Tani Newton
Well, the phase one report of the you-know-what inquiry is out and I have to comment on it, even if I haven’t yet read all 713 pages.
I have to say, it is well written and very well proofread. I haven’t spotted a single error yet. Except that it’s all lies, of course, but you know that.
If I had to describe the report in one word, I think I would choose celebratory. It begins with dozens of pages of applause for everyone concerned, including you and me – we all contributed to the success, apparently. It continues with hundreds of pages of narration, in which we learn that New Zealand’s ‘pandemic response’ was world-class and that all the ‘public health measures’ were “effective”. Evidence, I gather, would be outside the scope of the report. Everything was just “effective”, because they say so.
I’m struggling to think of an analogy for how unreal it all seems. I would like to think better of my fellow members of the human race. I would like to think that they could ask themselves questions, realise that they’re being lied to and notice that what they’re being told is not supported by evidence. And yet it can’t be so.
Human beings are social creatures who deeply need each other. And not just emotionally: we are also fragile creatures who can’t survive in the unadapted natural environment and, to have any kind of pleasant life, we need to have society, community, trade and the division of labour. Our need to get along with each other produces a predilection for agreement, trust, co-operation and believing whatever narrative seems to be holding people together.
The minority of people who ask questions are always frowned on, even though they are needed. They, for their part, despair of the majority who prefer to believe the narrative, even if it’s patently false, and participate in the agenda, even if it involves cruelty and injustice.
Without the majority doing what they do, it’s hard to see how society could hold together. And without the minority questioning it, it would be a great deal more evil than it is. Trying to understand all this is almost unbearably painful. Somehow, we’re all meant to be doing what we’re doing. Tony Blakely has to tell his story and look as if he believes it: quite possibly, he actually does believe it. The media have to report on what he says; they all have to praise and laud the destroyers of the country; the question-askers have to ask questions and be shouted at and called names. It feels as if it’s all happened before and, of course, it has all happened before. It’s the story of the world.
