Continuing our review of the year in politics, our firmament of experts offer the definitive summary of 2018 in just one sentence.
For more of the political year in review –and 2019 in preview – go here
Huh, turns out it can get worse from here.
– Alex Braae
Too many people, too many opinions (this one included).
– Madeleine Chapman
Suddenly the idea of having a Doomsday retreat in a remote valley near Wanaka doesn’t seem quite so paranoid; it’s like the grown ups have all taken a crazy pill that makes them obnoxious, stupid and dangerous at the same time.
– Linda Clark
Proper fucked.
– Simon Day
Can there ever been a more combustible mix than Trump, Brexit and climate change – all with the capacity to potentially destroy our futures?
– Peter Dunne
‘Your silence will not protect you’
– Emma Espiner (The line is borrowed from Audre Lorde)
Fractured and noisy but every now and again an individual does something to restore my faith in humanity, like opens a food pantry outside their house to feed those in need.
– Mihingarangi Forbes
Pleasantly predictable in NZ, unfathomable in some other places (Washington, London) and terrible for the refugees on Nauru and other similar places on earth.
– Laila Harre
A world facing imminent climate breakdown, simmering frustration about inequality, and ongoing colonial and economic violence, in which several pathways forward have been clarified: a return to authoritarian, xenophobic conservatism (represented by Trump and others); tweaking a broken status quo in a way that is likely to prove unsatisfactory (represented by Emmanuel Macron in France); or a more transformative challenge to economic and political systems.
– Max Harris
Fragile.
– Bronwyn Hayward
‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre…’
– Liam Hehir
Dangerous, inward looking, pre-occupied with trivia and warming up.
– Stephen Jacobi
Much better than you think.
– Wayne Mapp
Predictably chaotic. Or, in the case of the US and Britain, dead horses flogging dead horses.
– Trish Sherson
If the venal the vacuous and the venomous would simply fuck off, I reckon the world is more full of promise than at any other point in our short life span.
– Tainui Stephens
Trumpian. Every week the “leader of the free world” behaved worse than the last, and more often than not it simply makes him stronger. America, please make it end.
– Simon Wilson