It was only a few weeks ago on a video call with a Brownstone writer in New Zealand when I got an education about the reality on the ground. I told him that Americans had the impression that Jacinda Ardern was popular in her country, a fact which dismayed me. She, after all, became the most famous dictatress in the Western world pushing for Zero COVID, a woman adored by the media, courted by all the late-night talk show hosts, and cheered by Harvard students at a commencement address just last year.
The gentleman assured me that my impressions are very wrong. She is loathed and despised in her country. She put this great nation through nearly three years of living hell, locking down her own citizens, arresting people for being out and about, ordering people never to speak to each other, blocking travel in or out, and then mandating jabs for everyone while encouraging segregation and isolation for those who refused.
He was right. What seemed to bring her down was massive public anger at her COVID policies. She took a healthy, happy, and free nation and turned it into a prison state, issuing edicts with a toothy grin to the cheers of the media. Even now, following a surprising and sudden resignation, she is being lauded by the press.
So on it goes, with no mention of her appalling censorship and Stalinesque brutality exercised against her own people, except to say she “managed a pandemic that not only threatened lives but devastated key local industries.” In fact, it was she who threatened lives and devastated local industries! The Guardian, however, agrees with the Harvard Political Review that she is “authentic, empathetic and bold,” thus defying “gendered stereotypes.”
Honestly, if the path for a woman leader to experience canonization by the Western press—and being sainted by the Ivy League—is to trample human rights with a smile, I suspect that most people would prefer the stereotype.
Ardern’s resignation announcement was strange indeed. She cried. She said she is tired. She said she doesn’t have the energy to continue. Good. Indeed, the human person is not intended to fare well emotionally when imposing cruelty on his or her own fellows. Doing so surely does take a toll. We do have this thing called a conscience, which St. Paul said is the means by which God inscribes ethical intuition on our heart.
The only way a ruler such as Ardern could have done what she did was to block out the conscience completely and thus become less than human. She apparently grew tired of that. Good for her. Maybe in her retirement, she will find her way back toward goodness, issue a heartfelt apology, and urge the world to use her example only as a warning of how not to rule.
However, that is not likely. Instead, she will write a book. She will accept speaking invitations the world over. She will be the toast of the World Economic Forum. She will be on corporate boards. She will be on nonprofit boards. Her next gigs will double, triple, and quadruple her income. She will become rich. She will have a huge staff around her to manage her correspondence and finances, not to mention endless interviews.
She is not disgraced. Quite the opposite. She will be adored by the global ruling class forever.
What she will not be allowed to do is rule her people anymore, and that is a true blessing. But her downfall will be attributed to the rubes among the citizens who never understood what the heck she was doing with this whole Zero COVID bit. Was New Zealand planning to stay isolated forever, hiding from a germ while the immune systems of her countrymen are degraded by forever jabs and lack of exposure? Was that the plan?
Actually, the plan was never clear. Ardern is one of many despots in the world spawned by this pandemic. They believed that their power and pronouncements were capable of ruling the pathogenic kingdom, causing even tiny viruses to be afraid and to go into hiding. It was a case study in human arrogance like we’ve never seen before.
Many college administrators copied her grotesque cruelty. Same with many mayors and company heads. Her example to the world was to be as brutal as possible and tolerate no dissent. That she was and is celebrated is a terrifying truth about our times: there is a ruling class in media, technology, and government that longs for totalitarian forms of governance. They don’t believe in freedom any more than she did or does.
There are two legends that pertain. The first concerns King Canute of the 13th century, who became so fed up with his obsequious and adoring court that he set out to show that his powers were not what they were cracked up to be. He had his throne taken to the sea coast and proceeded to order the tide not to come in. It came in anyway, thus demonstrating that he was in no position to control natural forces.
Ardern was like an evil King Canute who actually believed that stopping the tide was possible on her order alone. Of course COVID came anyway, thus revealing that her destruction of New Zealanders’ rights and liberties, not to mention the whole economy, was utterly pointless.
“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
The lesson here is that privileged isolation from a pathogen is a short-term strategy. Degraded immune systems are, in the end, more vulnerable to death than the exposed. The court in the castle had a great time but they were, the entire time, making themselves more vulnerable. That is essentially what Ardern was doing to her entire country. In this she was reversing decades of progress toward freedom. She wrecked the country’s stellar reputation for freedom and prosperity. It will be many years before it comes back.
The path trod here by Ardern is not different from many lockdowners. They all seem to be biting the dust, one by one, almost as if they are being sacrificed by someone somewhere once they have played their role. Donald McNeil at the New York Times started much of the hysteria and then got his head chopped off. Same happened to Andrew Cuomo of New York. Newscasters have been toppled. University presidents too. They were all on the wrong side of history, and they are being tossed out as sacrificial victims.
The question will always exist: why did she do this? Was she working for China and the Chinese Communist Party? Did her socialist ideology blind her to the limits of power? Was she merely confused about immunology or was she acting out some dark-hearted fantasy in which she would be the grave hegemon lording over an entire nation? Is power really that much of a drug that it makes even decent people blind to the sufferings of others?
The answers are elusive. We might have far more respect for her if she owned up to her failures and admitted what she has done. But the way things are going in the world today, there is reason to doubt that this will be the end. She leaves in her wake darkness and decay.
Sadly, this could just be the beginning of what could turn into a stellar career ahead.
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