(1) Thread: Nancy Pelosi's hair salon visit: A Kiwi perspective.
Summary: She couldn't have picked a worse example of her Marie Antionette views.
(In New Zealand, "Kiwi" means NZer, or our national bird, the Kiwi. The fuzzy skinned green fruit is called Kiwifruit here.🥝🇳🇿)
(2) I vividly remember how much I needed a haircut during NZ's main covid lockdown period of 5 weeks from March to May 2020.
Women voters get it more than men do, on average.
With so many aspects of daily life stripped away, looking good became even more important to us.
(3) We never considered what it would be like to not be able to maintain our hair coloring routine. Having gray hair showing at the roots is a big deal for many women.
Women in San Fran, where lockdown insanity has dragged on for longer than most, are especially angry w Pelosi.
(4) I thought living through 5 weeks of lockdown was bad enough, but in parts of AU, the UK and the US, it's been an uninterrupted 6 months, with no end in sight.
In August NZ went back into a partial lockdown (1.5M out of 5M people) for spurious reasons, which has been rough.
(5) Pelosi's defenders are trying to spin her disaster as no big deal but this is where they get it wrong, so many times.
They are completely out of touch with how the ordinary man or woman in the street feels.
We've known for years this is a big problem for Democrats.
(6) NZ's now-fired Minister of Health, David Clark, was snapped driving to a park for mountain-biking exercise during lockdown. At a time we the plebs were only allowed to walk down our own street for exercise and a sanity break.
Similar things happened in many countries.
(7) What these forced errors achieve is that they help people wake up, politically.
First, the politician breaks a lockdown rule.
Then they try denial, blame & minimization.
A few even attack the victim, eg a business owner who gets death threats.
Voters are watching.👀
(8) Marie Antionette's fate should be seen by politicians as a salutary lesson.
Nothing drives voters to your opponent more effectively than dropping the mask and revealing your true nature.
Well said, @DonnaLeeSun. I have the same approach.
Donna is "Unapologretically Canadian."
I am Unapologetically New Zealander/Kiwi. Granted, "sorry" has a special meaning in Canada, eh? But our countries do have a lot in common. Mini-thread:
I really get what Donna is saying in her Twitter bio:
"Trumpism has a strong foothold in Canada & we ignore it at our peril. Pay attention, esp. to PP, former PM Harper & idiot Premiers!"
The same is true of New Zealand, Australia, and our OG mothership: The UK.
PP stands for Pierre Poilievre, who became the leader of Canada's conservative party on 10 September 2022.
For me it's super simple: Far right extremism gained a foothold in the US, only to be rejected by majorities of voters multiple times since. Because #DemocracyWins.
Evidently, my above use of the term misogyny has triggered a few of them.
They're trying to insinuate that Kohberger was a liberal which, even if true, would have nothing to do with the points made in my tweet. We already know several things about him, and his crimes...
Further, when writing the above list of 5 known and/or confirmed misogynists, some of whom have killed at least one woman, I considered a range of factors that put them on that list.
I want to encourage discussion about misogny and the targeting of women by violent offenders.
Esp. the 2020 US presidential election, and others where right wing governments were (and will soon be) punished for anti- public health and safety, anti-science, ignorant approaches to pandemic response.
Do politicians and their advisers get this yet? In most households, it is one or more women who take basic health and safety seriously, & who develop a superior knowledge base due to our more complex biology, higher rates of illness, & greater need for infection control measures.
Of course there are many men with the same health knowledge and risk management priorities as women, but we are talking about "in general" here, and how that applies to elections.
Gotta laugh, my tweet generated the following reply from a maga account:
"Ukraine flag in bio"
Ad hominem/genetic fallacy is all they have. They deflect by targeting the player not the ball. Because playing the ball is too hard for them. It requires honesty & courage.
I'm talking about changing the way domestic violence incidents are handled, and doing more to put long term distance between known DV offenders and their legal access to guns.
An idea best espoused by the outstanding @BeauTFC. Link to follow.
The outstanding @BeauTFC talked about this issue here:
I wonder what price between $8 billion and $44 billion Elon Howard Hughes Musk might consider to sell this vital pro-democracy communications hub before he completely destroys it.
I mean, that's his goal, right?
He paid waaaay too much for it. Value currently estimated at $8 billion. Surely there are billionaires out there with the ability to build a consortium to entice it out of his grubby little hands?
There's a good argument for the US federal government buying it, too...
Or a group of countries. It's not all about the US, you know.
What does the Putin regime have on Musk, that could get him to over-spend so much money? The global fascist movement is the only winner out of this. Or was it the Mercers?