Sourdough, Shoplifters, and the Spin of Mediocrity
Seymour's 2024 State of the Nation was something else - and also more of the same. A not-so-subtle expression of his 'top vs. bottom' ideology, he decided that yesterday was the day to escalate his ideas into a tale of two invisible tribes; outlining a division between 'change-makers' and 'whingers'. Imagined out-loud by someone who doesn't believe in division? Touché indeed.
To be clear, he started his explanation of 'two tribes' right after saying that we were all connected as a nation of pioneers who travelled great lengths to be here - free from oppression and poverty, to freedom and liberty.
He wonders - unfortunately for us, out loud - why we cut down tall poppies and value conformity over truth. Clearly, cheerleading for himself as a particular tall poppy that the whingers are out to slay. Conforming, but not well-behaved whingers, that is.
In David's imagination, it is the swinging axes of crying leftist, Marxist, woke whingers that are driving the very good people of the very good tribe away from our nirvana of liberty and freedom. Later in his speech, he attempts to substantiate this using a statistic of 2% from an opinion survey from 2022 about whether the country should lock down again for Omicron, and somehow stitches this into the crochet of these people being the same ones that left. Amazing. I mean, if that's truth, give me conformity.
Back on track though, we are eight minutes in, and as a conformist, it's important that my whinging follows the trajectory of "David's turn to share his exciting news this week."
He goes on to share his theory about the two invisible tribes here in NZ who have differing values and attitudes about life. He calls one of these tribes the 'change-makers,' who essentially borrow money from big capitalists to become mini-capitalists. These people have a vision for change and opportunity and see their duties to enact this as a moral obligation - helping others to find jobs, working the land to feed others, saving up to buy a house, and being very good people who don't judge or divide people (except into the two tribes).
But, he laments, these change-makers get vilified and called names. And it's mean. Less than a minute into his diatribe about tribes, all is revealed - there are change-makers in the audience right now, and yes! You're listening to change-maker right now too! Reverberating in the punchline, I can't help but feel I've happened upon an excerpt of his daily journal.
But not to languish in feelings of disappointment at naughty conformists, Seymour then gleefully shares his perception of the other invisible tribe: the mediocre tribe who think everyone should be mediocre. This tribe wants more lockdowns so we can not think about economics while we make sourdough and blame successful people for our circumstance. As we feed our mother, members of this tribe obsess about ancestry and point floury fingers at people who won't maintain a constant status of guilt and turmoil for what our/your/my ancestors did. And as we etch the dough, we refuse to cross-hatch it because that looks like jail cells, and we love crime.
And of course, we are really, he implies, not about making the bread, because actually, we don't believe in making a difference in our own lives. We just want someone else to do a Milkrun order for us and drop off a loaf of Molenberg. And when they do, we will shout and yell at them and tell them it's their fault.
With the sourdough-making complete, Seymour reluctantly touches on a 'painful' subject that he wondered if he should include in his speech. I'm wondering why he is giving a speech at all, but of course, I'm just whinging. This is where he does some mental gymnastics that lead him to the obvious conclusion that the 2022 poll that asked NZ if we wanted another lockdown is not only evidence of the existence of these two tribes but also a TEST for the two tribes.
The poll result stated 48% of New Zealanders agreed with a lockdown and 46% did not. That, he states, demonstrated the "two attitudes of the two tribes." It was all he needed to know. Hard-working, truth-seeking, non-conformist change-makers wanted it open, and the mediocre majority wanted it closed. Case closed. I'm surprised he doesn't love crime more, given he's such a good detective.
What happens next is quite the series of free-thinking leaps of logic. David says that the 2-point gap between the 46 percenters and the 48 percenters equals around about the 116,000 people mark. And that's how many who have left the country since the lockdowns. In a not-blaming, not-finger-pointery way, he claims this is because people who choose to leave (the change-makers, naturally) have made the country less attractive for the other members of the 'get up and go' tribe, so they also leave. And so what we have left is the moaning majority who want mediocrity, leaving a hot mess of shoplifters, conspiracy theorists, and jandal makers angrily baking sourdough.
This is a recipe for disaster in the mind of David, and his audience both laugh and shuffle nervously as he lays out the very real risk that left-wing governments will surely return under these floury conditions. Notwithstanding the fact that votes cast overseas usually swing to the left, or that he has zero evidential basis for his theory about the voting behaviour or invisible-tribe status of those citizens who have left, or any evidence at all that the 2-point gap in the poll did equate to the 116,000 citizens who left, the truth-seeking, non-conformist audience takes the free-thinkers' thoughts hook, line, and sinker.
He solidifies his theory with an anecdote about a 23-year-old who left when the borders opened in 2021 with 45 of their peers. Apparently, this is because it's too hard for a 23-year-old to buy a house. And he says the young people that stayed here have been infected with another virus being bred in universities: the woke mind virus of identity politics, Marxism, and post-modernism. This leads me to wonder how the change-making 23-year-old and his 45 mates, who listened to their teachers and went through university because they have student loans, managed to avoid this virus?
As much as I would love to keep listening to more of Seymour's imaginings, at 15 minutes in my oven timer goes off, signalling it's time to get my sourdough out and wait for someone to come and cut it for me while I moan to them and blame them for wanting opportunity and good things for everyone.
To anyone that managed to get through the rest, I commend your patience and ability to conform - I mean think freely - or do I mean moan?
And to the members of my invisible tribe - the shoplifters and jandal makers, the bread bakers and finger-pointers - if that speech was the outcome of free thought and truth-seeking, I'll happily assume that best-evidence, collective care, and sourdough bread equates to mediocrity. And I'll take that over Seymour's invisible soup any day.
