It is a known fact that Maori genetic makeup is stronger than others
Reading this “Minimalist Rant” at Ace of Spades I chuckled at the last sentence, “Sound familiar?”, because when I see shite like this from Te Pati Maori, (also documented here at Kiwiblog, just in case they delete things) I can’t help thinking about how this is happening across the entire Western world.
And the driver is that the Oppressed/Oppressor dynamic is reaching out to new groups as the old Marxist economic one gasps its last.
Trust. I don’t have it any more.
I used to trust the police. I used to trust my representatives and senators (at least a little). I used to trust the president to be at least minimally competent and patriotic. I used to trust the town employees. I used to trust clerks at stores. I used to trust the people around me as I walked or drove. I used to trust the governor to run the state halfway decently. I used to trust Washington D.C. to fumble around and screw things up but eventually find a decent solution that didn’t get too many Americans killed. I used to trust the legal system to be screwed up but ultimately interested in the law.
But not any more.
The shift from minimally patriotic and focused a bit on the success and safety and security of our country, to a self-serving drive to maximize wealth and power at the expense of literally everyone seems to be complete. And that extends from the president selling influence, and destroying America in the process, down to the village clerk lining his pockets with the change from our parking meters (true story), or the building inspector taking bribes (another true story).
American Exceptionalism is many things, but one of the most profound differences was the shared commitment to our country and its greatness. We could trust the guy across the street or across the state or across the country to be dedicated to approximately the same things. Love of country. Patriotism. The belief that we were going to be better tomorrow. Even the great schism of The Civil War healed after shockingly few years. There are countries that had less profound and destructive internal differences 1,000 years ago that are still fighting! But we moved on.
No more. Our trust in each other has been so eroded by a never-ending cascade of disappointments and betrayals and lies that we no longer trust in the inherent goodness…the inherent superiority…of American Exceptionalism. We have devolved into a wealthier version of Yugoslavia or Sudan or Ukraine.
Who do we trust? Our friends. Our families. Our tribes.
Sound familiar?
No Minister 
The covid years destroyed patriotism for me. For me, the last people who proudly held the NZ flag were Brian Tamaki’s protesters.
I still have a photo somewhere of a police officer indifferently dragging a NZ flag on the ground after one of those protests.
The Government along with large corporates, persecuted the unvaccinated population, and successfully gaslit the general population to join in. Friends, families, and tribe relationships were shattered, seemingly forever.
These days it seems, NZ has ‘moved on’ as if nothing happened, but that trust I had since I was a kid is gone.
Who do I trust? Our newfound friends who are our new tribe of sorts.
The old New Zealand I knew is gone forever. After 13 years away, I thought I was coming “home” last year. But it’s a different country that I don’t really recognize, and not a good one by comparison. The sense of community and shared values has completely disappeared. The landscape and the mince pies are both still delectable, but the Shire has been overrun. Even the hold of rugby on the NZ psyche, which I never cared for, has gone poof. I wouldn’t mind if something had replaced it, but there’s nothing. Nobody seems to know what it means to be a New Zealander any more. It almost makes one yearn for Murray Deaker’s obnoxious jingoism – at least he cared. Our institutions are broken badly, and there is insufficient political will to repair them. It breaks my heart. Nobody really wants to rescue the place enough.
My American wife got to the one year mark of being here and put her foot down – it’s not working. As much as I hate to be a quitter, I’ve reluctantly come to agree. We gotta get out of here. My green card is still valid. Back to Texas we go. They got big long roads out there…
Breaks my heart to read that too, but my heart is with you for a better future.
My circumstances: American wife wants to stick it out and given that her “home” is Chicago, Illinois, well… you can understand why she doesn’t want to return.
I look back to what I wrote on Kiwiblog in 2016, Davenport, Iowa.
I think I should have bitten the bullet.
Well sheeiitt…. Haven’t clicked on that link for years and I see it’s still only $776,371, compared to the $ 649,900 I quoted at the time:
Yup, I think if I had ended up anywhere else in the States, New Zealand would have remained appealing. The US in general is kinda going to hell too. I’d take life in Orewaburg over most blue states, and even some of the red ones. But Texas, almost alone, has retained some sanity, and semblance of the American dream, and real freedom. We’ll be looking for a four bedroom place, and even with Hill Country property going crazy right now, those are fetching around $320k in greenbacks. No hope of even a sniff of that in NZ.