The MAGA hat is not the disease, it's a symptom. There are people in parliament who flirt with Trumpist politics: that it's the majority who ought to feel aggrieved and oppressed by the minority, and have "lost" something that ought to be taken back... https://twitter.com/shilokino/status/1265162573063716864

..and that there are vast conspiracies at work to keep them "oppressed", and therefore they can't trust any of the authorities - the government, the scientists, the journalists.

It's understandable why they flirted with it, back when it gave Trump an unexpected victory. But by the time it became apparent that it made American politics toxic and utterly dysfunctional, it should have been *obviously* unconscionable to maintain those tactics.

Now, when it is leading to nearly 100k deaths? I'm not sure what words to use after "obviously unconscionable".

I'm not saying that Muller's hat means that he's one of them. I'm saying that it's an unacceptable failure to recognise what ought to be clearly alarming.

This politics of resentment is one which destroys societies, and is killing people by the tens of thousands.

And as much as it is far away in America of 2016, a faraway place from which you bring back souvenirs, it is also in the New Zealand Parliament in 2020.

It is an infection which is on our shores.