Remarkable, laughable, and sinister in equal measures, the righteous have assembled a posse of pointy-heads eager to review the protests which occurred in the grounds of Parliament Buildings, upon the anniversary of same. Taking in the view afforded from the saddle of their high hobby horses they cast their one good retrospective eye over the proceedings, to their considerable credit, with a fairness and balance unwitnessed since CCCP vs The Twenty-One circa 1938.
Lamenting the polarisation and division evident during those heady February days, indeed attributing the ongoing distrust in our good and Godly Government to those very people, one Professor Pointy-Head pontificates on the demise of civility in contemporary political discussion down to the axis of disinformationists that were the 1 Museum St Merry-Makers.
Devoid of respect, as much as of imagination, the clever professor denigrates the demonstrators with the usual tired tropes, so very predictable as to be not worth mentioning, while failing to find within himself the wherewithal to consider the popular support enjoyed by the Capital Campers in his spiel.
Rather excited by his own voluminous knowledge of all particulars polarising, the professor reckons on the evidence of a report collated in 2020 and presented at the He Whenua Taurikura hui in mid-2021: the one where the sole spokesperson for the Jewish community was taunted with catcalls of ‘free Palestine’ and subjected to an organised walk-out by the Muslim contingent during her talk.
Our professor, a very expert, by his own claim, on anti-Semitism, merits the incident, by omission, as example neither remarkable, nor polarising, nor indicative of the extremist element permeating the peacenik movement.
Unable to speak, let alone reply to, truth, the professor doesn’t engage with some facts: like “the 30 per cent level of support” across New Zealand for the anti-mandaters’ parliamentary lawn occupation, as polled by Horizon Research and described by Stuff as “a shock for many in the Government and its fellow travellers”. Indeed, so much of a shock it rendered our good professor mute, or at least reduced him to pithy jingles about kooks, cranks and conspiracists. That 30 per cent rose to 40 across the influential 25–44-year-old cohort; a level of support either of our ‘major’ political parties would be envious of today.
Therein lies a considerable component of polarisation: the refusal of the professors and divers pointy-heads to lift their gaze; to stop poring over their volumes of Professor Spoonfeed fan-fiction stereotypes and take a good hard look in the mirror at the person refusing to accept the merits of the arguments of others; to cease pre-judging their motives, eschewing any level of empathy with their fellow human creatures then withdrawing, while shouting insults to their intelligence from the warmth and comfort of their own collective cosy-blanket.
Physician, heal thyself first, lest ye a hypocrite become.
