I had a great year posting here at NOT PC. I hope you did too visiting here.
The blog turned 18, and as you can see in the sidebar to the left (you can see the sidebars, right?) even older posts still get plenty of love. (New Zealand's "new PM" is hardly new any more, nor a PM. But she is still clueless about capitalism.)
The most popular posts here at NOT PC that were written this year however were these ten below, in order. Enjoy them again -- or be affronted for the first time ....
1. "Remember when a flood was just a flood? A watery calamity that might make roads impassable, homes unliveable and sometimes, in the worst cases, claim lives? Not anymore. Now it’s always a deluge, an apocalypse, a portent of the horrors to come if mankind keeps on sinfully heating the planet. Now a flood is always a lesson from on high – from a ticked-off Poseidon, presumably – warning hubristic humans to ‘reduce carbon emissions.’ Floods are our fault now, like everything else..."
Minisinformation, green gloating, and apocalypse porn
2. "There has been a concerted effort since the 1990s to convince people that climate change is making natural disasters worse. ... But a disaster is defined by two things: deaths and costs. And we’re not seeing an increase in either... The green movement *is* a disinformation campaign’..."
"You want disinformation, then look at the Green movement"
3. "To make it even plainer, David Seymour's proposed referendum does not seek to redefine the Treaty that was signed in 1840. It does not even seek to redefine the principles established in that Treaty's three clauses. What it would do is to clearly define (something Parliament has never bothered to do) the principles drawn up in 1987 by an activist Court of Appeal judiciary ..."
He's not that bright, is he
4. "She's not calling for all New Zealanders to be equal as individuals -- i.e., each of us enjoying equal individual rights and privileges under law per the third Treaty clause. What she's after instead -- what she and others in her elite strata have worked so hard for, to achieve that momentum -- is for Māori as a collective to be made equal in political power to the government. With a Māori elite distributing the spoils.
"That, to her and to many others, is what "partnership" truly means. Political power."
Why are some Māori protesting the new government? And what can we learn from it?
5. "This is good news for New Zealanders, where fewer than 14 percent of persons over age 15 smoked tobacco in 2020. They will avoid yet another state encroachment on their personal liberty along with tax increases to fund government spending on enforcing tobacco prohibition and fighting tobacco smugglers. ... New Zealand’s recent about‐face on tobacco prohibition will hopefully put to rest similar efforts in California and other states. Let’s hope it will also cause Sunak and his Conservative Party to reconsider their plans. The UK had the right approach to reducing tobacco smoking until now: opting for evidence‐based tobacco harm reduction instead of prohibition."
New Zealand's About‐Face on Tobacco Prohibition - The View from Washington
6. "No wonder they're smiling: These ten people you see above above are given $5.2 million between them every year. Isn't that nice. Averaged out, that's a pretty tidy sum. What do they do for that money? They're on the Executive Leadership Team at NZ's Reserve Bank, aka Te Putea Matua (which my dictionary translates as "important basket.") Which doesn't really answer the question. (But might describe some of these people.)"
"Forget the cost-of-living-crisis. That's not something experienced in Wellington by public sector executives."
7. "Despite everyone and his big sister having been indoctrinated in environmentalism and "social justice" from their first moment at school until their last, most adult NZers still have too much horse sense to fully embrace it in its most destructive political form.
"Case in point: The Greens's MPs announced their "non-negotiable" election manifesto on Twitter over the weekend -- "who we are," they said, "what we stand for, and the values we will take with us into every decision we will make over the next three years.""
"Here's a sample of the Twitter-crowd's reaction (just the more polite ones)..."
Greens announce their manifesto. "F*ck off" says Twitter
8. "There is plenty of room for criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian occupied territories. Ultimately, it will be right only when the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza can govern themselves (in secular states, with liberal democracy, and no ability to wage war against their neighbours) and when Israel respects their right to do so. However, there will be no peace whilst Hamas thinks it is better to kill Israelis than to build an economy and society based on Palestinians producing, trading, living and thriving..."
"The moral difference between Israel & her enemies comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?"
9. "The anti-vaccine advocates have been proven wrong in every major claim they have made during the pandemic. They claimed that the covid vaccines would lead to heart attacks, infertility, birth defects, and mass death. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. But if you spend much time talking to these people online, which I don’t recommend, you will find that they are not merely undeterred but regard themselves as vindicated, and they have moved on to demanding 'accountability' from the 'establishment'."
"The anti-vaccine advocates have been proven wrong in every major claim they have made during the pandemic."
10. "Political commentator Chris Trotter has always been at the 'honest but deluded' end of the socialist spectrum. That is, he honestly wants material wealth, human progress, free speech, and social freedoms, but he is yet to understand that socialism doesn't deliver any of that -- that the essential nature of socialism is not the 'equality' it allegedly strives for, but the need for armed robbery to establish and maintain it. The impossibility of socialism's goals inspires the coercion needed to achieve them."And he's slowly discovering that even many of his erstwhile allies have grown to like the coercion more than those goals.
"The revelation makes good reading...."
Chris Trotter: 'honest but deluded'