I know what Shakespeare would have said

Let me get this straight. Cameron Slater’s Whale Oil site is hacked in retaliation for a post that upset a lot of people and as a result, a great swag of incriminating emails ends up in the hands of Nicky Hager.

Meanwhile, Labour’s enemies discover there are weaknesses in the Labour Party’s website that enable them to go poking around there for sensitive information, some of which ends up with Slater.

I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that if either of these acts was illegal, it’s more likely to have been the hacking of Whale Oil. So why, on Q+A and The Nation this morning, did the interviewers apply the blowtorch to Slater and go soft on Hager?

Taking advantage of a website’s slack security may, at worst, be ethically dodgy, but publishing the contents of private emails obtained by hacking is surely a lot more serious. Yet both Susan Wood (Q+A) and Lisa Owen (The Nation) let Hager off the hook while aggressively going after Slater. (Owen, for example, seemed to be demanding that Slater reveal sources, something no journalist would dream of doing.)

Hager can’t have believed his luck. But then, perhaps he’s come to expect this sort of friendly treatment. You can’t help but suspect that in the eyes of many in the media, Hager has a halo and Slater has horns and a forked tail.

I’m no cheerleader for Slater. His blog has earned its place in the media landscape but it’s sometimes gratuitously offensive, as when he wrote that a “feral” who crashed his car on the West Coast while trying to evade police deserved to die – the comment that supposedly triggered the attack on his website. He was making a legitimate point but overcooked it, presumably for the purpose of provoking a reaction, which he got - in spades.

The comments posted on Whale Oil, too, are often rabid, and I was pleased to hear him say this morning that he intends to exercise tighter moderation. Not before time.

I don’t like cosy collusion between journalists (or in this case bloggers) and cabinet ministers or government spin doctors either. They smell. But Slater is hardly the first media person to be favoured with sneaky leaks and tipoffs. As has been pointed out over the past few days, Helen Clark had her favourites in the press gallery too.

And anyway, what about Hager’s motives? He likes to call himself an investigative journalist, but he’s nothing of the sort. In truth he’s a polemicist who happens to use some journalistic skills, such as writing and ferreting out information (which, to be fair, he does pretty well, if selectively).

Hager dislikes being called an activist, but it’s a more honest description of his role than “journalist”. The giveaway is that he seems very choosy about the subjects he writes about, and in the way he covers them.

Invariably he pushes issues dear to the left, and does it in a way that presents the right – whether it’s the business sector, the National Party or the Exclusive Brethren – in the worst possible light. To put it another way, he’s agenda-driven. That isn’t journalism.

As proof of his supposed neutrality, he cites the fact that he embarrassed Clark’s Labour government in 2002 with his book Seeds of Distrust (published, like Dirty Politics, immediately before an election, so as to achieve maximum political impact), in which he exposed the accidental release of genetically modified corn.

But this doesn’t prove a thing – least of all that he had no political motive, as he would clearly like us to think. The truth, I suspect, is that Hager is well to the left of Labour and would have been hoping that the timely publication of Seeds of Distrust would benefit the Greens, a party which I believe he’s more attuned with.

Hager’s book was given the title Dirty Politics for a good reason – to create the impression of moral rot on the part of the government and its cheerleaders. The irony is that Hager is as much a part of the dirty politics he writes about as John Key, Slater, Judith Collins and Jason Ede. And I suspect the reaction of most neutral voters will be, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “A plague on all their houses”.

 

Is this the most bizarre campaign ever?

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, August 13.)

This election is shaping up to be the strangest in my lifetime.

There’s a cacophony of minor parties scrambling for attention and a frenzied political bidding war in which there seems to be no limit on the extravagance of the promises made.

We’ve had an outbreak of thinly disguised xenophobia over the sale of a farm, a sideshow over the use of the phrase “Sugar Daddy”, and a blatant appeal to the emotions of voters who imagine New Zealand can raise the drawbridge and retreat into a cosy and safe economic fortress, 1970s-style.

And all this is taking place within the context of a seriously flawed electoral system originally devised  to prevent an extremist party such as the Nazis regaining power in Germany, as if that were somehow applicable to New Zealand.

The weirdness is so all-pervasive it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s begin with the largest (literally) and most bizarre factor of all.

The very name Kim Dotcom suggests a character from a Batman or Austin Powers movie. But while Dotcom likes to present himself as something of a fun-loving jester figure, he’s a noxious force in politics.

