All I’d add to this excellent thread by @BlairWilliams26 is that I think we always need to look at the social…

All I’d add to this excellent thread by @BlairWilliams26 is that I think we always need to look at the social dynamics, not just the narratives. The 5/95 thing, 5% of any group at any scale will determine the direction the other 95% will follow. The Covid debacle isn’t…/1 https://t.co/oY6yJRoA6z

…the persuasion of the public by all of these slogans. The public will tend to follow traditional lines of authority, no matter what they say. They will wear masks if they’re mandated, with minimal fuss, for example. Our problem isn’t the slogans or even the hegemony. /2

The 5 will always lead the 95. The slogans just oil the existing mechanism. Our problem is the 5 itself, that it’s been hijacked by populist libertarians. We don’t need to undertake a mass de-programming of the entire population, we need to target that hijacking. /3

How do the wrong people end up in charge? I Tweet about that a lot, they use elections to game the democratic process. Popularity is placed as the ultimate authority, and then what is popular is easily shaped and marketed, to suit the hijackers. /4

Once elected they claim ‘mandates’, to speak for the ‘will of the people’. In most democracies a majority don’t even bother to vote, through voter suppression. So it’s an even more ridiculous claim, to speak for the public. The public is not a thing, it’s an ever-shifting…/5

…’market’ of desires that can be shaped. That’s what marketing is. Right now in the UK ‘brown’ (traditional) antique furniture is on the decline as a sale item, whereas for years it dominated. It’s the same furniture, but the desires have shifted. Earlier in the pandemic…/6

…Australians happily went along with public health measures, because that’s what the 5% led into existence. Maybe 1% of the 5% (the anti-State libertarians) then led a counter-movement, to ‘live with the virus’. And now most Australians seem content enough to do something…/7

…the exact opposite of what they did only 2 years ago. The answer isn’t to try to shift the people, it’s to close-off the ways the anti-State crowd decouple popularity from institutional expertise and accountability. They use popularity to destroy democracy. /8

If you think popularity IS democracy, that democracy is ‘what the majority want’, you’re a perfect example of their victory. Anti-State libertarians change ‘the public’ into minorities and majorities, and then work the numbers. They take our voting mechanism and use it…/9

…to destroy the much more important institutional bedrock of democracy. They bypass experts in their departments almost entirely, hiring pliable consultants and other external expertise to give them ‘advice’ that matches what they’ve already decided to do. /10

@latingle tried to warn us a few years ago now. We weren’t listening. /end https://t.co/oWFCZGY6pL