Just as a stopped clock displays the time correctly once every twelve hours, so a washed-up, silver-spooned, self-anointed, self-appointed ‘radical’ can be on the money with the occasional utterance.
Thus it was with ‘Hanoi Jane’ Fonda last week:
“I just think COVID is God’s gift to the left” [snigger]
The statement was delivered in the context of rallying her fellow far-left cohort to beat the ploughshare pandemic into swords to attack Donald Trump with. While her effortless and malevolent snigger betrayed her utter contempt for the humanity she pretends to care about so much, her words ring utterly true in God’s Own Country in regards to Dear Leader. A leader who, facing the abyss of removal from office after a single term delivering nothing at all except failure after failure, has been elevated to near-sainthood by her masked, and blinkered, supporters among the public and media.
The contrast was not lost on The Economist whose October 3rd Asian print edition, under the one-word headline “Jacindarella”, described Ardern’s rags-to-riches (politically speaking) run of reversals of fate beginning just prior to the COVID-months:
“What makes such a prospect all the more striking is that, before the pandemic, Ms Ardern was on track to lose the election. She came into office with lofty plans to “build a fairer, better New Zealand” by reducing child poverty, ending homelessness and erecting 100,000 cheap houses—none of which she has managed to do… she had achieved little of substance. “On almost every front, this government has been a failure,” says Oliver Hartwich of the New Zealand Initiative, a think-tank.”
Ms Ardern’s COVID-boost to adoration-status was reflected in the portrait accompaniment to the Economist article: looking positively sanctified as she gazes to the Heavens, perhaps an emulation of Saint Corona – the patron of plagues and epidemics – certainly not an accidental shot.
Corona was awfully executed even by the standards of the ruthless Romans who had widely known and understood genius for utterly cruel and brutal death – her limbs roped to a pair of opposing bent-over palm trees, she was dismembered upon the ropes’ severance. Ugh.
I would never wish harm to a hair on Ms Ardern’s head; in fact, I would take a bullet should a pistol be levelled at her with menace — she is my leader whether I like it or not — but, metaphorically speaking, she doesn’t seem in serious danger of being curtailed by the twin palms of National and Act as her public support is so strong. However we can hope (and vote) for an outcome so close as to keep her leftist agenda severely restrained, as The Economist noted:
“Ms Ardern positioned herself as a transforming leader. But to win enough seats to bring about sweeping change, she must secure votes from centrists who are wary of grandiose ideas.”
Our present prime minister would do well to remember those words and those of Fonda. She finds herself in her current popular position by accident, not by design, by fate, not industry, and in that respect, COVID truly has been God’s gift to the Left in this country.
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