The sausage of our Kiwi summer has come with a cheesy filling of existential dread.
Chris Luxon beamed against a backdrop of sun-drenched shrubberies in the social media post announcing his songs of the summer. “No matter where you are in NZ today, BBQing, at the beach, or just in the backyard, I’m sure you’re listening to some great music in the background,” he wrote, alongside a pic of him wearing a V-necked tee and a rigor mortis grin. “Here’s my summer playlist.”
About the time he hit post, the Iranian regime instituted a nationwide internet blackout and carried out a brutal crackdown on protests which had been spreading for days across the theocratic state. More than 500 people have been killed in the ensuing clashes. Another 10,500 have been detained. “Let me know what other songs you think should be in there!” Luxon’s post continued.
The prime minister isn’t alone in desperately trying to shield his Kiwi summer vibes from a general maelstrom of calamity, violence and geopolitical unrest. Just a few days before his playlist reveal, the Herald posted stunning snaps from its summer photo competition to Instagram, Shane Jones sipped Bacardi and coke in sunny Northland and US forces broke into Nicolás Maduro’s Caracas compound to abduct the Venezuelan president along with his wife, in a move which has the potential to embolden dictators and upend the global rules-based order.
Soon after, Matilda Rice returned from a social media break to share her holiday photo dump, the Mad Butcher wished us all goodnight from Waiheke and a masked ICE agent shot Renee Good in the face as she tried to drive away from him and his colleagues in midwinter Minnesota.
We’re all trying to keep our sunscreen-soaked walls standing. But the horrors are battering at them with increasing insistence. Every day brings a new juxtaposition of sunbathing and existential stress. It’s a nice day out. Heatwaves are sparking deadly bushfires in Australia. The birds are singing and the leaves are green. The US is moving ahead with its plans to annex Greenland the “easy way or the hard way”. Time to fire up the barbecue. NATO is fraying at the seams, Israel is once again bombing Gaza and US politicians are telling Cuba “you’re next”.
Before Christmas, Luxon attacked the New Zealand summer holiday, arguing our collective three-week reptilian sun coma is dampening productivity. But it seems even he is now giving into the temptation to delay his return to the real world. Despite telling reporters he’d be back on the job by 4 January, his staff are taking more than a day to respond to media queries and reporters have been told he’s “working from home” in direct defiance of his own finance minister, who wants public servants back in the office. His health minister was similarly reluctant to return to work after hackers harvested what is known in the medical field as a “shitload” of patient data and demanded a ransom for its return.
It’s understandable. No-one wants to stare into the oncoming headlights of reality when it’s still possible to blind yourself in sunshine and bury your head in thermonuclear sand. The sausage of our Kiwi summer has been infused with a cheesy filling of dread, but we seem determined to keep eating it until it’s gone and the coleslaw of conflict and economic collapse is all that’s left. What’s that on the radio? The chair of the US Federal Reserve is accusing the government of trying to arrest him for making independent economic decisions? Better take a dip in the ocean. It’s feeling particularly warm, even for this time of year. Weird. Probably nothing to worry about.
