There are several issues I don’t comment on because they’re entrenched as social media-driven causes. It…

There are several issues I don’t comment on because they’re entrenched as social media-driven causes. It doesn’t matter what you say about those topics, it’s pointless engaging with them here because the team sports is so fanatical. But to make a general comment. /1

There is very little public policy now. Instead we get causes, organised as team sports campaigns on social media. It goes as far as ending up in legislation, when one team wins. It’s so dangerous, when the absence of a collective or public life is replaced by causes. /2

By whatever set of beliefs can be made the most popular in the economy of likes. People return to this front-line every single day, banging on about their team’s position, against the other team. We’re wallowing in the void stripping away basic governance creates./3

We’re not living in democracies now, we’re consumers and customers in a continuous ‘market’ of causes, beliefs marketed on social media to generate likes. Our legislation increasingly is little different to a new product a company brings to market. /4

We have representative democracies. Despite all the guff about ‘the people’ (never defined) being informed or misinformed or disinformed, representative democracy functions by most of us *doing nothing* to govern. Because that’s a specific job, the most complex of all jobs. /5

We leave it to thousands of skilled officials, hopefully minimally obstructed by the populist Gilderoys we elect to purportedly ‘run’ the place. We always forget history. Those ‘bureaucracies’ it’s so popular to abuse now were solutions invented by the same elites…/6

…who now lead the abuse against them. They were their solution to introducing genuine expertise to social problems that were way beyond then to solve. Just as elites invented public health, to save their societies. /7

It feels like logging on to social media each day is us doing democracy. It’s not, it’s destroying it. To use a favourite analogy, it’s literally like us all rushing the doors of the plane every day to try to tell the pilot how to fly it. We each have our own expertise. /8

But social media has now generated a belief that we’re all qualified now to comment on and action anything. We don’t TRUST anybody to do anything now. That’s what the libertarians want us to be like, it’s their victory. I’m one who came here to fight Covid, as an example. /9

I have no expertise in any of the jobs that normally manage pandemics. But I come here to support (and learn from) those who do have that expertise, not to add my own loon spin on what they do. I have respect for their work, I trust it. /10

But these platforms aren’t designed for that. They’re designed to turn societies into teams, fighting other teams. Causes replace calm, analytical public policy. The people who stripped away the forums for that calm work created these platforms to monetise that loss. /11

Somewhere for us to come and express our anger at the destruction of our collective life, by pulverising what’s left of it into even tinier, hardened fragments of anger-driven teams. Destroying societies, while making us feel like we’re putting Humpty back together again. /end