It would be difficult to dispute the proposition that the right wing of political discussion has a monopoly on stupidity. Everyday some right-wing air brain in the United States provides the world with examples of how the moron’s work. Trump of course leads the way. Drinking disinfectant to cure Covid. Dropping nuclear bombs into tornadoes. Exercise should be avoided. It depletes the body of finite energy reserves.   Praising George Washington for “taking over airports” during the 1775 Revolutionary War. The Wright brothers flew the first airplane in 1903. Windmills cause cancer. And America’s new F35 fighter was totally stealth. “So, when we’re fighting, they can’t see us.” 

While Trump may lead, his followers are close behind. This week a Georgia Republican congresswoman and supporter of Donald Trump has been mocked online after she confused the name of the Gestapo with a Spanish soup.

Marjorie Taylor Greene accused Democratic leaders of “gazpacho” tactics on Capitol Hill during an angry rant on One America News on Tuesday. Greene described the Washington jail housing US Capitol riot suspects as a “DC gulag” before accusing the House Speaker “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police [of] spying on members of Congress”.

The representative from Georgia quickly became the butt of jokes on social media for confusing the cold tomato soup from Andalusia with the Third Reich’s feared secret police, the Gestapo.

Let’s dedicate this day to all right-wing gazpacho lovers. I hope they will have a great day ahead.

But the United States is not alone. New Zealand has its share of the mentally challenged right. Some readers may have seen the ex-TV news reporter, Liz Gunn, at parliament yesterday screaming into a camera, “Send reinforcements. This is war. This is war.” Clearly there is a job for her in the Washington DC gazpacho.

But one bloke, whose wife was in Wellington yesterday, had a Lotto win. She told television news she was going home to get a divorce because her husband had just had a Covid booster shot. Gives a whole new meaning to the government’s poster that says, “The vaccine that keeps us together.”

But the pinnacle of sensible political discourse came from the woman who held up a sign saying, “Love is the answer”, while screaming that a TV news reporter should be assassinated. The gazpacho could do with her as well.

But these New Zealand examples are mere foot soldiers. Do we have our version of Trump? Yes, indeed we do. Every morning on News Talk ZB Mike Hosking incites discontent. He feigns innocence. But is as stupid as Trump and just as dangerous. Yesterday, for example, Hosking did an item on the government’s planned unemployment insurance. His conclusion was that because the rich, like him, were going to pay for the planned insurance and the poor were going to get the benefit, New Zealand was now a “communist” country.

Now that is incitement. Dozens of the disaffected hearing that rubbish will join the ranks of those protesting in the grounds of Parliament. Hosking is stupid. He is wrong. Communism means control of the means of production, distribution and exchange. New Zealand is a million miles from anything like that description. The company Hosking works for proves that point.

New Zealand has 557,680 private business enterprises, an increase of 1.7 percent from February 2019. The number of paid employees in these enterprises was 2.3 million, up 1.2 percent from February 2019. These enterprises had 593,590 business locations, 1.6 percent more than in February 2019. That demographic is hardly the stuff of a communist takeover. Jacinda is no Stalin.

But tell a lie often enough and Hosking will get an audience of believers. I have no objection to the vomit Hosking spews, as long as New Zealand treats him like the absurd clown he has always been.