Apologies from the cancellation of last weeks speaker from Mike Greer Homes at the last minute.
Like most of the readers of Tuesday Club notes I have been soaking up each torturous step of the USA elections. There’s lots of friends in USA who receive the Tuesday Club notes. To you all our best thoughts. Today its not the “United “States of America. In my lifetime I have never known the place I love to visit so broken. So un-united.
The new President has a massive task to rebuild trust in politics. The Democrats have really got a lot of work to heal the massive divisions in the country. Decency has not been allowed to have any say in the mind of their departing President. I have probably hundreds of friends in USA. Every single one of them, bar one, have been appalled by Trump’s behaviour. They are decent people, with all the same hopes and aspirations as we have for their lives and that of their families and friends.
My one mate who is a rabid Trump supporter lives in the rust belt. He lives every day with the experiences of those whose jobs have gone. For whom Trump promised so much, and, in my opinion, produced so little. My mate talked about Trump “draining the swamp”. He sure did that. He drained it and replaced many decent people with completely subservient morons. People with accountability to others outside politics whose motives were completely self serving.
I’d say to my mate in USA who will be licking his wounds right now, that next week I will write something about the similarity between Trump and a widely despised dictator of last century.
The world is a safer place with Trump gone. USA will not be. Trump will continue to behave in an irresponsible manner and urge those with less discipline, and guns, to flood onto the streets and object. Our thoughts are with the millions of decent Americans, many of whom voted for Trump, who will not behave in this manner and whose lives will be in danger because of this behaviour.
It made me sick how compliant the Republican Party was toward Trump. It was a naked example of power at any price. I have great admiration for old fashioned conservatives. I have learnt so much from so many of them in my life. The old fashioned conservatives in the Republican Party in the Senate stayed largely silent as Trump trampled over any form of decency and collective responsibility, like how to handle Covid 19. How can these people look in their mirror and say they have acted in accordance with their conscience? The old saying of “all power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely “ really does apply here. I will return to this theme next week.
I will conclude with the need for vigilance by every person in every country about rabid extremes in communities. The internet gives this group licence to write bad things and say bad things. All behind an invisible cover. We are all capable of thinking bad thoughts. Most of us dismiss them as wrong. The internet fosters bad thoughts. It creates bands of similar minded idiots. Trump was a master at encouraging these people. He has now gone . The dark net driven subversives haven’t. We need to challenge the sort of thinking which plays all of us against each other. USA hasn’t got this on its own. It is alive and well here as well.
This week’s notes are brief as i have been travelling in the North Island visiting Community Housing initiatives mostly in the Pacific Island and Maori communities. I will write up my thoughts on this next week. At the moment i am typing this at a motel in Tokaanu. The hot pools at the motel have made my fingers soft and my mind relaxed….
This week’s speaker:
We are continuing our theme of following Greater Christchurch 2050 challenges. This week we have Sam Johnson, one of the founders of the Student Army, speaking as a young person on how he feels we need to approach the future as Greater Christchurch. Sam has continued his community activism and is an impressive sideways thinker. He works to make this a better society and his presence, and his work, makes this a better place to live in, so we are delighted that he will be this week’s speaker.
One other important thing. We will be back on site at Smash Palace this week. For many of you Zooming is boring and non-inclusive. Well, you can come back and meet each other in the flesh.
CCC restructure announced this week:
This week Dawn Baxendale announced her long promised restructure of the CCC executive. Next week I will analyse this but one thing worried me during the week. Chris Lynch posted his thoughts on the announcement, as he should. However, the venomous comments under his posting were disgusting.
It needs to be said that this is about people’s lives. People will lose their jobs and we need to feel for them. I regularly feel absolute anger about how bureaucrats behave. It is important that we continue to challenge public decisions and processes. However, there’s thousands of great staff at CCC and we should be honouring them as public servants and not bagging them while hiding behind anonymous labels.
More about this next week.
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