If there was any doubt about that, it was erased by the Internet-Mana Party video on YouTube in which Dotcom urged an apparently liquored-up audience of Christchurch students to chant “F--- John Key”.

Apologists for Dotcom have tried to excuse this as free expression and youthful exuberance. It was nothing of the sort.

Whatever you think about Key (and I’ve never been a fan) this was rabble-rousing at its basest and most puerile level. Dotcom looked like a grotesque cross between a gangsta rapper and the Fuhrer at Nuremberg. 

Policy? Issues? Never mind that tedious stuff. Let's bring it all down to mindless, hateful abuse.

The video did, however, serve one useful purpose: it left no one in any doubt that what primarily drives Dotcom is deep personal animosity against Key.

No matter what you think about the other figures in this election campaign, you have to allow that they are all motivated by genuine concern for New Zealand. But Dotcom doesn’t give that impression.

The question voters should ask themselves is whether a toxic personal grudge is a sound reason for entering politics (not forgetting, of course, that Dotcom may also be motivated by a desperate desire to avoid extradition to the United States, where he’s wanted for Internet piracy).

Relax, the apologists for Internet-Mana say; Dotcom won’t necessarily have any influence on party policy. If you believe that, you probably also believe in chem trails. He doesn’t strike me as the sort of person to put $3 million into a party if he’s not going to have any control over it.

Which brings us to Laila Harre, the nominal leader of the Dotcom-funded party. Of all the performers in the current political circus, she is the one whose reputation has been most damaged.

Harre once commanded respect as a leftist politician of conviction. In aligning herself with Dotcom she has redefined herself as a rank opportunist – a retread, desperate to revive her political career even if it means throwing her lot in with a flashy and extremely rich capitalist entrepreneur with an opaque agenda.

Try as she might, she will never overcome the perception that she has betrayed her proletarian principles in the pursuit of power.

So what of the other players in this most bizarre election campaign?

There’s the cerebral and unworldly Jamie Whyte, whose Herculean task is to rebuild the discredited Act. Whyte is a conviction politician, just as Harre once was on the other side, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that Act has no gas left in its tank.

There’s Colin Craig, who hopes to capture the substantial social conservative vote, but who seems determined to sabotage himself. I mean, who persuaded him to pose for that tragically misguided photo where he’s lying in the grass with a come-hither look?

Craig is another conviction politician, but like Whyte, he’s up against a media that is at worst hostile, at best unsympathetic. The last thing he needs is to provide ammunition to the mockers, but he can’t seem to help himself.

Then there’s Winston Peters. There’s always Winston Peters. But I wonder if this could be the old warhorse’s last charge. If New Zealand First doesn’t get past the five per cent threshold, I can’t see Peters sticking around for another three years – in which case that could be the end of the party too, unless Ron Mark can be persuaded to take over.

And of course, lastly there’s Key. His preternatural popularity is a complete mystery, but you can’t argue with the opinion polls.

The only thing standing between Key and a third election victory is the MMP system, the vagaries of which could still deliver a rogue result in the form of a dysfunctional coalition cobbled together from the disparate, angry forces of the left.

As a journalist, I find it riveting; as a citizen concerned for our future, I find myself getting more apprehensive as the big day approaches.

FOOTNOTE: This was written last weekend, before the Nicky Hager bombshell. What was previously our most bizarre campaign ever is now also shaping up to be the ugliest.

Socialism, Bob Harvey-style

(First published in the Dominion Post, August 8.)

I WAS INTRIGUED to hear Sir Bob Harvey, the personable former Waitakere mayor and tireless champion of West Auckland, describe himself on TVNZ’s Q+A programme recently as a socialist.

Obviously the meaning of the word has changed. The classical definition of a socialist is someone who believes in state control of the economy, but no intelligent person – and Harvey is an intelligent man – could seriously argue that the heavy hand of the state creates happy, prosperous societies.

I mean, what shining examples are there? The Soviet Union? North Korea? Chaotic, wretched Venezuela, perhaps?

The truth is that wherever it has been tried, socialism has been synonymous with economic failure, misery and repression.  That’s why it’s almost extinct. People aren’t stupid.

I can only conclude, therefore, that when people like Harvey describe themselves as socialists, they actually mean something else – perhaps a gentler, kinder socialism that hasn’t yet been revealed to the rest of us.

Here’s my theory. I suspect that to call yourself a socialist these days is to announce to the world that you have a social conscience, and are therefore on a higher moral plane than all those heartless people who are interested only in their own wellbeing.

