We are simple souls, and so find ourselves “conflicted” (to use pop psych jargon) over the public vituperate venting about one Macsyna King.  How we love a mob.  All heat and no light.  A dirty bomb.

Macsyna is coming out of the closet via a book, Breaking Silence: The Kahui Case, written by Ian Wishart.  The mob has called for the book to be banned, via boycott, successfully pressuring booksellers not to carry it.  She was the mother of murdered (or manslaughtered) infant twins, Chris and Cru Kahui.  The court acquitted her then current boyfriend (and father of the twins) of responsibility for their deaths.  No-one else has been charged.  The defence argued that Macsyna herself was their killer.

If the court evidence is to be believed, King has been both wretched and depraved.

Asked by Crown lawyer Richard Marchant who was the dominant person in the relationship, Ms King replied “I thought I was”. “I would yell the loudest, I would swear at him (“husband”, Chris) and I just wouldn’t stop till I got my way,” she said. “I’ve kicked him in the shin, I’ve slapped his face before.” Kahui, eight years her junior, was a quiet, softly spoken person who would bottle things up. . . .

Ms King told the court she had three children to two different fathers prior to meeting Kahui in 2004. All three children were now cared for by their respective fathers and she did not have contact with them. She started living with Kahui shortly after meeting him and quickly fell pregnant, giving birth to a boy, Shayne, in 2005. In September that year, she split with Kahui for several months and went to live with her sister Emily. During that time she got into a relationship with another man but then returned to Kahui. She fell pregnant with the twins soon after her return. . . .

During her conversation with Ms Ingham, Ms King said she sometimes hit Kahui – but not around the head or face – and occasionally smacked their one-year-old son Shayne with an open hand. She also said she was attending an anger management course. She also said she like to go out with her friends and get drunk but would get the babies “out of her hair” first. . . .

But, why pick on her? Why the loathing and disgust?  She is hardly atypical.  In fact she accurately and fairly represents the NZ underclass–which is large and growing.  She is a poster girl for the intergenerational welfare dependant.  Maybe that’s why the populist mob is so energized.  It is deeply offended that thousands of people like King, not only exist, not only are the products of New Zealand society, but are funded and paid for by state welfare payments which become more generous according to the number of children one produces.  Their depravity is paid for by the ever generous state.

Maybe this cuts so bone deep that the mob is having an “I don’t want to know” moment of denial. Disembowelling the messenger is its defensive visceral reaction.

For our part, the more folk like King get their story out there, the better.  We rely upon Wishart to get the text as close to the truth as possible–but he is rather experienced at it. We would argue for the stories of a hundred of King’s underclass colleagues to be told.

Most people in New Zealand ardently support state welfare.  We are bored to death by repeated assertions from the Commentariate that the Macsyna King’s of this world simply do not exist.  They are only imaginary febrile figments on the part of beneficiary bashers.  State welfare helps only the deserving poor, because the poor are always deserving.  Depravity, laziness, slothfulness, envy, lust, self-indulgence, lying and greed have absolutely nothing to do with whether one is poor or not.  The poor are public spirited, generous, earnest, honest, diligent, and energetic folk who have fallen on hard times.  Prime the pump with a bit of welfare money and they will be away laughing.

The King’s of this world expose the mythical character of the dominant socio-political narrative, the controlling ideology of our Age.  Her truculence, belligerence, bullying, and vile mouth don’t fit the carefully crafted stereotype of the welfare class.  She is a living, breathing, walking blasphemy.  Hence she is thus deeply offensive and hateful to many.

But we believe there is another reason why the Mob is baying.  The defence at Chris Kahui’s trial argued that Kahui was innocent; King was the killer of the twins.  The jury acquitted Kahui in near record time. Ergo, King must be the twins’ killer.  The baying mob always presumes guilt before trial.  Moreover, in our brave new humanist world, the organs of state must stand in for God.  Since God has been banished as a mythical relic from an ignorant bygone age, we moderns must prove ourselves superior in every way.  The attributes and expectations of deity inevitably devolve to the State.  In part this means that the State must deliver perfect and final justice every time.

The public has zero tolerance for failure to convict.  Burdens of proof are nothing.  Emphatic convictions are everything.  Since Kahui was quickly acquitted, the state’s case was clearly prejudiced and incompetent.  King was the only alternative offered up.  She, therefore, must be guilty.  The state’s inability to put her on trial and successfully convict is deeply troubling to devotees of the established secular religion (which amounts to around 95 percent of the population).

To allow King to speak out adds insult to injury; it rubs society’s collective face in its own faeces.  It mocks the impotence of secular humanism.  Collective gnashing of teeth is the order of the day.  How dare she presume to speak to us.

Let’s try a thought experiment.  Imagine our Lord was incarnate in New Zealand at this time.  We have no doubt that He would be seeking out the Macsyna King’s of this world, for as He would acerbically remind us, He would have come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.  How the Commentariate would bay for blood, if King were to repent and become one of His disciples–a kind of modern day Mary of Magdala.

How fitting, then, that we hear from King–one way or the other.  How fitting that Wishart, a Christian has presumably spent much time with her.  We hope and trust that Wishart, as one of Christ’s ambassadors, has been able to speak to her of the Saviour Who can make clean and whole.  We trust that he has had opportunity to call her to repent and believe.

For our part, being neither offended  nor disappointed  nor blasphemed against, we are keen to hear from her.  She represents, to use Lytton’s phrase, the Coming Race.

Cross Posted at: ContraCelsum

Tags:   Chris and Cru Kahui · Due Process · Ian Wishart · Investigate Magazine · Macsyna King · Welfare13 Comments