor is it like the Arab Spring with the heady rush of democratic blood to a post authoritarian head followed by reactionary spasms of the body politic (such as in Egypt or Syria).

Instead what has happened is the pendulum has finally swung back from its rather violent shift in 1984. NZ is not going to return to the past of being a highly socialist democracy but rather steer into the future of a democratic sovereign state which is willing to address its own issues and illness by reducing inequality and market dominance and ironically protecting the very people and things (the market and New Zealand’s elites) that would be most affected should revolution actually occur.

Populism did rear its head in NZ but as we have sufficient democratic buffering (via MMP) to prevent the results triggering partisan feuding or violence in the streets we got political pragmatism and the courage to do what is needed instead.

So the revolution did occur and it was televised and Elections 2017 has been a long strange trip to write with all the drama one could ask for (not that I did). I had my ups and downs and very nearly lost my marbles as I delved as deep into politics as I did with the US election in 2000 and the coronation of King George Bush the Younger but I made it through and am genuinely happy with the outcome despite still not trusting politicians or noting that incoming PM Jacinda Ardern gets paid more than any other leader in the free world (at $500,000 plus a year).

NZ politics gets a break for the next few posts while I honour my promises to write what I was requested to write and get back to some of my other ideas for things to blog about.

Until then I leave you with little song to remind you it’s good morning for Aotearoa and springtime for Democracy.

Vootie!

*-For full effect watch this video, keep the accent in mind and then reread those four sentences again.

**-Or should that be the Bay of Plenty

***-As the NZ Herald notes (see ****)

****-If it can sort out its leadership issue/crisis

NOTE: title for this post stolen/plagiarized/copyright infringed from a 2008 article in the Telegraph