In addition to that, I suspect that “socialist” has become a code word for someone who feels guilty about enjoying the trappings of capitalism – the stylish clothes, the overseas holidays, the restored villas in fashionable inner-city suburbs.

Most of the people I know who think of themselves as socialists enjoy pretty sweet lives. Capitalism has been very kind to them. I bet Harvey (who made his name in advertising, possibly the least socialist business imaginable) isn’t exactly short of a buck.

But we’re talking about a generation that lived through the heady era of the protest movement, when capitalism was the enemy, and part of them has never moved on.

Even when they’ve grown sleek and prosperous, in their minds they’re still marching down Willis or Queen St protesting against apartheid or the Vietnam War. Calling themselves socialist is a convenient way of resolving the contradiction between their romantic ideals and the reality of their very comfortable capitalist lives.

True socialists like the founders of the Labour Party wouldn’t recognise these people.

Being a socialist in those days meant getting your head bashed in by a special constable on horseback. Now it means sitting around a Kelburn dinner table tut-tutting about income disparity while someone opens a bottle of 2003 Felton Road pinot noir and wonders whether to go to Morocco or France for their next holiday.

* * *

IT’S DECADES since newspapers decided they would no longer accept letters written under pseudonyms. Most require that the writer supply a full name, home address and phone number. It’s not foolproof, but it weeds out most of the mischief-makers who don’t have the guts to put their names to their opinions.

Predictably, the quality of letters improved almost overnight when the rules were changed.

Contrast this with the approach of the Sunday political TV programmes Q+A and The Nation, which seem happy to accept anonymous texts and emails commenting – often scurrilously – on the issues under discussion and the credibility of the politicians interviewed.

Some contributors provide a first name, but the viewer has no way of knowing whether it’s genuine. Occasionally the commenter is identified in full, but most are anonymous.

Given that the comments are displayed on screen almost instantaneously, there’s no way the producers can vet them in the hope of weeding out propagandists and barrow-pushers.

How many of the snide messages running across the bottom of the screen are from party members and activists? There’s no way of knowing. In effect, they’re no better than the cowardly trolls who infest the Internet.

* * *

I WONDER, is there a club for people who can’t stand Te Radar? If not, I might have to start one.

I admit I’m out of step with public opinion here. Clearly, lots of people love him. Why else would TVNZ (or to be precise, the taxpayer through New Zealand on Air) keep paying him to jaunt around the Pacific making prime-time documentaries?

But something about Te Radar irritates me, and I can’t figure out exactly what   it is. The frizzy hair? Those nerdy glasses? That nasal Kiwi voice? The contrived Peter Pan quirkiness? All of the above?

What bothers me most is that the people he encounters in faraway places might make the mistake of thinking he’s representative of the rest of us. Now there’s a scary thought.

 

Con Devitt and the decline of union militancy

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, July 30.)

 

Cornelius Devitt died in Wellington a couple of weeks ago. That name would mean nothing to younger New Zealanders, but to those of a certain age, Con Devitt was once a household name. In fact you could almost say he was public enemy number one.

Devitt was a trade union official. To be precise, he was secretary of the Boilermakers’ Union.

That may not sound significant, but the Boilermakers’ Union included the workers who did the welding on construction jobs involving structural steel.

It was a small union, but it wielded power far beyond its size because it effectively controlled some of the country’s biggest construction jobs. And in the 1970s, under Devitt’s leadership, the Boilermakers’ Union was synonymous with militancy and disruption.

Most notoriously, the union was blamed for endless delays in the building of Wellington’s showpiece BNZ Centre. Begun in 1973 and intended for completion in 1977, the 31-storey building wasn’t finished until 1984. The final cost was four times greater than the original estimate.

The BNZ site wasn’t the only one where the boilermakers made their presence felt. They were also involved in long-running disputes at Mangere Bridge, Marsden Point oil refinery and the Kawerau pulp and paper mill.

But the BNZ job caused the greatest outrage. It was in the heart of Wellington and thus smack-bang in the public eye. And because the BNZ in those days was still state-owned, the taxpayer had a direct stake in it. One consequence of the BNZ fiasco was that New Zealand architects stopped designing buildings that depended on structural steelwork.

I interviewed Devitt in 1995 and he insisted the union was made a scapegoat for other problems on the BNZ job. I’m sure there was an element of truth in that, but there was no doubt that the boilermakers were a bloody-minded lot who seized any excuse they could for downing tools. On one memorable occasion they went on strike because a union delegate didn’t like his company-issue boots.

