The vulnerable. To go back to the saying, that you’re only as strong as your weakest link. This was the…

The vulnerable. To go back to the saying, that you’re only as strong as your weakest link. This was the insight that led to the invention of ‘the public’ in the late 19th century. Something we all grew up assuming was a natural part of the democratic furniture. /1 https://t.co/124o1mGgGy

Nope. Like many of my Tweets talk about, from the 1950s, and particularly since the 1970s, the status quo displaced by Spanish Flu and two world wars launched an all-out assault on this extraordinary invention. It’s crucial to understand that invention, to protect it. /2

The public is NOT ‘a majority of people’. It’s not the majority that wins an election. Libertarians want you to believe that. The public is totally different. It was a recognition that society only works because of interconnection and relationship. /3

Like the links in a chain, you can have the most powerful chain, but if even one link is compromised, the lot is worthless. It breaks. The ‘vulnerable’ in society are not some gated community you can give lollies to, to appease them. If they fall, we all fall. /4

That’s what ‘the public’ actually meant. Recognising that we needed to look out for everybody not to give the vulnerable a helping hand, but because they are us, we’re all fundamentally linked. Nothing even to do with compassion or empathy. It’s logistics. /5

I thought about this while installing a lock on a new door, to avoid ‘lock snapping’. Doors with fantastic strength and even multiple locks around the entire frame can be rendered useless in seconds by snapping the main lock with a pair of pliers. /6 https://t.co/nUnDeOH8vd

A perfect example of how the weakest link defines the strength of the whole system. The rest of us are that strong door. The vulnerable are that weak lock. We need to look after them because otherwise we’re all doomed. The Brits did this with cholera. /7

The upper crust of society in the 19th century couldn’t have given a toss about the poor or vulnerable, dying of cholera. What they did care about was it spreading to themselves. That’s what spurred THEM to invent the public. /8 https://t.co/sUslQhGFOY

This week the ALP said multiple times that part of their core work is to look after the vulnerable in society. What no career politicians seem to remember is, that used to be the SAME work as looking after everybody. Not a couple of dollars extra a day to those in poverty. /9

With Covid, they haven’t registered or remembered that letting the vulnerable (whoever that even is) all catch Covid repeatedly will destroy the whole society, or economy if you use the stupid modern framing. They can’t be isolated out at arm’s length. /end