Not Like Us - The Politics Of Wind Directed Urination
What People Outside Politics Fail To Understand About Politics
Editor note: I'm going to be infuriatingly vague about the who's who in this post. Think of it as anti-name dropping, meant to spare people from any backlash that might come from knowing me. That experience should be punishment enough.
Something that I get asked from people who don't understand politics, people with only a superficial interest in it, is how can you be friends with X? How can you know Y? Or even, how can you interact with Z at all? Like doing so is somehow empowering some great evil to curse the land.
I think it is hard for people who don't ever commit to anything to understand why people who do can find understanding and a sense of comradery in each other.
These are questions I never get from friends involved professionally. The less people do, both in politics and in life more generally, the more aggravated they seem to be.
Yes, politics is contentious, but people who have lived it have experienced something quite unique that people who haven't will never really understand.
The older I get, the more I value different opinions and people for what they are. Not how they vote, or who they associate with. Some days I feel like an outlier.
I was surrounded by quite senior Labour Party figures growing up, and I was taught by one of my parent's to hate National and everything it was meant to stand for.
It wasn't intentional indoctrination in a cult-like fashion, but it was a type of tribalism whose closest facsimile is religious zealotry - something my Presbyterian grandparents were strongly against. Having seen what it has done to everywhere else but New Zealand, introducing it here was not something they could stomach, even at home.
When I first got a very junior job working for a very low ranking National MP in my early 20’s, I was casually told, subtly, to feel shame for this. I was encouraged to hate myself by the same person.
Fortunately I never did, because I knew this person - as a failed political aspirant themselves - failed in this world because they never really understood what politics is.
Another person, one my own age and a National Party person this time, spread a rumour (based on my background, and possibly my ethnicity) that I was a Labour Party sleeper agent.
She, too, tried to run for Parliament, even made it onto voting papers, but her campaign was a semi-famous disaster littered with rookie errors. She was never going to make it, I could have called that when we first met at university.
I have always understood, for lack of a better term, 'the game', and they didn't. Still don't.
It is about principles and ideals, but it's also about telling a compelling story and understanding what makes people tick.
At its heart, politics is just sales.
You can't succeed if you see anyone not immediately over-awed by your argument as either a monster or an idiot. People who think like this inevitably fail… except Richard Nixon (there's always a few outliers).
Former MP’s and staffers often talk about Parliament as this very toxic working culture, and for some people and in some situations it was. For me, the most toxic part of politics was, and remains, everyone outside of it.
Even now, doing commentary, I've gotten to be on panels and spoken with commentators and journalists of such varied stripes they could make a nerd rainbow.
I genuinely haven't had a bad experience with any of them, even ones I was ready to have a bad experience with.
None of us are so different (even the former Cabinet Minister who refused to concede the final word!) and there's always something we can bond over.
The National MP I worked for in my early 20’s, a charming man well liked on both sides of the House for his respectful and gentlemanly manner, had three really close MP friends.
Two were in his party but hilariously couldn't have been more different from each other, with one a true party man, and the other probably more suited to being in Labour than in his own party. The third was a Green.
He told me once that he, this Green MP, was a man of great character, a man of good morals and pure heart, and that meant more to him than any disagreement they might have about climate action or the need for mining to create jobs. He was also a laugh, which we all need from time-to-time.
Like my boss, I had and still have, friends across the different political parties. At least one in every party. We’re united by knowing the long hours and endless toil that being a staffer entails.
We had all experienced someone from the outside world being a jerk to us because of who we worked for, had all been dragged into the petty internal squabbles and the power grabs of party politics, and all felt the need to have a cold one (or ten) after a brutal sitting week.
Good people, real people, ones who treat others with class and dignity, are worth having in your life regardless of what others might think about it.
Because of seeing the best, and worst, in people involved in politics I have come to appreciate people others think I shouldn't.
Yes, politics matters, but it is not an excuse to be awful or to lose your humanity.
We're seeing more inflamed rhetoric lately. I've covered this turf before and will sadly have to do so again, but I'm comforted anytime I get to talk to X, Y, or Z about it. Not because they confirm my prejudices or agree with me, but because we can disagree without it becoming toxic.
They, by virtue of understanding that being mad alone changes nothing, can acknowledge there are multiple sides to each issue and that success only comes from crafting a compelling pitch.
It's a competition, but it doesn't need to be a divisive or hateful one. We may be on different teams, for now, but we're all in the same game and share the same passion for said game.
Some things in politics are complicated, but one thing isn't - either you understand it is a contest of ideas and strategies, not a battle for souls, or a literal war, and you come to terms with that, or you don't.
If you don't you'll always be outside, pissing in the wind and wondering why it's only raining on you.
Brilliant. Lessons for politics and life.
This is one of the very best pieces of writing that I’ve seen on Substack in a very long time. THANK YOU!