For a while I have mentioned that too much of NZ political “thought” is re-hashed and often washed up ideas brought in from abroad. Both neo-liberalism and “Third Way” Labour positions were imported rather than organically generated from inside the NZ body politic and/or academia. With importation of foreign political ideas all too often comes stripping of the original ideas of any intellectual depth and nuance, particularly in the fields of public policy and political debate.
The latest example of this is ACT’s pimply-faced Ann Rand adolescent devotee’s use of libertarian thought as the basis for its policy approach. In recent years its leader, an Alfred E. Newman look-alike with serious racist and misogynist inclinations, has taken to exalting the virtues of the incestuous gnome that is currently president of Argentina, a Trump-loving mutton-chopped heavy metal grunting, formerly cross-dressing evil munchkin who takes advice from his cloned dogs, thinks orphaned children should be sold on open markets, denies that the Argentine dictatorship engaged in a “dirty war” that resulted in 30,000 deaths and countless tortured and disappeared people, believes blue-eyed people are more aesthetically and intellectually superior to brown eyed people, and who is now embroiled in a crypto currency meme fraud and a narco-trafficking scandal, all while his “chainsaw” approach to public sector reform has resulted in increased poverty, lower health and education standards, increased basic good prices like those of groceries and electricity, a hollowing out of the nation’s productive base and resultant wide-spread public unrest that is answered with indiscriminate police repression. Yep, that guy.
Which is why I say again, we are currently being governed by a crazy clown posse pushing a dumpster fire of anti-social, foreign inspired ideological garbage disguised as public management best practice. Stuff that.
But do not take this just from me. Have a look at this: