Light the fuse

Not the great New Zealand mobilisation novel

An early work-in-progress dedicated to
helping precipitate the
Great Mobilisation,
circuitouslby provoking a novel by an award-winning author, to provoke a movie etc. of, to help build the mandate for the Churchillian leadership of…y

Dare to be wise!
Kant

Chapter 2

Recruiting an irresistible face

Contents
author Cimino
work-in-progress published 20240712

Irredeemably Decent Norman Kirk: Failing utterly to understand why the nation was so comprehensively devasted by his death, in 1974, the New Zealand Labour Party has serially failed since to anoint a leader with anything approaching Kirk’s irresistible combination of decency and charisma—neoliberal-enablers Lange and Ardern not excepted. photographer unknown

…four things that matter to people:
…somewhere to live,
…food to eat,
…clothing to wear, and
…something to hope for.
Norman Kirk, 1969

Gifted his first chapter by Hutch, Cimino suddenly realises he’s been gifted his second, by Biden. The previous day, on their way home from visiting a 92-year-old friend whose face, voice, and faculties, would render him far fitter than the incumbent, for office, Cimino had quipped to his wife of 50 years:

Anybody can become president, asso you prefer so? Grammarphobia allows either and I like the logic of as long as they’re George Clooney !

Sarah, from the driver’s seat, had instantly entreated:

You should tell him.

Sarah was serious. Cimino loved her for it, and agreed to. Their long-held belief was that political leaders must, first and foremost, be people who voters yearn to see and listen to. For Cimino, it goes back to the pitiful spectacle of Bill Rowling imagining he could fill the void left by Norman Kirk, in the broken hearts of a bereaved nation. The ache endures, only months shy of the 50th anniversary of the great man’s death, aged just 51.

Cimino had pursued a number of heroic local projects in partnership with an arch-strategist and innovator. In regard to the 2023 Buy Waiwera moonshot they’d collaborated on, he’d insisted to Cimino that the prerequisite was to have a compelling, household name tell the story. Aware as he was of that fundamental, Cimino was also aware it was more easily said than done. He’d been lucky, thrice, with knight commanders and companions promoting the Mahurangi Coastal Path over a four-decade span. Cimino had learnt, however, that by time a person has become a household name, they’ve long since learned to be extremely circumspect in responding to such requests, much less from nobodies.

To attract the services of a compelling, household-name storyteller, however, requires the mission to be of epic proportions. For a while, the previous year, most of the key dominoes for such a project were potentially to hand. In the event, the critical storyteller piece eluded the plotters. Had all the pieces been secured, and perfectly placed, Aucklanders might, by now, be luxuriating in the first of their brand-new Waiwera hot pools.

Buying Waiwera, or at least all of the former hot pools and hotel site, was plan sufficiently audacious to have worked. It involved building a campaigning machine powerful enough to have ended child poverty in Aotearoa. Cimino, in very good company, is continually incredulous that people, with the tools now at their disposal for the first time in the history of civilisation, have not seized power from the global oligarchy and built a world-wide democracy. The Democratic Recession, Cimino is certain, can be ended, but it cannot be ended incrementally.

Fortunately, the very act of ending child poverty—squarely addressing Norman Kirk’s,

they have emphasis added to have food to eat

—would simultaneously build real-world democracy. The cynical might doubt the utility of any sort of democracy in addressing climate and hunger, but that, Cimino is certain, is because democracy is invariably equated with the poor, representative-democracy specimen that masquerades as the real thing.

Building Cimino’s democracy-builder would be no mean feat. Having built a system himself that was used entirely successfully for more than a decade—but by one, sympathetic user—he’d long since disabused himself of the magnitude of developing anything that resembled what all too many small-business owners are prone to describing as:

just a simple system.

…to which the developer might fairly respond, rhetorically:

You mean a simple system, like the human brain?

Having once, tantalisingly, been offered the services of an ace systems developer, Cimino could not forsake the notion that, with right project, with the right face to front it, something as preposterous as ending child poverty in Aotearoa could be accomplished, leaving one nation in the world having reclaimed its democracy.

As for Biden endorsing Clooney, it is, of course, what a still-great man would have the cognisance and humility to do.

Anti-alien state of America Regarding the above-mentioned 92-year-old’s superior suitability for the role of president—setting aside the small considerations of common sense, inclination, the natural limitations on longevity, and preferred nation-state of residency—his mere country of birth rules him out. Likewise, it rules out the mere 77-year-old, American son Arnold Schwarzenegger, who demonstrated devastating fitness for office as governor of America’s most populous state. In discriminating against those born in Australia or Austria—or anywhere other than their United States—the founding fathers displayed appalling anti-immigrant bias, handing Birther Trump his first brutish bludgeon, 220 years later. Schwarzenegger, hands down, would have made for a hugely more humane Republican president than fellow movie-star Regan.

‹ Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 ›

Return to top of page | End notes

Disclosure The editor of this content is no longer the secretary of either the Mahurangi Action Incorporated or the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust. Regardless, the content published here continues to be that of the editorially independent, independently owned and funded Mahurangi Magazine.