The war on popularity, part something. Power is achieved by a majority of votes. This is how the voting…
The war on popularity, part something. Power is achieved by a majority of votes. This is how the voting system works. The problem with it is, ‘majority rules’ is profoundly undemocratic. We’re in a public health emergency where public health is ignored. This is why. /1 https://t.co/wflenhkI1t
‘The public’ is emphatically not ‘a majority of people’. This is more neoliberal, libertarian, populist spin. Some definitions try to do better by saying the public is all people in a society. But that’s still about counting, and isn’t quite right. /2
The public as used in public health isn’t about counting heads, it’s about inter-relationships. It means the unavoidable connection between all people in a society, their mutual dependency. You need all of them in all of their diversity, for society to function. /3
As a corollary, if you don’t look after all of them, the impact will damage everybody. You can’t isolate some to protect the others, as we’re trying (well saying, not really trying) to do with Covid. All of them are connected, what happens to one eventually happens to all. /4
Neoliberal, libertarian, populist (N=1) politics runs the fantasy that society is millions of isolated individuals. The only way all of those isolated individuals can then do anything collective is by accumulating majorities. Minorities lose, bad luck. /5 https://t.co/fYLzMcmEhP
This is why I say elections will destroy democracy, despite the fact the N=1 crowd have seduced us all into thinking they ARE democracy. (They’re really, really not.) Elections are grown-up popularity contests, like we have in school to determine pecking orders. /6
Elections destroy the public by replacing it with the N=1 model of isolated individuals. The public’s will is then said to be what the majority want, expressed in polling and elections. Populist politicians say that’s their ‘mandate’. No actual issues are really voted for,…/7
…you vote for people. About 99% of what they will then do in government is never even mentioned in elections. But they will still tell you they have a mandate to do all of those things. Because they tricked us into thinking getting a majority of votes means they represent…/8
…the public will. It’s absolute, lethal nonsense. Good marketing can make any appalling idea and behaviour popular. Look at Trump. Until we wake up and remove popularity from democratic systems, they’ll continue to fail. And Covid will keep beating and killing us, because…/9
…bad people will make that killing popular. They can make anything popular. The obvious, practical public health response will not be activated, because popularity politics pays no attention to practical things at all. Just popularity. 99% of our government is the thousands…/10
…of expert officials who do pay attention to all of those practical things. They’ve been sidelined almost completely in the past 50 years, by the N=1 crowd, who imported their own house-trained advisers. Democracy is about 99% those officials. They’re never mentioned in…/11
…descriptions of democracy. Voting is mentioned, that’s about it. It’s a populist N=1 trick, another of their framings that people inhabit without even realising it. /end