Rob Muldoon was prime minister then, and he was in the habit of referring to “Clydeside militants” – a shorthand term for left-wing unionists from Britain who attained positions of influence in New Zealand unions. That was a direct reference to Devitt, whose early days were spent in Glasgow’s Clydeside area, then a hive of heavy industry. Devitt proudly told me it was known as “Red Clydeside” on account of its tradition of union militancy.

Devitt, who was 86 when he died, was one of the last of a generation of union leaders whose faces were very familiar to New Zealanders in the 1970s and early 80s. They included Bill Andersen (Drivers’ Union), Pat Kelly (Cleaners and Caretakers), Blue Kennedy and Frank McNulty (Meat Workers), Don Goodfellow (Railwaymen) and Jim Knox (Federation of Labour president).

Some were Marxists, though not always openly so. Factionalism ran deep within the union movement, not only between militants and conservatives (of whom the Irish Catholic Tony Neary, of the Electrical Workers’ Union, was the figurehead) but also within the left – most notably between Moscow-aligned communists and those who took their ideological cue from Beijing.

It was a time when militant unions wreaked economic havoc in key industries. Freezing works, the wharves, car assembly plants, transport (especially the Cook Strait ferries, which were seen as especially vulnerable) and the pulp and paper industry were often targeted.

It was ironic that Muldoon, despite his much-vaunted tough-guy image, never got on top of the union problem. Unions went on strike with almost complete impunity throughout his nine years in power, and no doubt contributed to the woefully sick economy that Labour inherited in 1984.

Only a handful of union survivors from that era remain. They include Ken Douglas, who went on to head the Council of Trade Unions, and former Seafarers’ Union president Dave Morgan, though neither remains active in union affairs. Douglas tried to hold the movement together when it began to break apart in the late 1980s and was savagely attacked for supposedly betraying the workers – another irony, given his socialist and militant credentials.

It all seems a lifetime ago, which I suppose it was. Yet that period of strong-arm unionism left an enduring legacy.

Many New Zealanders retain sharp memories of the damage done by industrial turmoil. That goes a long way toward explaining why the union movement today is a shadow of what it once was.

Economic upheaval, deregulation and globalisation wiped out the old centres of union power, such as the big freezing works and car assembly plants. Politicians did the rest, passing new employment laws that tipped the scales in favour of employers.

The abolition of compulsory trade union membership in 1991 was a turning point. Some militant blue-collar unions never wanted it in the first place, believing the movement was weakened by numerically large unions, such as those covering retail and clerical workers, whose members were not strongly committed to union principles and were reluctant to take industrial action.

Today, less than 17 percent of the labour force is unionised and some once-formidable unions no longer exist. Others have shrunk or have been absorbed by others. Power has shifted to white-collar unions, such as the teachers’ and nurses’ organisations.

There’s a new generation of union leaders – typically much better-educated than their predecessors, more media-savvy and less locked into old, class-warfare mindsets. And because unionism is no longer compulsory, unions have to work a lot harder to attract and retain members, which they do.

I believe that in some ways, the balance of power in industrial relations has swung too far in favour of employers. Workers need strong, effective representation to protect themselves against abuse and exploitation.

But if today’s union leaders want to understand why politicians have nobbled them, they need only look back at the rampant abuse of power by militant unions in the era of Con Devitt.

A tribute to John Hayes

I just got around to watching last week’s valedictory speech by my local MP, John Hayes. It brought home to me (not that I was really in any doubt) that the Wairarapa is losing an exemplary parliamentary representative.

Hayes has been in Parliament for three terms and increased his majority each time. He has been a ferociously hard-working MP, putting in long hours and travelling vast distances in one of the country’s bigger rural electorates.

He has fought hard for local causes. Masterton’s Makoura College would have closed in 2008 without Hayes’ dogged resistance. Now its roll has doubled and despite being a decile 2 school serving a predominantly low-income area, it’s achieving NZCEA results that exceed the national average.  

Hayes has also lobbied tirelessly for local irrigation schemes and was the key player in negotiations to re-establish a Masterton-Auckland air link – still not confirmed – after Air New Zealand abandoned its service.

Those are all reasons to respect him, but his valedictory speech reminded me of another one. Hayes has always spoken his mind, possibly to the detriment of his political career.

