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Worzels World - Are these the evil times?

 

Is it that this post modern world in which we live is now upon ‘those evil times’ predicted by prophets of past ages?

After this Eastertide in these evil times the world at large might easily echo the question Pontius Pilot uttered around about 1983 years ago, ‘What is truth?' Jesus from all accounts declined to answer and if today’s media are anything to go by the world by and large still has no idea.

Our tolerance and acceptance of so much that is obviously not truth is at an all time high. Or should that be low? Wisdom is considered foolish and foolishness mistaken for wisdom. Virtue is mocked and expectations of justice are at an all time low.

When revelations of the National Party’s political shenanigans were published in Nicky Haggar’s book Dirty Politics, I asked a few National Party stalwarts (of which there are many round here) what they thought. ‘They all do it’ said some. ‘The others are just as bad‘ said others who are themselves probably just as bad and ‘that‘s just the way it is in politics.’ These were the common and almost unanimous appraisals. Except for one individual who merely shrugged, shook his head and said ‘I suppose I’ll just have to vote for Winston.’

Unable to answer Pilot’s perennial question, the world operates under a false paradigm. With neither the understanding nor the will to do what is right and just, it reverts to doing what is expedient and what is easiest.

The concepts of free market economics, non-discrimination, and democracy that have been sold to us bear no relation to reality. A better description of what we actually have is a plutocracy governed by a monopolistic privileged class based on wealth and availability of capital. The playing field is about as level as the north face of Everest. Those that climb to the lofty heights of the summit are almost as rare.

Current US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders stated that 58 percent of the wealth in the US is owned by the top 1 percent of citizens. Since New Zealand’s restructuring under the US corporate model we have shared this trend towards the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a privileged few.

Will the TPPA further entrench this trend?

Modern financiers make rank amateurs of such robbers as Bonnie and Clyde who had to wield Tommy guns to obtain ready cash. Through lies and manipulation – known in the modern vernacular as public relations – these modern robbers have duped the general public into lining up to give them their money and in turn their labour and resources.

Clever men plot and scheme in back rooms beyond scrutiny. Most, for all their assumed cleverness, have yet to learn how to do an honest days work and think themselves smart for gleaning their daily bread by exploiting common resources and the labour of others. Rather than expose these charlatans for the greed-ridden non-contributors they are, the media champion them as leading lights in the community.

Foreign financiers now skim the cream off the Kaipara cash cow as a result of illegal secret dealings. This goes unanalysed and mostly unreported. The situation is portrayed, and widely understood, as ‘a bunch of whinging Mangawhai ratepayers who don’t want to pay their fair share.‘

Central Government’s response to this illegal behaviour was to pass a bill that made the illegal suddenly legal. No one seems to care that this is an obvious misuse of the rule of law and the democratic ideal. They thought it easier, and it has perhaps proved to be so, to make the innocent pay for the deeds of the guilty rather than seek redress from those responsible for the

harm they have done.

The Office of the Auditor General is paid quite handsomely to audit the affairs of public organisations such as Councils. They did not do the job they were paid for. The settlement of $5.3 million reached in more back room negotiations between three parties (all government appointed) will not even cover the amount of interest accrued on the illegal loans over the time taken to negotiate this paltry and inadequate settlement. It may be easier to pass all the costs for negligence, stupidity, and bare faced profiteering on to the ratepayer, but it is not right, it is not just. It is no way to run a country. When leaders mock in word and deed the virtues of justice and truth they do so at their peril and no good can come of it.

The first step in our individual and collective degeneration into darkness and despair is accepting evil as being ‘just the way it is’ and looking at what passes for news it would be easy to believe that is what we have done.

Maybe these are the evil times so long prophesied?


Through lies and manipulation – known in the modern vernacular as public relations – these modern robbers have duped the general public into lining up to give them their money and in turn their labour and resources.

 
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