NZ Parliament Protest: Thin End Wedge Rebuttal

As police play for rain, protesters represent the thin end, but there's no wedge | Luke Malpass | Stuff |

The political question being asked is whether this protest represents some sort of thinend of the wedge – of a much larger silent majority out there, which the few protesters represent. Or whether it is simply the thin end. It is almost certainly the latter. Over the past couple of years, the Ministry of Health has commissioned Horizon Research to conduct survey about the public’s attitude towards vaccinations.

There we have it; the prime blunder in determining how representative of New Zealand the protestors at Parliament might be. As if supporting vaccination somehow translates into supporting vaccination mandates, the segregation of society, the never-ending restrictions and everything else that goes with those major positions of Ardern's government.

OPINION: The protesters think they represent a silent and sizeable chunk of Kiwis. They do not, and patience is wearing thin. https://t.co/M1S6RUOvhW

— Stuff (@NZStuff) February 11, 2022

If, however, you are more interested in how many people you can get vaccinated by whatever means necessary; whether by soft coercion of implying no more lock downs once enough are vaccinated or by the harsher coercion of vaccination passes and work mandates - it's all the same in the end.  The total vaccinated is the only number that counts, for it represents the people that can be controlled one way or another.

I believe this one of the reason why this logical fallacy continues to be promoted. If a government can reliably force a significant majority of the population to do what they want, what does it care if any proportion of those people are angry at being forced? As long as those forced, or those who resisted don't end up on Parliament grounds, that is.

To be fair to the writer, Luke Malpass, he does acknowledge that vaccinated people can also be against the mandates, thus somewhat diverging from the standard government propaganda line:

As always with these protests, there are principled opponents to vaccine mandates. It is also likely a portion of the vaccinated population who don’t agree with the mandates.

What I would like to see happen next is a critique of the standard government conflation that the bulk of NZ's population agrees with their Covid-19 policy because they've gone out to get vaccinated.  Once that idea is treated seriously in the mainstream media, we'll know that journalists have started to free themselves from the group think they've been participating in for so long.

Anyway, we are still moving into some very interesting territory.  The media do seem to be questioning around of the edges of the belief system that they've been publishing for the last couple of years. While we have a governing class that senses something is wrong, it still thinks that only a fringe element of society is supportive of the protest.  While there is a growing population of New Zealanders that has been getting increasingly annoyed at being trapped in this never-ending totalitarian hellhole, not all of this population realise exactly what is happening, but they do know it's affected them badly and they just want it to stop.

Individuals, once they realise that our restrictions will never end, cannot go back to being compliant, easily pushed around citizens.  That is why this protest defies understanding by those still in the thrall of the Covid belief system.  This is why this protest is not lead by any one person or group.  This is also why the protestors do represent a silent and sizeable chunk of Kiwis, despite constant attempts to downplay the numbers and the support.  Once you see, you cannot un-see.  Once you know, you cannot un-know.  Therefore, the numbers can only grow from here.