His departing comments were characteristically blunt, although delivered without rancour. While praising his colleagues across all parties for their hard work behind the scenes, he was critical of Parliament’s toxic atmosphere. He recalled visiting the Swedish and Danish parliaments, where MPs debate issues respectfully, and wondered why we couldn’t do the same here.

He gave the media a serve, too, and asked why anyone would consider a life in politics when they risked being publicly pilloried for every minor slip-up.

A former diplomat who played a crucial role in the negotiations that ended the disastrous Bougainville civil war of the 1980s, Hayes also talked about a parliamentary visit to Israel that led him to conclude that most Israeli politicians weren’t remotely interested in settling things with the Palestinians. He didn’t refer directly to the current conflict in Gaza but said: “To Israelis, I simply ask you: have you no humanity?”

Whether you agree with him or not, these are not sentiments one expects to hear from a National Party backbencher – not even in his last days in the House. But it was a typical example of Hayes speaking his mind, and it helps explain why he was never greatly favoured by the party hierarchy.

People who speak their mind in politics are often considered a liability by their leaders, even if voters respect them for it. National rewarded Hayes’ honesty with a consistently low place on the party list, well below seat-warmers and useless blowhards like Tau Henare.

Hayes will be missed. It remains to be seen whether the candidate National is putting up to replace him, winery owner and former international banker Alistair Scott, is made of the same stuff.

What I could do with a machine gun

(First published in The Dominion Post, July 25.)

I AM AWARE that what I am about to write will result in me being branded a cantankerous misanthrope, and possibly even a bit mad. What the heck.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve noticed myself developing a visceral aversion to noise. Not all noise; just certain noises.

Some sudden, intrusive sounds provoke what I can only describe as an involuntary, irrational rage.

I swear, for example, that if I had a machine gun, no boy racer would be safe. In my wilder flights of fancy I picture myself lying in wait to ambush them. I would shoot first and worry about the consequences later.

In my mind I replay the famous scene at the end of Bonnie and Clyde in which the outlaw couple’s Ford is left so riddled with bullet holes that it looks like a colander.

The practical problem I have to overcome is that boy racers don’t provide adequate warning of their approach. I might hear them doing drifts or donuts in my street at 2am, but by the time I got to the gate with my Uzi they’d be away and gone. But boy, I think about it.

Steady, droning-type noises, as opposed to loud, abrupt ones that come out of nowhere, don’t seem to bother me so much. At weekends, planes come and go constantly from the local aerodrome, but I never feel tempted to launch a surface-to-air missile from behind the potting shed.

Motor mowers are acceptable too. All New Zealanders are genetically programmed to have a high tolerance of lawn mowers, otherwise we’d all go mad.

Chainsaws are more challenging. I live in what must be the chainsaw capital of the world. In other towns, kids get skateboards and X-boxes for their birthdays. In Masterton they get a Stihl or a Husqvarna. And I mean girls as well as boys.

Chainsaws are part of the aural furniture here. There’s always one revving somewhere in the middle-distance. I accept this is one of the prices you pay for living in a rural town where everyone knows the price of a cord of macrocarpa, but I sometimes struggle to contain my irritation.

Constantly yapping dogs? They’re almost up there with boy racers on the vexation scale. The same goes for motorbikes, whether they’re Harley-Davidsons – which are engineered to announce their presence to everyone within a 2km-radius – or trail bikes, which are the 250cc equivalent of an infernal mosquito buzzing in your ear.

Even the blackbirds in my garden drive me mad with their raucous alarm calls every time I go near them. That may sound a bit extreme, but the squawking of a startled blackbird is a sound calculated to rattle the nerves.

Tuis, on the other hand, are winningly euphonious, demonstrating that it’s not noise in itself that’s offensive, but the type of noise.

I’m on a roll now. What else?

● People eating in movie theatres – and not just their noisy munching, which is bad enough, but the infuriating rustle of the bags containing whatever rubbish they’re consuming. Rustling bags are another of those sounds that induce homicidal impulses. The Uzi solution might be a bit extreme in this instance, and there’s always the risk that you might hit the wrong person in the dark, but a Taser might do it.

● All-night parties, especially ones where all you hear is the tuneless thump of bass and drums. The politician who promises to throw all-night partiers into prison without the time-wasting formality of a court appearance is assured of my vote.

