To: Gib Bogle who wrote (54583 ) 9/7/2009 3:14:05 AM From: Maurice Winn 1 Recommendation Respond to of 218057 Gib, those are very difficult questions of an existential nature. <Who will you blame for this? How long can you hold Helen Clark responsible for the Commie mentality of NZers? > While pondering who to blame it's easy to land firstly not on Helen Clark but the electorate who put her there. She was just the figurehead who more or less represented the wishes of her acolytes. People similarly like to blame Adolf Hitler for the woes of the 1930s and 1940s, but he was just a figurehead shoved to the front by the mass of Germans who thought him a jolly good chap who would do as they expected him to do. While they were goose stepping across Europe unimpeded, and things were going spiffingly, they were Gung Ho for more of the same. It was only when reality dawned and Dresden started behaving like an incinerator that it really dawned on Germans just what they had chosen. So who to blame for Helengrad's kleptocracy? When I cast my mind back and follow the events of decades gone by, the processes flow eerily close to home. But while it's too simplistic to blame Helen Clark, or her acolytes, it's simplistic to blame me for having initiated the rot way back in the late 1960s when some of we young "useful idiots" prevailed on parliament to introduce votes at 18 with our "Vote at 18 Committee". Initially, I was amazed that voting at 18 was introduced apparently as a result of that effort and thought how easy it had been. It was only later that I realized I was suckered by the Labour party who of course wanted young fools allowed to vote because they vote for left wingers because they are too young and inexperienced to understand the reality of what will happen. We didn't make it happen, we just gave a good excuse to the politicians in charge to do what they wanted to do. But far be it from me to take the blame!! Who was to blame for my naivety and setting me up to cause that process? The proximate cause was the political indoctrination I received at home, albeit willingly, in discussions while growing up, which led me to my support for what I thought was freedom to vote at 18 in response to the absurd idea of being conscripted against my will to go and fight communists in Vietnam. Without getting sidetracked there, my mother did not get on at all with her father [and neither did her two brothers for that matter, which makes a quorum]. He was what you would call a fanatical extreme right winger. I expect her political orientation derived from her antipathy to her father in some Freudian interplay. Much as it seems that Helen Clark abandoned her father's political ideology to show him how much he was in charge of her. But is it fair to blame a grand father dead for going on a century? Or perhaps his antecedents? At some stage we have to accept that blame must reside with those currently conscious and making decisions now. So, I absolve myself of guilt and j'accuse those who cast their vote for the Evil One in the elections which brought as the dark era of Helengrad. How long can I drag out that particular horse for a flogging? It will start to look a bit silly when people wonder who the heck I mean. For now, the flogging is good. Just as we blame Adolf for German actions leading up to and during WWII, we can reasonably blame Helen Clark for the depredations on Kiwis. But that is just shorthand for those really at fault - those who voted them into being. Adolf has had a good innings. 70 years and still going. Helen Clark probably won't be good for a flogging for that long, but she should do at least until Xmas. The fact that decades ago I was a fellow traveler is no reason for me to feel a touch of the lash. Mqurice Note to self... contact John Key and suggest Vote at 35, men only, with property. Sobriety test required.