Salvation through politics?

A lot of people seek salvation through politics; they think politics per se will change their lives, and ours.

People like young Chloe Swarbrick, or Jacinda Ardern, or any number of bright young things who bat for the blue team -- all of them out in force these last few months, desperate to drive some "change" they allege we need that will come, they dream, by the actions of that person whose toothy grin appears in gleaming photoshop on their billboards; change will come, they insist to us and in their own minds, if they can just get that person into political power! They've been out on the streets for weeks. and out in their multitudes last night on social media, variously bitching and boasting about the final election results.

Most of the bitching was from the Red and Green Teams, apoplectic to discover that the people they drink with and see every day aren't actually representative of the overwhelming plurality of New Zealand voters, and nor of that sizeable number who chose on Saturday to stay home and be non-voters.

How dare the Blue Team, said the Red and Green bitchers, take the victory that every one knew was supposed to be theirs. How dare that plurality of voters vote instead for "selfishness" and "greed." (Why is it greedy to want to to keep your own money, but not greedy to demand others hand it over for your chosen causes?) "This is not my New Zealand," they pouted (and in so bitching they were, let's observe, uneeringly though unwittingly accurate)

In truth, there was very little to choose between either of the alleged sides: one sought to give marginally more power directly to bureaucrats and unions, and the other to do it indirectly by way of so-called "social investment." They think these things will change the world. Will "fix" child poverty and will "save" the planet. (Come back in a few years, I suggest, and see if either has happened by these means.) The are committed to the idea that it is politicians who run things and will save us all -- and not the vast mass of people who get up every morning and, as part of the nationwide (and worldwide!) division of labour who get on and make the things that make people less poor and the planet a better place to be.

These people don't produce. Instead they see salvation through politics.

May it rot their souls. Because it will.