Many have been surprised by the decisions made by the Sixth National Government. Taking food away from hungry children and giving the money to landlords seems pointlessly cruel. So does ticking up an eleven-figure debt that our grandchildren will labour to settle, just for tax cuts. Perhaps the most egregious is maintaining cannabis prohibition in the face of the mountain of international evidence that it doesn’t work.
What motivates these decisions?
A cursory examination of New Zealand political history shows that previous National governments have also been motivated by cruelty. The Fifth National Government slashed the mental health system and continued to withhold medicinal cannabis. The Fourth National Government slashed the welfare system and destroyed unions. All of these measures were blamed on Labour at the time, but in reality were motivated by simple cruelty.
Cruelty is, in fact, one of the major human motivations. The rush of sadism can be one of the most powerful of all. Ted Bundy once said “When you feel the last bit of breath leaving their body, you’re looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!” Similar feelings of grandeur flow through the National MP who cuts food programs for children.
It can be seen from the way that bullies abuse each other at school, psychopathic bosses abuse workers in the office and spouses abuse each other behind closed doors, cruelty and sadism are powerful motivators for action in many different times and places. People wired up this way readily find an outlet in National and ACT party politics.
Once the central motivating role of cruelty in National party psychology is realised, it’s much easier to understand National party policy.
This was seen most evidently during the cannabis referendum. National party supporters, who generally opposed law reform in this area, were not moved by arguments around the immense alleviation of human suffering that easy access to cannabis would allow. To the contrary – National voters, who seldom use cannabis themselves (preferring booze, painkillers and television), understood that cannabis prohibition usually destroyed Other People.
This also explains why National party voters were seldom moved by appeals to the fact that Maoris suffer more heavily than other races from cannabis prohibition. Given that National voters hate Maori people and want them to suffer, why would they then care about Maoris getting locked up because of cannabis prohibition? To the National mindset, that’s more of an argument to support prohibition.
John Ehrlichmann, Presidential Advisor under Richard Nixon, once said: “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Same deal in New Zealand. Of course the National party and their lackeys like Mike Hosking and Bob McCoskrie know the science. The science has been established for decades: cannabis is medicinal, and any amount of misuse is less harmful than misuse of alcohol. But by lying about it, the National party can target their enemies. Not hippies and blacks, but hippies and Maoris.
National party policy cannot be understood unless it is appreciated that the intent of such policy is to destroy people the National party hates. This is primarily the poor. National hates Maori people more because they are poor than because they are Maori – proof for this assertion comes from the fact that National voters don’t seem to hate Asians.
The central motivating role of cruelty in National party policy can be seen in this year’s benefit cuts. The indexing of benefit increases to inflation instead of wages has cost the average beneficiary $6 per week, which saves the Government a pittance in comparison to what they’re paying out in landlord tax cuts. But it’s not the saving money that motivates such cuts – it’s tightening the stranglehold on beneficiaries.
Nietzsche wrote, in Thus Spake Zarathustra, to “distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful”. There was excellent reason for this. The impulse to punish is fuelled by resentment, which is the basis of slave morality. This impulse is referred to as a “justice boner” in modern Internet parlance, reflecting the fact that its ultimately motivated by pre-human, even reptilian, brain structure.
Unfortunately, the stupidity of Labour and the Greens means that the cruelty of National and ACT is something the rest of us must endure for as long as the two-party democratic system exists.
As long as democracy exists, it will appeal primarily to the lowest common denominator and thereby enable the most bestial and sadistic impulses of humanity. This is why the National and ACT parties have produced, and continue to produce, a parade of sadistic beasts: Shipley, Richardson, Prebble, Key, Brownlee, Bennett, Collins, van Velden et al., ad infinitum.
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