Matisyahu's Blog

It has been ages since I’ve been back in the office and the first day back feels really good – free coffee, plenty of fresh fruit to snack on for morning tea and afternoon tea. I’m going to have a quiet night tonight rather than going for a walk but I’ll go for one tomorrow night because I’ve got the extra time up my sleeve because of the later start. I’ll see how it goes for the next month or so and whether I may want to up it from 2 days per week to 3 days per week but before I make any sort of commitment I’ll see how it turns out.

The train ride into town was enjoyable as I listened to some music and observing how things are slowly developing particularly along the connection between Petone and Wellington with the bike path that is being built. There is a tendency to get down in the dumps and feel as though nothing happening, that things are stagnating when in reality things are progressing if one looks around at what is happening locally. I think a good amount of the doldrums are in part due to what is happening outside of New Zealand, a sense of chaos in the world, the sort of optimistic future had disappeared at the end of Obama’s second term and with the election of Trump then the reelection of Trump – many had hoped that the Biden presidency would mark a reset back to normal.

It is something I think many Gen Z ask online (particularly on Reddit) why millennials are the way they are. As a millennial I lived through two terms of George W Bush, 9/11, the war on terror, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economic collapse then Obama was elected on a message of ‘Hope and Change’. With the election of the first black president in the United States that it symbolised a new beginning – some calling it a post racial United States while others saw it as a culture shift, a generational shift etc. This sort of hope and change spread beyond the United States which is why so many outside of the United States looked to it as maybe it representing something new whose influence through popular culture (soft power projection) could be extended beyond the United States.

There was also social media before enshittification where there was an optimistic vision of social media not being a replacement for real world relationships but being able to create connections with friends, maintain friendships with those who had moved away or maybe traveling so they could share photos etc. There was this naivety that the world could be made smaller through technology, that social movements could start online and translate to real world impacts be it democracy, climate change, social justice etc. etc.

I think that for many the election of Trump shocked people who had convinced themselves that the divisive politics of the past was in the past, the days of culture wars was in it’s last death throws, that the Republican Party would move to a place where the debates were centred around policy rather than culture wars. The problem is that during that period before Trump the Republicans had conventional candidates such as John McCain and Mitt Romney but they were let down by a party that never had moved beyond reactionary politics. The net result? the tea party then the tea party morphed into Trump’s MAGA movement – reactionaries all the way down. I think for many liberals they convinced themselves that those making the noise were louder than what their numbers suggested – like an empty cat with a stone inside it makes a lot of noise when falling down a flight of stairs.

As for what is happening at the moment, I hope that this reactionary period is short lived and much like a pendulum what we’re going to see it swing back to somewhere near the middle. It may not happen immediately but I’m hoping that the the behaviour of Trump has forced those outside of the United States who ran on an anti-establishment platform suddenly realise that the brand of politics Trump is espousing isn’t a viable long term political strategy. As Anthony Scaramucci pointed out in a YouTube short, Trump is a narcissist and has no interest in creating a political movement that outlasts himself – the movement either exist because he exists and whether it exists after he is gone he doesn’t care about.

I also think that when Trump was speaking on the campaign trail many who voted for him convinced themselves that what he was engaging in was bellicose rhetoric but his governing style would ‘normal’ while others convinced themselves that they were ‘one of the good ones’ – they were happy for bad things to happen to other people. Those very people act surprised that when the Republicans were talking about ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ that the Republicans were talking about them. Maybe this is going to be the harsh lesson that some will have to learn first hand after decades of the Democratic Party working to smooth the rough edges of Republican policy when the Democratic Party were not in power only to find that it doesn’t result in them winning any votes from those who voted Republican.