The largest newspaper in the country is in its death throes. Having put most of its content behind a paywall that no one with a modicum of sense is going to use, its free content has become like something from Woman’s Day. Yesterday, its lead story on its website was entitled – “Wedding of the Year: Ideas for Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford’s nuptials”.
Yes, really. It was a pure fantasy piece about where they might have the wedding, who might be the matron of honour and who might design the dress.
This is the country’s largest newspaper’s lead article on a Sunday. Let’s just say it did nothing to encourage me to actually start paying for content.
Facebook is shutting down conservative voices. The persecution of Christians is reaching genocide levels. Poverty in this country is reaching new heights, mainly because housing is so expensive and hard to find. (I do genuinely believe that the chronic housing issues in this country, particularly for people on low incomes, are driving people into poverty never seen before.)
There are doctors’ strikes and teachers’ strikes. In spite of almost record low levels of unemployment and large numbers of jobs unfilled, there are more people on Jobseeker benefits than 2 years ago. Now mothers do not have to name the fathers of their children to receive a full benefit. Yet our largest newspaper can find nothing better to write about than where Jacinda’s wedding MIGHT take place, and who MIGHT design her dress.
It is sickening. Could it be, though, that we are all being subjected to ‘conditioning’?
Our world is not just becoming Orwellian, it is also becoming the world of Aldous Huxley, where we are fed a stream of information and education on a continual basis. In Huxley’s world, everyone conforms and individuals do not matter. In Huxley’s world, it is society that is important and everyone takes drugs and is promiscuous. People are taught what to think by sleep teaching, and drugs are the answer to all ills. In a world where cancer drugs are not funded but we are about to legalise recreational drugs, this all makes sense. A drugged society is much easier to control.
So while we used to have regular updates on people sleeping in cars and mould on the walls of rental properties, our world now consists almost entirely of fluffy stories, legal drugs and ‘dangerous’ people being banned from public platforms.
Those ‘dangerous’ people are not Jihadis, by the way. Islamic terrorists are still free to roam the world of Facebook, threatening anyone who is not a Muslim with death if they do not convert. It is those voices who do not conform with the message that we all need to hear that must be silenced. They are the really ‘dangerous’ people.
Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1932. We all know what happened in the next few years after that. Are we going down the same road again?
Yes. I think we are. One fluffy story at a time.