As Judith Collins wryly remarked, regarding Jacinda Ardern’s incessant prattling about “kindness”, the more a man tells you he’s honest, the more often you check your pockets.
The more a progressive leader boasts that their performance is world-leading, that they are “on the right side of history”, the further you should run away.
Daniel Andrews and Jacinda Ardern, the Tweedledum and Tweedledumber of antipodean politics, provide a brutally clear proof of this dictum. Both leaders parade their “progressive” credentials to an adoring media. Both have presided over draconian and devastating lockdowns.
No government in Australia is more dedicatedly progressive than the Andrews government. It is woke in every way, but the woke is broke.
Progressive ideology is proving disastrous for Western governments.
Progressive ideology is addicted to gestures instead of results. Competence is ranked below a cluster of intersectional “identities”: gender, race, colour, sexual preference, and so on.
Progressive politics is focused on identity politics and performative symbolism, on woke gestures. This proceeds from its underlying analysis that society’s problems are caused by structural racism, sexism, heteronormativity, gender stereotypes, global warming capitalism, worker exploitation, old power structures, old forms of learning and knowing.
Progressive politics demands from its leaders and citizenry a continuous performance of doctrinally orthodox gestures, apologies and credal recitals.
So, Jacinda Ardern is feted for wearing a hijab and doling out hugs like a dockside hooker when the fleet is in. But quantifiable indicators like the growing number of children in poverty are ignored.
Worse, active scrutiny of progressive policies is not just avoided, but actively attacked. Questioning progressive nostrums is decried as “racist”, “homophobic”, “transphobic”, and so on.
Progressive ideology is intrinsically secretive and intolerant. The only measure for evaluation is the amount of resources devoted to the gesture — how many schools are forced to endure the Safe Schools program etc.
Therefore any normal critical scrutiny is seen as a kind of anti-gesture reactionary manoeuvre to be resisted. Progressives claim to follow the evidence or follow the science, but mostly they’re following the ideology, which is why any suggestion that their gestures are damaging is regarded as wilful sabotage of good policy.
So “progressives” like Ardern and Andrews might be singularly inept at the traditional business of government, like building things or making them run properly, but, hoo boy, can they make a gesture. Only in Victoria would the government hire a quarantine hotel security guard who gets mind-numbingly detailed training in “diversity and inclusion” but no training at all on using PPE.
But then, Victoria’s public health team has just 57 staff. The premier’s office alone has 64.
A traditional social democratic government would prioritise its public health capabilities. Victoria is the most left-wing state[…]But NSW, ruled by the reactionary Liberals, had more than twice the resources devoted to public health that Victoria had. Every other state had greater per capita resources devoted to their public health teams than Victoria.
While the Andrews government has been busy rooting out sexism in fairytales — I kid you not, there was a government initiative over this — trivial things such as the public health team were nowhere.
Victoria is the ideal “progressive” state. Traditional education measures – you know, that imperialist, patriarchal garbage like reading and maths – might be plunging, but at least the kids know how to tuck their penises and bind their breasts, and how to use dildos.
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