Dialogue: Righteous braying for vengeance sparks the jitters

I own to feeling a little nervous every time I'm exposed to footage of the hundreds of red-necked, small-minded, righteous Banksie groupies who have been turning out every five minutes or so in support of Mark Middleton.

At these moments, I wonder how it is that New Zealand came to be so utterly populated by the righteously indignant.

I wonder if I am the only person in Godzone who believes an individual like Paul Dally is as entitled as the next guy to a Parole Board hearing if one has been set and, more to the point, is human despite it all.

I suspect I am.

Still, I asked a few punters around and about in the past few weeks. "People like him should be killed as well," hissed one old love I bailed up, her little eyes a-glitter with vengeful fury.

"Ninety per cent of voters wanted tougher sentences for people like that and that's a huge majority and the Government won't listen."

Another, slightly younger, love echoed that sentiment - and how. "People like Dally have no rights. When you commit that kind of crime, you give up your rights. That kind of person is not even human any more.

"I'm sick of the way society is supposed to pretend those people are human and we should try to understand them."

It's the righteousness in all of this that makes me nervous. That and the fact there are obviously a great many individuals out there who feel righteousness is a right.

I see no other explanation for this crazy saluting and feting of Middleton.

Saluting Middleton was not about making New Zealand a better place to live.

If it was, it would have been more constructive - there would have been no talk about giving guys like Dally a taste of their own medicine, or enforcing the notion of sentences without a hope of parole and so on.

Saluting Middleton was about making a public show of the vengeful aspect of the New Zealand character.

Certainly, there was nothing uplifting about it. It felt less like support for Middleton than a witch-hunt for the likes of Dally. It felt vicious and destructive, as all eye-for-an-eye arguments inevitably rr are. (Why has everyone forgotten the one about hating the sin but forgiving the sinner?)

Middleton's (admittedly tragic) narrative offered the great unwashed an excuse to put the boot into Dally and, indeed, into anyone who suggested that even the likes of Dally have basic human rights and a decent society ensures those rights are upheld.

It's a pity, too. I'm rather tired of living in an era where heroes and newsmakers are inevitably individuals who pimp for society's ultra-conservative element.

It has been quite a week for them, too. We've had the incredible Pauline Hanson returning, incredibly, from the political dead. We've also had the incredible George W. Bush being himself and bombing civilians for the hell of it.

We've had the likes of Clarence Thomas, supposedly a Supreme Court Justice, appearing as a keynote speaker at an ultra-conservative political forum.

We've had the truly amazing Rudy Giuliani rising from the political grave to take his annual swipe at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for exhibiting supposedly "anti-Catholic" soft porn.

This was probably my favourite. You have to wonder when a guy like Giuliani, a notorious thug and adulterer, gets to a place in his life where he has the face to accuse others of anti-Catholic behaviour.

You also have to wonder about the people to whom a guy like Giuliani appeals. Clearly, they are so keen to hear an ultra-conservative line of patter that they are prepared to hear it from any idiot. At the very least, they don't mind who casts the first stone.

There's something more than a little chilling about it. Guys such as Giuliani managed to change the face of a city as large and diverse as New York by appealing to New Yorkers' greatest fears and worst instincts.

He obviously believes there is plenty of mileage in that approach. That is a pity, because I'm bored with it.