Cut the crap and give me my country back

(Shout-out to my friend Steve King, who wrote the protest song I’ve nicked the post title from.)

So last week, our beloved leaders signed up to the TPPA (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement). They were always going to, of course. Since this National Government was first elected in 2008 there have been three clear, consistent patterns to their behaviour. One is dismissing objections to their decisions, as with child poverty, charter school outcomes, river pollution from intensive dairy farming, and the revelations that the GCSB has spied on New Zealanders. Another is favouring business in any way they can, as in asset sales, tax cuts, 90-day “trial period” no-fault firings, and the various formerly protected parcels of land and seabed now opened to mining. And the third is undermining democracy, as with Environment Canterbury, students’ associations, tertiary education governing bodies, and the number of times they’ve used Parliamentary urgency – i.e. skipping the pesky “public submission” part of the legislative process – for controversial but non-urgent Bills.

All three of these patterns are perfectly embodied in the TPPA. Dismissing objections: the text of the TPPA has been kept strictly secret, which means nobody can object to anything specific (but Trade Minister Tim Groser gets to call us all “ignorant” and “fools” for not knowing what we have been expressly prevented from knowing). Favouring business: what we do know about the TPPA is that it’s about removing tariffs and price controls imposed by governments, while extending intellectual property rights. Undermining democracy: the TPPA will allow corporations to sue governments for imposing laws or regulations that hurt their profits.

It turns out that, despite all Groser’s prior reassurances, New Zealand actually gets a pretty crap deal out of the TPPA. The best we get is a small tariff reduction on dairy – dairy being the one great super-product that two successive governments have bet New Zealand’s future on, the thing we’re destroying our rivers and lying to the world about it for. All the rest is what Idiot/Savant over at No Right Turn calls “margin of error stuff”. Danyl McLauchlan at The DimPost notes that “the TPP will deliver the equivalent of a couple of months of growth in ten years time.” And yet we went ahead and signed it anyway, because it’s better than not being in a secretive trade partnership that could sue the crap out of us, right guys? Right, guys? What this tells me is that the cynical view of National’s motives is wrong. They’re not amoral manipulators just out to score cash for their CEO cronies; if they were, they would have turned this down. It’s much worse than that. They’re true believers with an ideology. No matter the evidence, no matter what actually happens, the way forward is always to boost business and remove impediments to it. No other option is on the table.

Obsessed

Dear Adam Ford, we need to talk about one of your recent comics.

Well, no, we don’t need to. But I’ve been struggling to come up with blog posts lately and you were an easy target. As a webcomic artist I know you understand.

No, I’m not talking about any of the recent ones where you’ve breached the Ninth Commandment and borne false witness against thy neighbour, thy neighbour in this instance being Planned Parenthood. I’m talking about this one:

Cartoon strip, three panels: a dialogue between two people, one wearing a T-shirt saying “Culture”, the other a sweatshirt saying “Christian”. “Culture” is surrounded by posters, and holds a megaphone in one hand and several placards in the other.
The mouse-over text at Ford’s site reads: “Agree with me, you intolerant savage! demands Culture, gun trained on Christian.”

“Culture”: Sex is life! Every kind of sex! All kinds of sex! Having sex with lots of people is pretty much the meaning of life, you know! The only people who are not promiscuous are weird sad losers! Woo yay sex! And porn! Love it! More porn pls! Also, homosexuality! It’s like the greatest thing ever, period end of story! Gay gay gay gay yay for gay! And transgenderism! So beautiful! So heroic! So perfect in every way! Don’t you agree with everything I’m saying? Don’t you? Oh wait you don’t have a choice! LOL!
Signs read:
SEX
Sex! Every imaginable variety! All up in ur face! All day every day! Woo!
[partially obscured] ...hyperse[xual] homosexual transsexual
[Picture of bald bearded face] Say this is a woman. Say this woman is beautiful. Do it now.
Roses are red. Violets are blue. You should have sex with tons of people.

“Christian”: I, uh, I disagree with you. About that sex stuff. I don’t agree.

“Culture” [ugly angry face]: Ugh why are Christians so obsessed with sex???

Well, you’re upholding the proud old tradition of substituting visual stereotyping for argument, but there’s an element of that in most editorial cartoons so I won’t dwell on it. I picked this cartoon because I have a keen taste for irony. Why does the majority culture think your particular subculture is obsessed with sex? Largely because of the bizarre hallucinations your subculture promulgates about the majority culture’s sexual ethics, as demonstrated in your first panel.

Let’s start with the most minor point and work up from there. I’m sure you’ve seen those lists of terms for different sexual and gender identities that queer advocacy groups put about. I’m sure, because you tried to copy one – that placard at the back that says “hypersexual, homosexual, transsexual”. Did you realize you didn’t get even one of those words right? Nobody says “hypersexual”. Nobody. And for the other two, the words are “gay” and “transgender” in queer-friendly parlance. “Homosexual” and “transsexual” are words used by people who aren’t au fait with sexual or gender diversity. Already I’m getting the impression you couldn’t be bothered taking two seconds to Google anything.