● The unnecessary use of car horns. The horn is a device to be used in situations where human life is in imminent danger, and then only sparingly. (In other words, there should be a lightning-quick assessment as to whether the life at risk is worth saving.) All other applications are a crime against humanity – and there are no exemptions for morons who get an infantile thrill from tooting in the Mt Victoria Tunnel. 

● Cellphones with idiotic ring tones. Phones that sound like phones are acceptable at a pinch, provided the volume is kept down. Phones that play Greensleeves or the theme from Beverly Hills Cop are beyond the pale.

Am I being flippant? Well, perhaps with regard to shooting people – but otherwise, not entirely. Most intrusive noise is avoidable. The people who cause it show a lack of consideration for others and a disregard for their privacy. We should all be far less tolerant of it.

 

 

 

The American paradox

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, July 16.)

I have to smile when I think of my one visit to New York City.

My wife and I arrived late on a Saturday night in October 2002. I remember it well because on the drive in from Kennedy Airport our cab driver told us of the terrorist bombings that had just killed 202 people in Bali.

But that’s incidental. What amuses me is the recollection of how apprehensive I was – quite unnecessarily, as it turned out – when we ventured out into the city the following morning.

It being early on a Sunday, the streets around our Greenwich Village hotel were virtually deserted. I’m not a timid person but I admit feeling uneasy as we descended the steps of the nearest subway station to catch a train to Battery Park, from where we intended to take a ferry to the Statue of Liberty.

I’m not sure what I expected, but for the previous few decades I had been conditioned by Hollywood movies to believe that New York – and the subway especially – was infested with armed muggers and crazed drug addicts.

Of course we didn’t encounter any; not even a beggar, though they’re usually everywhere in urban America. As the day progressed and we roamed the city, we gradually relaxed. There were no drive-by shootings, no car chases, no police with loudhailers telling holed-up serial killers to come out with their hands up. I was almost disappointed.

By the time we left New York several days later, we felt entirely at ease moving around. And contrary to legend, we found New Yorkers friendly and approachable.

Since then we’ve been back to America several times. We’ve driven through 20 states, including some that most Americans admit they wouldn’t dream of visiting. We’ve stayed in big, glamorous cities and forgotten towns in the middle in nowhere. And we’ve grown to like the country so much that we almost suffer withdrawal symptoms if we stay away too long.

Almost everywhere we’ve been, people have been gracious, welcoming and interested in where we come from and what we’re doing. And although we’ve seen countless movies about terrible things happening to people on lonely American highways or in sinister small towns, at no time have we felt remotely at risk.

All this makes it doubly hard to comprehend the hideous events that regularly cause America to convulse.

Hardly a week seems to pass without a report of someone running amok with a gun. Some of these incidents happen in incongruously pleasant settings, such as the affluent, laid-back Californian town of Isla Vista, where young Elliott Rodger recently recorded a chilling video before coolly killing six people because he was resentful at not being able to get a girlfriend.

More recently there was an even more quintessentially American killing spree in Las Vegas by a strange young couple who shot dead two policemen before turning their guns on themselves. It seemed they had a grudge against the government – a recurring theme in such crimes.

How does one account for such bizarre acts? It’s not enough to say that a country of more than 300 million people is bound to produce extremes of good and bad. While that’s certainly true, there’s more to it than that.

Some of America’s weirdness is built in; hard-wired, as it were. There seems to be a rogue gene in the country’s DNA that periodically manifests itself in outbursts of homicidal craziness on a scale that New Zealanders can’t comprehend.

Among a tiny, cranky minority of Americans there’s a seething, irrational, inarticulate rage that, when combined with the availability of guns, can have lethal consequences. Religious fundamentalism, right-wing extremism, anti-government paranoia and the constitutional right to bear firearms (which some Americans regard as if it were ordained by God) make a toxic brew.

All countries have their own weirdness, some more than others. Japan and India impress me as being wonderfully weird, albeit in different ways. But on the international weirdness scale, it’s hard to imagine any country topping the USA.

It’s hard to explain, for example, how a country that’s so overtly Christian – a country where the biggest and most opulent buildings in many poor rural towns are churches – can also be the Western world’s most enthusiastic executioner. It doesn’t seem to occur to many Americans that putting people to death, often in the most cold-blooded way, might be contrary to God’s will.

But there remains that perplexing paradox. On the one hand there’s the friendly, charming America that my wife and I experience in our travels; on the other, a society where grotesquely strange and evil things happen.

Winston Churchill famously described Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. I wonder what he made of America, which seems a far more bewildering mess of contradictions.