The huge support Ardern generated after the COVID-19 lockdown is puzzling. Why did polling on her leadership increase when she introduced repressive measures and legislation during lockdown?
The same question can be asked of Todd Muller’s appointment because the most talked about fact was that Muller owns a MAGA hat. Why are we interested in a hat which symbolises Donald Trump when Muller appears to have little in common with Trump?
I found a possible answer to both questions in a very unlikely place: an economic theory with its origins in a dead Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973). He was one of the last members of the original Austrian school of economics that examined socialist resentment of a free market economy. But that’s another story. What we are looking at here is the theory of adding value, which Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy Advertising in the UK discusses in relation to capitalism.
Sutherland opines there are only two things that create value in business and they are not the traditional theory of supply and demand. Sutherland suggests that adding value is achieved by marketing and innovation alone. He says everything else is simply an economic cost.
Sutherland says if you can’t give people what they want, then you should work out an ingenious way to make people want what you have. The illusion of Brand Ardern sprang to mind to answer the questions above.
The illusion of “giving us what we want” explains Ardern’s extraordinary success during lockdown. We stayed home even after overseas evidence said the lockdown had a similar effect on the spread of COVID-19 as not locking down. Closing borders and contact tracing were the real keys to success and we could easily have avoided the financial carnage without lockdown.
Of course, if you are expecting an apology from the magician and her assistant Ashley Bloomfield for devastating our financial future, think again. Brand Ardern must be protected at all cost.
Rather than admit they were wrong, the magic team kept the fear mongering going. In fact, they were so successful that when the time came to venture out into public again some people were too afraid.
Ardern created the illusion that our lives were in her hands. We feared death and every day the illusionists reminded us more deaths would occur if we did not follow their instructions. Even when we knew this was a lie we complied anyway.
The acid test of the success of the illusion is when the illusion is believed instead of the facts.
We were the willing participants to Ardern’s illusion and she succeeded because we rejected the facts in favour of the illusion of avoiding thousands of deaths. Dangerous territory indeed, and yet here we are.
Relating the theory of marketing and innovation to Muller’s MAGA hat, the media created the illusion of orange man bad, ipso facto we also see orange man bad. The illusion is so good it overtakes the facts.
The common denominator in both examples is the media who make the illusion believable but the truth not so much.
On the AM show this week Ardern was the confident smiling assassin who once again demonstrated that facts are irrelevant when your illusion is robust.
Ryan Bridge asked Ardern what she thought about Todd Muller’s MAGA hat. Ardern replied “I’ll leave that, again, to the public.”
Ardern knows perfectly well the public bought hook, line and sinker into the illusion of orange man bad. That illusion is so strong it beats any fact the media unconvincingly throw at it.
Ardern despises orange man bad but has no need to say it. She has complete faith in the illusion created with media help. The public buy in is very sound. The loony left, the lazy and the just plain stupid know for certain that the orange man is bad and all facts to the contrary can be happily discarded.
Ryan Bridge asks her if she has confidence in the competence of her ministers and Ardern smugly retorts “Ultimately it will be our record that people judge us on.”
Note that Ardern does not answer the question. Instead, she resorts to Brand Ardern to deflect attention away from the appalling track record of her ministers.
Bridge tries again. “So, the National party is worried about your team though, the people in your cabinet. When it comes to the biggest common struggle of a generation, the person that you have put in charge of economic development is Phil Twyford.”
This is laugh out loud funny! How does the illusionist handle the very obvious fact that the government’s biggest failure was delivered by the honourable Twyford? You guessed it, she resorts to brand Ardern.
“Again, I am going to defend my team” she says.
“KiwiBuild? Light rail? What about Phil?” Bridge valiantly plods on. Ardern keeps smiling and throwing the illusion of brand Ardern at any facts Bridge cares to raise. Her brand is quite impenetrable and the facts are irrelevant. This is dangerous territory indeed.
The illusion of the exemplary leadership Adolf Hitler created for the German people persuaded those that knew of them that his mass extermination camps were justified. People had been thoroughly convinced by Hitler’s illusion of a master race. This is not to say that Ardern has the evil intentions that drove Hitler, this merely demonstrates the power of a strong illusion, and how easy it is to sell the lie.
The facts will always fall before a masterful illusion.
“On employment, Willy Jackson?” Bridge asks forlornly. And fruitlessly, because Ardern has complete faith in her robust illusion. She simply keeps rolling out the illusion of the success of her team against the factual failures of the individuals in it.
Bridge’s mention of the Minister of Health, David Clark, totally missing in action during COVID-19, is countered by Arden’s illusion that we avoided tens of thousands of COVID-19 deaths because of lockdown. Ardern deflects from the weakness of her ministers to the winning formula of a strong illusion.
Ardern has public buy-in because the easiest and laziest way to handle political discord is not to bother with the facts, but accept the illusions presented every single day by media representatives.
Todd Muller has two major hurdles to overcome if he wants to beat Ardern at her own game. First, he must get media buy-in (he started this process by recruiting Matthew Hooton); and second he must create illusions about the National party for a gullible public. This is the brave new world we live in: a world of deceit and lies!
There is another option: the path less travelled, of truth and honesty. Unfortunately Muller chose Hooton and ignored the opportunity provided by the the MAGA hat thus indicating this path is not his first choice.
Keeping politicians honest seems light years away from NZ politics unless the public says otherwise and we unearth politicians with the calibre and back bone of Donald Trump.
Your mission, dear reader, should you decide to accept it, is to identify the illusions presented to you every single day by a politically compliant media. There is some incentive because the alternative is ending up on the barbecue along with the others who swallowed the illusions hook, line and sinker.
If you enjoyed this BFD article please consider sharing it with a friend.