Tim Walker’s Protesting X

New Zealand’s Government seems to be conforming more than ever before, meaning our team of resident malcontents are running out of things to protest.

It was surely a grim day for protesters around the country when President Trump rose to power, subsequently calling an end to the TPPA – that was after all their main source of noise-making…

So instead of New Zealand protesters focusing on all things New Zealand, they appear to have since taken on the weight of international issues, and are now protesting on behalf of other nations.

…Someone must also have stopped excavating ancient kauri in New Zealand’s wetlands, or perhaps someone else realised that digging up and exporting half-rotten wood actually wasn’t such an outrage after all, because that source of protest dwindled too…

New Zealand’s protesters have again demonstrated a lack of understanding regarding words and their associated definitions (one might recall a while back how the TPPA was somehow ‘taking our sovereignty’..?), and have for some time been condemning the US election result, claiming of all things (yet again exhibiting their fine free-thinking ability by maintaining exactly the same stance as US protesters), that ‘there was no democracy’ in the outcome.

…They must also have realised that dairy farming wasn’t so much ‘the Devil’s work’ as it was ‘a vital part of the New Zealand economy’; then of course ‘poverty’ and ‘housing crisis’ are some of these protesters’ favourite words to put into chant too, but now that John Key’s gone those marvellous words just don’t seem to have the same nagging quality anymore…

The process of public election practically defines the term ‘democracy’, and in fact the only time I recall a public election being not democratic was way back in the ‘90s, when Sideshow Bob rigged the Springfield mayoral election.

…So after bitching, moaning, and ultimately scare-mongering, armed with the fear that President Trump ‘will destroy the free world’ – when in fact Trump’s initial statements were no more outlandish or inflammatory than those heard by Bush, Clinton, or even Obama during their respective inaugurations – New Zealand’s protesters are now back to pushing the classics: ‘poverty’ (too much), ‘immigration’ (not enough), and ‘the housing crisis’ (too much cost, not enough construction, also too much foreign ownership and such), clearly without realising the gross contradiction they’re unveiling…

These protesting New Zealand citizens have already shown the audacity to complain about the result of one of the US’s proudest democratic institutions, seemingly overlooking the fact that Trump’s rise to power would mean the demise of one of their longest-protested institutions – the TPPA.

…A rise in immigration would obviously require a ‘rise in taxes’ to fund the immediate establishment of these immigrants’ lives, then there is the further ‘housing shortage’ this would subsequently cause as these foreign families were allocated basic dwellings; also let’s not forget the number of ‘jobs they would steal from hardworking Kiwis’, thus the additional ‘poverty’ this would invariably create.

Life must be so simple being a protester – hearing a concept, finding a flaw and outright condemning the notion; running with your opinion, halting progression, disrupting lives, forcing yourself on people who don’t care, preaching your ‘knowledge’ to people who don’t want to hear, all without ever truly understanding the concept’s processes, or its prospective and often even its immediate consequences.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by O Blevy-Hiss

Photography by Mel Con-Tense

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