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Monthly Data and obligatory cat photos.

Ken Perrot at Open Parachute has the NZ blog stats up for the month, and I think the sitemeter has gone flakey because he can’t see my site. But Sitemeter has 6.3 K visits this month, so thanks.

Screenshot from 2015-03-02 18:11:09

WordPress makes things a lot more pretty.

Screenshot from 2015-03-02 18:32:54

Thanks, folks, for the traffic. And a quote from Karl du Fresne, one of the old journos who now blogs. For non Kiwis, Laila Harre is very left wing — she met her husband picking coffee for the Sandinistas, and Matthew Hooten is a market researcher with impeccable Tory connections.

Does that necessarily make her a hypocrite? While I dislike Harre’s politics intensely and always get a quiet thrill when sanctimonious leftists are exposed as closet capitalists, there’s no law that says they must drive 1980 Cortinas and wear track pants. In fact there’s a long tradition of left-leaning political reformers coming from privileged backgrounds.
And while I initially shared my informant’s shock at the suggestion that Harre and Hooton were chums, on reflection I came around to a different point of view.

I thought about my own situation. I have a number of long-standing friends who don’t like my political views, but we don’t let that get in the way. We focus on the likeable qualities we see in each other and generally succeed in setting politics to one side.
Life would be very dull if we fraternised only with people who think like us. It would be like being trapped for life in a Rotary Club meeting.

Let’s assume for a moment that Harre and Hooton really did go skiing together. Who are we to say they shouldn’t enjoy each other’s company?
Skiing with Hooton doesn’t mean having to agree with his politics. In fact the two might learn something from each other. Isn’t that preferable to shouting at each other over an ideological chasm?

The notion that we shouldn’t associate with people who think differently alarms me. Democracy is about the free exchange of ideas, but we retreat into tribal enclaves, erect barricades and refuse to have anything to do with the enemy.
We block our ears and hum loudly when anyone dares express a contrary thought. It’s as if we’re scared of being exposed to ideas that might turn out to be less heinous than we imagined. Groupthink takes over.

This happens on both the Right and the Left and has become noticeably worse since the advent of the Internet. Political blogs and websites provide fortresses where like-minded people can band together, drawing comfort and reassurance from their conformity and angrily repelling all invaders.
Anyone who challenges the consensus becomes the enemy.

Now the obligatory cat photo. This is Stripes, AKA Tripod — who is not one month post amputation.

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pukeko

Solo Dad. Calvinist. http://blog.photo.pukeko.net Photographer: manual, film and Digital. http://photo.pukeko.net.nz

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