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Home / Bay of Plenty Times

Tommy Wilson: Christine Blasey Ford is brave, impressive and influential

Bay of Plenty Times
1 Oct, 2018 10:33 PM5 mins to read

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Christine Blasey Ford, with lawyer Debra S. Katz, left, answers questions at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last Thursday. Photo / Getty Images

Christine Blasey Ford, with lawyer Debra S. Katz, left, answers questions at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last Thursday. Photo / Getty Images

My mokopuna (grandchild) is a clever little girl, (I guess we all believe our own are the most beautiful and smartest on the planet huh?).

I found out first hand as she was putting together a jigsaw puzzle on the floor in front of me last night.

One piece at a time was carefully considered then gently placed where it belonged.

Then, after savouring the success came a look of satisfaction - saddled up with little girl glee, as the new exciting opportunity to find a home for the next piece presented itself.

As we watched I could hear myself thinking 'you keep at it girl, you keep learning how to put the puzzle of life together'.

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'Keep learning new things every day, so one day you will be smart enough to be at the top table where the politicians and judges of this world should be saving this planet not drowning it in greed' was what was going through my mind.

This last week we have seen the raw reality of the American justice system with the appointment for life of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh.

A good old Republican boy, Kavanagh was almost a shoe-in until a very clever, brave woman, Dr Christine Blasey Ford, started to untie the Republican's shoe laces.

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What was impressive about Dr Blasey Ford's testimony on the stand was her intellect and I bet you a barrel full of Bitcoins, she sharpened her intellect from a very early age by putting puzzles together on the family floor.

My all-time favourite part of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony was her vivid, scientific explanation of how she processed and stored memories of the alleged assault.

"Just basic memory functions and also just the level of norepinephrine and epinephrine in the brain," she said in a clip.

"As you know, that neurotransmitter encodes memories into the hippocampus, so the trauma-related experience is kind of locked there whereas other details kind of drift."

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Tino pai wahine ma.

This was influential in my opinion to the about turn of the hearing panel who then allowed a full FBI enquiry to happen over the next seven days, something the Republicans were no doubt wanting to avoid at all costs, given it could stiff arm their man from being on the bench of the most influential court in the USA - if not the world, for the next 30 or so years.

There was no comeback from the wisdom of the wahine by the shoe-in select committee, other than a deeper dourness on their bespectacled brows saying - Houston we have a huge problem getting this republican rocket launched.

For me it was bye bye American pie, time's up for you good old boys, your whiskey and rye.

So, what is the counter-punch to a planet ruled by mean spirited, self-centred, grumpy males?

I guess the obvious answer is kind, loving generously gifted females is it not?

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Why not? It is us blokes who have mucked it up big time and more and more we are seeing the world getting crazier by the day because of some questionable decisions made by men.

Just to clarify, we can't blame this on papatuanuku, it's not the world that is crazy it's the people on it.

The people in charge of governments and justice systems, and most of them are men.

If we cannot curb the graph of greed that is spiralling out of control we have - according to a growing voice of concerned scientists, a future with no horizons on a poisoned planet from which we cannot recover.

Now that's crazy and how the hell did this happen?

Remember when we used to call Aboriginals of Australia backwards and the colonists showed up to save them?

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Remember when women could not vote let alone run countries or sit on Supreme Court benches?

We got that wrong, eh boys?

Turns out they, the indigenous peoples of Gondwanan land, have been living in perfect harmony with the environment for 50,000-plus years. Their law of the land was simple.

We punish greed, your mob rewards it.

In a pipi shell, perhaps the answer to our poisoned planet and trumped up, poisonous political system is we need to stop glorifying greed and start putting women in power.

We are lucky to have one and like she said on the global stage of the United Nations last week, "We need to be kinder to each other".

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Kindness is the antidote for any person who has swallowed too much greed in my opinion, as it is a country who has swallowed to much political poison.

Democracy starts in our own backyard.

Democracy is another word for fairness and with fairness comes justice, a kaupapa we can all practise in our own homes, communities and country.

It's not a difficult puzzle to put together, the pieces for peace on earth are all there on the floor in front of us, just as they were for my moko - and she solved it in two twos.

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