Matisyahu's Blog

I woke up this morning at 11:30 am after a great night sleep, got out of bed, had a cup of coffee and relaxed on the patio out the back in the sun – it was a little on the cool side but the sun made the experience enjoyable. I’ve set the alarm for Sunday to be 10:30 am and then on Monday I’ll set it for 9:30 am – I wanted to gradually get used to going to bed at an earlier time so then I can get back into a good habit.

I’ve been watching the politics in the United States and it is always painful to hear talking heads in the United States media label something that is a main stream position in every other country as being ‘far left’. This whole term ‘far left’ is becoming yet another talking point along side ‘woke’, ‘DEI’ and ‘CRT’ where those using such terms can’t even clearly define the term means that they’re throwing around and yet their ignorance is paraded as some sort of fount of wisdom. I wouldn’t mind it so much if this ignorance was being spewed by randos on the internet with a platform and far too much time on their hands but I would have thought that media outlets would at least have some standards particularly when their media brand is going to be associated with such half baked commentary.

With that being said there is a glimmer of hope that that is the fact that my generation and younger make greater use of the internet to seek out news. Previous generations had the excuse that the only news they had access was either from their local newspaper with maybe articles syndicated from one of the bigger newspapers (or wire service) or when it came to television you were pretty much at the mercy of one of the big television stations. Fast forward to today and it is now possible to jump onto YouTube and watch news from all around the world, from Bloomberg to BBC, from DW English to France 24, from ABC in Australia to Al Jazeera English service. Long story short, the gatekeepers of news no longer exist and if you want to seek out news from different points of view then you’re able to find that online from reputable sources.

This is why the complaints from people displaying ‘big boomer energy’ when it comes to TikTok makes me laugh – “the problem with kids these days is that they’re on their phones with their TikToks not getting the truth” . We’ve had Benjamin Netanyahu complain incessantly that the carefully curated narrative is slowly losing its impact on this and the next generation (both Jews and Gentiles alike) as support for Israel falls through the floor even as his right wing allies try to use botnets to shape the narrative both with Israel and outside of the country (link) (link). Then there is the persistent narrative by talking heads in the media, be it on the centre or on the right, calling anything and everything they dislike as being communist, socialist or far left while ignoring that their red scare tactics only work on the generation who still needs their children or grandchildren to come over and show how a PDF document can be resized or rotated or trying to get their printer to work.

Getting back to closer to home. It is always interesting to see what the fall out is from what Winston Peters said in parliament to the Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan. The reason why it is interesting to see is because of the recent poll that was done where 54% of New Zealanders want Chris Luxon to sack Winston Peters (link). The first problem is that such a percentage, although a majority, it isn’t really a large majority and the second problem is that the recent polling as of a day or two ago (two weeks after what took place in parliament) demonstrated that although New Zealanders weren’t happy with Winston Peters the voters didn’t consider it a ‘deal breaker’ (link) which is why Chris Luxon is happy to keep him on as foreign minister. This is the reason why it is important to check what the polling is after the event – people can demonstrate that they’re unhappy with something but that doesn’t necessarily translate to “so therefore I can going to vote for a party on the left”. What we’re seeing is the right hold onto their majority but it is now a matter of shuffling the seats around between the three parties over who ends up getting the bigger say if that majority in the polls holds to election day.