This past week
has been a fairly momentous one in many ways. Not only for the wider world and
all of the barely anticipated political upheaval, but also for the small dot at
the bottom of the South Pacific where everythingsgonegreen resides … aka The
Shaky Isles, Aotearoa, New Zealand, which unfortunately, over the past 48
hours, has very much lived up to its former moniker after being rocked by a
series of fairly large earthquakes. The largest of those measuring 7.5 on the
Richter scale (or 7.8, depending on where you look), claiming two lives,
cutting off a large chunk of the upper South Island, and causing major
disruption to the nation’s capital. The more than 1,500-plus aftershocks
continue as I type this.
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| Train to Doomsville |
This kind of
thing – seismic activity where you’re simply at the mercy of Mother Nature –
certainly helps to provide perspective on all of those other rather
insignificant issues in our daily lives, things we often deem to be important
beyond all proportion. When in fact, in light of continually feeling unsafe and
under threat from a power none of us has any real understanding of, those
things aren’t really all that important at all.
The impact of the
major earthquake was further exacerbated over the following 48 hours by a
fairly large storm – torrential rain and 140kmph winds – which resulted in
flooding, land slips (as the earth continued to move), road closures, and yet more
mayhem. Without wanting to overstate it, or appear overly dramatic, it offered
a (hopefully) brief glimpse into what it must feel like to live in a war zone,
when you’re trying to go about your daily business and live life as “normally”
as possible, but never quite know what to expect next. Nerves are frayed, loved
ones are traumatised, and more significantly, all of the major emergency
services are stretched in ways they’re never really fully designed to be. And
people end up – by default – operating on very little sleep, which can become a
serious issue in itself.
With the
heavens opening from above, and the earth moving beneath our feet, it is a
little bit like living inside an automatic washing machine permanently set on endlessly
repeating the rinse and spin cycles.
None of that is
meant to undermine or trivialise the real horror of life for people in places
like Aleppo or Mosul, nor indeed the many hundreds of other war zones or
hotspots across the globe, where serious loss of life is a daily reality. That,
of course, is much worse. Natural disasters tend to come and go (fingers
crossed), yet man’s own capacity to destroy his fellow man isn’t ever quite so relenting
or forgiving … *waves fist at the sky*.
Which brings me
to Donald Trump and the climate of fear he managed to successfully exploit in
order to become the most improbable President of the USA we’ve ever seen.
The first thing
we must acknowledge is that democracy – or at least a form of it – had its day,
and if you believe in democracy, then you must accept that Trump was fairly elected.
In the same way we would have accepted it if the flawed but not nearly as
dangerous Hillary Clinton had been deemed worthy. Whether I think that was a wise
move by the evidently hard-of-thinking wider American populace is irrelevant,
but putting on my rather ill-fitting feminist hat, it’s hard to fathom that the
most qualified woman in history missed out on the top job to a 70-year-old man
with an orange face, unfeasibly bad hair, and absolutely no previous
experience.
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| It's this big ... his job experience, that is |
A lot has been
made of the media’s role in the election and how a vote for Trump was not only
a vote for change, not only a vote against the political “establishment”, but
also a vote against the mainstream media, which, just as with the
insular-looking Brexit debacle earlier this year, completely misread the mood
of the people. There’s a school of thought that the media was biased in favour
of Clinton and the status quo, and that’s actually difficult to argue with. The
notion that people rallied against that is understandable, but Trump gave the
media so much source material to work with he became “buffoon-by-numbers” and a
walking talking parody who just kept on giving.
It’s easy to
point to the media and snigger, but they put no words into Trump’s mouth when
he suggested that Obama and Clinton founded ISIS, that climate change was
“invented” by the Chinese, when he laughed in the face of the ordinary worker
by suggesting it was smart to pay no tax – good luck with that one, with the welfare
system, and with the much promised infrastructure investment. It wasn’t the
media who promised to build a really rather improbable wall, who “joked” about
grabbing women by the "pussy" (sic), who mocked the disabled, or accused minorities of
being criminals. It’s not the media promising to ban vast swathes of world’s
population from entering the USA based on little more than their choice of
faith.
So good luck
America, democracy has spoken, you bought the rhetoric, and the bigotry that
came with it, so you’ll now get the President you deserve. I can’t add much
more, other than to sincerely wish you all the very best with the much demanded
“change” that you’re apparently so desperate to achieve. The signs so far don’t
look good – he’s already starting to shift his position on a number of things,
and clearly if Trump reneges on key election promises, it makes a complete lie
of the notion that he's the breath of fresh air out to change our vision of the
establishment or established political practices. It'll merely be a case of “new
boss, same as the old boss" ... all of those who voted for "change" will end
up getting exactly the same thing they voted against. If not something a hell
of a lot worse.
Finally, one
last thing. The media aren’t going to get off lightly here. This grumble is a
little regional and any overseas reader (probably only a couple, to be fair)
might not grasp the full context (click here if you must) but when a so-called
current affairs programme like (Australia’s) 60 Minutes deems it appropriate to
pay a certified creep like Gable Tostee some $150,000 for a “tell all”
interview while a family grieves for their daughter, something is seriously
wrong with our world.
Surely “all”
was already “told” in great painful detail during the widely covered court case
which cleared Tostee of blame for Warriena Wright’s death? What kind of world
is it where a man can profit so handsomely from the tragic death of a young
woman? A death he had – court verdict or no court verdict – some very real direct
involvement with. All the while being given the oxygen to lament how
traumatised HE is by her death? Poor little Gable. While a family grieves and
is forced to fend off even more requests to make comment.
Shame on 60
Minutes, and shame on those who allow this to happen by supporting the sort of
tabloid television which seeks to turn creeps into minor celebrities.
Isn’t it already bad
enough that we now have a celebrity pretending to know how to run the free
world?
Right, that’s
me, rant over, moving right along, thank God or Elvis or Ms Deborah Harry that
we still have music in our lives …
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