There is a show on Netflix called “How to Become a Tyrant”. The show looks at various tyrants and the techniques they use to gain and hold onto power. One technique that the show misses is what I call “Infantilise the People“. What I mean by this is effectively turning the population into children so that they become compliant and unquestioning.
This is a technique that clearly our prime minister is a master of.
Notice her televised press conferences where she plays the role of school ma’am.
Notice how she speaks in a slow, methodical, condescending voice as if she’s speaking to a group of students.
Notice how, when she’s talking to journalists, she gets irritated when a journalist asks her a hard question as if that journalist is being a naughty child.
Notice how, during the press conferences, she tells us how well we’re doing or tells us, “some people have not been following the rules.”
Apart from “But why?” children don’t ask critical questions. Also, as a rule, they believe just about anything you tell them. If you tell them that Ardern is a direct descendent of Mary and Joseph, or to be “woke”, a direct descendent of Maui, they’ll believe you.
This is why the government has been able to get away with making people wear masks even though they don’t work. It’s also how they’ve been able to get away with putting the whole population under virtual house arrest even though there is no evidence that lockdowns work. It’s how she’s being able to get away with comparing us with NSW as if comparison were a valid argument (it isn’t, otherwise I could cherry pick a place that has had no lockdowns and hasn’t been hit hard by Covid and use that as counter-argument).
It’s how she’s been able to get people to listen uncritically to “experts” even though those experts have been wrong far more than they have been right and have clearly been picked for political reasons rather than expertise (by some strange coincidence all the experts are left wing).
Also, children are much more vulnerable to peer pressure than adults. We don’t have enough police to enforce Covid rules but if you can get the people to enforce the rules for you using peer pressure then problem solved.
All this said, I don’t think Ardern is actually aware of what she is doing. Which incidentally makes it even more effective. If she is, then she has a lot more intelligence than I credit her for. What I do believe is that on an unconscious level she is aware that if she were to speak to us as if we are adults, there is no way that she and the government would get away with lockdowns, imposing virtual house arrests, mask mandates and all the other Covid rules.
So boys and girls, remember to do what Aunty Ardern tells you and you might even get a big “well done!”