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Lindsay Mitchell
lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com
Lindsay Mitchell has been researching and commenting on welfare since 2001. Many of her articles have been published in mainstream media and she has appeared on radio,tv and before select committees discussing issues relating to welfare. Lindsay is also an artist who works under commission and exhibits at Wellington, New Zealand, galleries.
‘You have to be cruel to be kind’ is a long-standing axiom.
Axioms arise from generational wisdom. Human nature doesn’t change.
Jacinda Ardern consistently calls for Kiwis to “be kind”. In today’s 4pm stand-up, the record hadn’t changed.
How would she respond if asked what cruelty she had exercised in the pursuit of kindness?
Because she has inflicted cruelty on New Zealanders through the lockdown.
Currently, New Zealand has no 2021 Covid deaths and few hospitalisations (compared to 9 RSV deaths and over 4,000 hospitalisations) yet people are cut off from each other; from elderly, needy parents; can’t work with their mates; can’t run their businesses; can’t get treatment for life-threatening illnesses; can’t socialise; can’t arrange or attend funerals or weddings, and are encouraged to nark on anyone breaking these rules.
Jacinda certainly fulfils the first part of the old wisdom. There’s plenty of cruelty going down.
But does she even get close to the second goal?
Her pleading to “be kind”, her kindness ideal, is no more than an instruction and expectation about how people should treat each other on a superficial level, because under lock down our interactions are no more than fleeting.
If she is asking people who barely tolerate each other in normal circumstances to transform under lockdown, you know she lacks any understanding of the human condition under extreme stress.
She must. Or she wouldn’t be pig-headedly pursuing the same pathway she led us down in 2020.
“Be kind” is a hollow platitude. That’s all it has ever been.
Lock down cruelty can never be rewarded in the way the axiom intended.
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