Jacindamania bites the dust

OPINION:

Jacinda Ardern, queen of the coronavirus lockdowns, celebrity for the anti-freedom left, face of the “politics of kindness” tag that led to a cultural phenomenon dubbed “Jacindamania,” has just announced, with tears in her eyes, she’s leaving her prime minister post in New Zealand.

And all the world can breathe a sigh of relief that another COVID-19 tyrant has crumbled and been crushed.

Ardern was the lady who took Justin Trudeau’s dictatorial approach to COVID mitigation controls in Canada and ran with it. 

“After Canada’s Trudeau, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern Threatens COVID Mandate Protesters,” RepublicWorld.com reported in February 2022.

She said things like protests “cannot be tolerated” — meaning, those who dared buck the two-tier system of society she ushered into New Zealand, the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated — that those who dared protest that communist clampdown would be arrested, jailed, thrown into the abyss.

In an interview with The Independent over a year ago, Ardern was asked, “It’s almost like — you probably don’t see it like this — but two different classes of people, if you’re vaccinated or unvaccinated. You have all these rights if you are vaccinated.”

And her cavalier response, complete with smile?

“That is what it is, so, yep. Yep,” she said.

Despot.

In that same interview, she also defended her mandate for vaccine certificates by calling them a “tool of confidence” and explaining that “people who have been vaccinated will want to know they’re around people who have been vaccinated.”

Why?

Why would people who’ve been vaccinated need to know if others have been vaccinated if, in fact, the vaccines truly did what they were supposed to do — protect against virus transmission?

“They’ll want to know that they’re in a safe environment,” Ardern said then.

Because the vaccines don’t work? 

Or because it’s not about whether the vaccines work or not, but rather about control and power and seizing liberties from citizens?

Both.

And a country full of New Zealanders have now spoken.

“Ardern fought back tears as she announced at a news conference that she would resign in early February ahead of New Zealand’s election in October,” The New York Times wrote. “Ardern’s sudden departure before the end of her second term came as a surprise to the country and the world … [because] she was a leader … who reached celebrity status with the speed of a pop star. Her youth, pronounced feminism and emphasis on a ‘politics of kindness’ made her look to many like a welcome alternative to bombastic male leaders, creating a phenomenon known as ‘Jacindamania.’”

That’s the equivalent of the leftist fawning in America over the socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — the leftist phenomenon known as AOC — the leftist phenomenon of “The Squad” of socialists of Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and, of course, Ocasio-Cortez.

All youth.

All ignorant.

All empty vessels with big mouths and media love.

Trudeau, similarly, is Canada’s version of the youthful tyrant schooled by globalist forces — and his dictatorial clamps on financial freedom for truckers who dared protest his COVID shot mandates and COVID shot “certificates,” meaning passports, meaning “show me za papa’s, comrade!” that made international headlines. Trudeau is still in control.

Ardern has lost control.

New Zealanders saw her tyranny first hand and said nope, no more. 

“She became the personification of a particular response to the pandemic, which people in the far-flung margins of the internet and the not so far-flung margins used against her,” said Richard Shaw, a politics professor at Massey University in New Zealand said to The New York Times.

That is to say: People who like freedom not tyranny got sick and tired of her tyranny and as a consequence, she can’t win reelection. So rather than face defeat, she’s pretending she has better things to do. She’s exiting, stage left, rather than face decided, embarrassing, humiliating loss at the ballot boxes.

Another COVID tyrant bites the dust.

May that same spirit go forth and multiply.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE  or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.