A European friend was living with us for several months whilst working locally on the Taieri Plains. He’s a right winger, a supporter of Donald Trump and distraught at the assassination attempt on the president in July. During July, August and September, he often expressed frustration at polling showing Kamala Harris ahead, often asking, ‘How is it that Trump isn’t miles ahead in the election race?’ Well the fact is – he was! The media in America simply lied and published fake polls to pretend Harris was a serious contender when she wasn’t. Now the truth has emerged from the Harris campaign itself, admitting they never once had her leading President Trump.
You can imagine my astonishment at this frank admission by the Harris campaign; as well as my astonishment at the findings of the Royal Commission into Covid-19. The honesty being shown quite genuinely has left me speechless. I fully expected it to be a hagiography of Jacinda Ardern by the ‘usual suspects’, completely ignoring truth, reality and many other things. I even wrote an essay here saying so!
The strong criticism of vaccine mandates, the demonisation of those opposed to taking the vaccine, the refusal of ministers to address protestors at parliament, Ardern’s preposterous claim to be the “single source of truth” and a number of other matters has left me enormously impressed. Sorry to keep flogging the horse: but I never in a million years expected any of this.
Even more curious is the media reporting of the inquiry report. The NZ Herald has actually published the strong criticisms of Ardern without pulling punches. A glaring example is this quotation: “Inquiry head Tony Blakely, an epidemiologist, said on Wednesday that vaccine mandates caused huge pain to a ‘substantial minority’ during the pandemic and the Government should consider whether their benefits outweighed their harms.” The Herald actually published that damning indictment of Ardern. They also published comments from a few nonentity Labour party apparatchiks but nobody cares what they have to say.
It was a nasty trick to pull on millions of people to pretend Harris was going to win the election when they knew full well she was heading for defeat – able only to win those states (ahem) not requiring voter ID – and consequently the shock and disappointment is greater. In previous elections the media had been honest about the chances of Walter Mondale, John Kerry, John McCain or Bob Dole, so it wasn’t really a surprise when they lost. There was no hysterical screaming and shaving of heads.
Similarly it was a nasty trick for the media and others to side with the Ardern regime, not engage in either truth telling or scrutiny and instead to engage in a massive campaign to attack any criticism by the general public – that it was either imaginary or simply ‘racist’ (the usual trick) – when it would seem an awful lot of people knew differently. Labour Leader Chris Hipkins is effectively acknowledging everyone outside of the Beehive was correct and everyone inside wrong – but don’t hold it against him because he wants to win the next election.
Sometimes, the system actually does work: the truth comes out and the good guys win and the bad guys are exposed.
