A recurring aspect of the Trump tariff coverage is that it normalises – or even sanctifies – a status quo that in many respects has been a disaster for working class families. No doubt, Donald Trump is an uncertainty machine that is tanking the stock market and the growth prospects of the global economy. Just as surely, New Zealand will suffer collateral damage, especially if China’s economy goes south.

But hold on. If the new normal is chaos, the old normal wasn’t that great, either. We have had over 30 years of economic policies that have – deliberately, as a point of policy principle – sacrificed secure well-paying jobs and replaced them with low paying insecure ones, relentlessly prioritised shareholder profits over the social good, deferred investment in people, technology and infrastructure, sacrificed environment wellbeing on the altar of economic growth, offloaded costs from central government onto local ratepayers and so on and on.

Subsequently, when the people displaced and the communities ravaged by these policies turned to drugs and crime, successive governments have spent money on locking them up so that the public can then “feel safe.” There is so much chatter about how divided we now are, as a nation. Yet for the past 30-40 years, our two major parties have been remarkably unified in their indifference to the social repercussions of the economic settings.

For years, Labour and National have broadly agreed on the “need” to increase defence spending, widened the powers of the security agencies, allowed an unelected central bank to set monetary policy, accepted the wisdom of unfettered free trade, and embraced opening up this country to foreign investment and ownership. Labour and National have also agreed on (not) splitting up the supermarket duopoly, on (not) addressing the obscene level of bank profits, on (not) having a wealth tax or a capital gains tax, on abetting the underfunding and creeping privatisation of public health, on perpetuating inadequate benefit levels, on (not) borrowing in order to end child poverty etc etc.

In short, New Zealand has been governed for decades by a neo-liberal Grand Coalition, and it has proved to be a social disaster. Yes, by all means berate Trump and his fascist ways and means. Yet the monetary settings and the trade and investment policies that he is up-ending, have never been benign. So spare us the media pearl-clutching about what Donald Trump is doing to the natural order of things.

Perhaps instead, we need to treat Trump II as a pandemic/climate change scale of convulsion that offers as much of an opportunity as it does a threat. If we don’t take that opportunity...then come Election 2026, the best that the centre-left can hope for (and work for) will be the goal of returning Labour to power. Good grief. The last time around on that carousel, voters gave Labour a golden chance to radically transform our socio-economic settings – but the Ardern/Hipkins administration ran in terror from the prospect. Let's not waste time on that again.

Peters pandering

So the UK now has a legal definition of a “woman” based on their biology, and Winston Peters wants Parliament to decree likewise here. The goal being to marginalise trans and non-binary people (even more than they are already) from social life in general and from the nation’s sports fields and public restrooms in particular.

What Peters appears to want is for trans people – and anyone experiencing gender dysphoria – to be defined out of having a visible social presence. Otherwise they will be at risk of facing mandatory testing if they should ever walk in future into a single-sex defined space, or tried to compete in a single-sex defined sport.

You have to wonder how many trans people Winston Peters has ever met. Likewise, how many of the people supposedly worried sick about the threat that trans people allegedly pose to cis-genedred society have ever had a conversation with such a person? Not many, one can safely bet.

In the meantime, and as we wait to see if Peters’ bill gets drawn from the members’ ballot, trans people will continue to be a vanishingly minor presence on the sports field or in public restrooms or anywhere else where the people who fear and resent them tend to gather.

While Peters struts and poses, trans people will continue to have a lower life expectancy than almost any other group in society, while also being at more risk of physical violence, intimidation and self harm. As this Waikato Univerrsity-led research report found in February:

Over the past four years, 19% of participants received threats of physical violence due to being trans and non-binary. More than two in five reported attempted or forced sexual intercourse, over double the general population rate, including more often than women overall. Discrimination also remained widespread, exacerbated by hostile social media environments.

And furthermore:

“Participants feared discrimination or violence at school, work, while playing sports, and in many public spaces, simply for being trans or non-binary,” said Jack Byrne, co-principaliInvestigator and honorary research fellow at the University of Waikato. More than half felt unsafe using public transportation at night - more than double the rate of women in the general population, and 43% frequently avoided public bathrooms, up from 33% in 2018.

The Waikato report reveals a worsening social climate for trans and non-binary people over the past five years. The extensive Counting Ourselves report in 2022 contained findings (pages 120-122) on – for example – the extensive bullying at secondary school of trans and non-binary students. Some schools, the report acknowledges, are better than others at promoting a safe and inclusive environment. Some are not so good:

...Schools that ignore trans and non-binary young people, discriminate against them, or treat them poorly, can cause stress and harm students’ wellbeing, attendance, and achievement. For some young people, these harmful and abusive school environments can have lifelong negative effects.

Point being, Winston Peters is making political gains out of stoking fear and resentment against what is already the most vulnerable community in our society – and doing so, ostensibly, in the name of women. Yet as Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said on RNZ this morning, if that was Peters’ true motivation, he would be out there campaigning for better funding for women’s healthcare and refuge needs, and in support of a myriad other more pressing issues that are actually being faced by women in the real world.

Three-time winner?

On another track...A few weeks before the IMF revised downwards its growth projections for the global economy, Donald Trump was already talking about the possibility of seeking a third term in the White House. At the time, Werewolf claimed this would be “unconstitutional.”

Well, not so. Ever since President Franklin D.Roosevelt served two terms and died before completing a third, it has been commonly understood that a subsequent amendment to the US Constitution has limited US Presidents to only two terms in office. Yet... that’s not quite what the 22nd Amendment says.

The 22nd Amendment says instead: “ No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice...” The key word there is “ elected.” If, in election year 2028, Trump ran as Vice-President, and the person heading the ticket then stood aside, Trump could lawfully succeed to the presidency, right?

Not so fast. Elsewhere, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution winds up by saying that “No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” Phew. That would seem to rule out the “J.D. Vance as Trojan Horse for Trump in 2028” election gambit.

Yet that safeguard doesn’t apply further down the succession line. If in early 2029, Trump was elected Speaker of the House, and then both the elected President and elected Vice-President stood aside, then Trump as House Speaker would be next in the line of succession.

Sure, this would violate the spirit of the Constitution. Good luck with that as a defence against Trump becoming President for Life. The House Speaker route to power would put Trump back in the White House for a third term without him violating the wording of America’s founding document. Not saying it will happen. But it could. By the end of his third term, Donald Trump would be 86 years old.

Secret Springsteen

A few weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen released a box set of seven full length albums consisting in total of 74 previously unheard songs (and 8 previously unheard alternative versions) recorded between 1983 and 2018. Not only does this trove of music revise a few commonly held perceptions about the creative arc of his career. More to the point, it includes a lot of new music that precedes his decline into bombast and over-singing, not to mention his sometimes hammy, working class ‘son of the soil’ phase.

Instead of all that, many of these tracks are simply arranged and (crucially) they’re well sung. Like this one:

On a more familiar epic scale, there’s “Rain In The River.” The video does juxtapose Old Bruce with some shadowy age-inappropriate women, but I guess these are just an old man’s memories and regrets, rather than any creepy May/December sort of thing:

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