Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Minority Rule - an alien in my own country

If a dozen minority or single-cause lobby groups with a 5% or so representation band together then, even with overlaps, about half the population is covered. By the time 20 such 1/20 groups get together then over 60% of the population are covered (this is true for any larger K 1/K groups too, as mathematically, in the limit, 1/e = 38.2% of the 'silent majority' are missed). 

Hey! I'm a scientist, and my most cited paper is about doing statistics properly.

So how does this work out in practice?

The party-controlled caucusing subverts the democratic system as a few leaders representing a few minority causes can control the government, stack the courts, etc. The democratic system is about electing people in constituencies to represent their constituents. In the Westminster system, and other two-house variants, the lower house represents local areas while the upper house is able to represent larger and less geographically local interests. But in both cases, the representative is elected, not the party.

The party system allows for people with consistent views to work together and form a government, knowing that they have a large measure of common ground. But a caucus that forces party line voting with the threat of expulsion and punitive financial penalties... this is a travesty. A politician can still vote their conscience, cross the floor, and risk this — and some do,  and some do leave their parties one way or the other, but normally only in the case of parties that don't enshrine such punitive measures in a membership or preselection contract.

I call this system lobocracy — rule by lobby groups through lobotomized politicians who are not allowed to think for themselves.

But now it is worse still. The thought police of 'political correctness' are telling me what I can think and say and do and believe — and with the tools of mandated educational brainwashing, social media and cancel culture, these issues of minority lobbying have moved from the floor of the house to my livingroom, my children's school, my local hospital and my own workplace: the minority is always right.

I'm being told what I can and can't say to my students. I'm being told what I can and can't say in my books — even what characters I must include in my novels or my classes, and what words I can and cannot use. When I express my reservations about the political correctness bandwagons, or exercise my vote against them, I'm not told that I'm wrong — just that I'm brave. People who exercise their democratic right to speak and vote against various 'progressive' measures have their words turned against them, sometimes years later, some to the extent of losing their jobs, their livelihoods or their freedom -– not to mention massive fines. This move against traditional values and rights is anything but progressive — it is both regressive and repressive. Since 1984, free speech has been increasingly replaced by doublethink enforced by thought police.

We now live in a culture of fear: the cancel culture. 

We are told what to say and think and write. We are told to 'represent' certain classes of people and expected to promote corresponding political views in our stories, or to use examples that aren't us and aren't ours and don't fit. And the gatekeepers enforce this. The 'diversity' committees (enforcing discrimination for overrepresentation of minorities) wag the dog, and care more about such orchestrated regressive and repressive 'correctness' policies than good education, good training or good literature.

What happened to free speech?

The silent majority has been alienated, unwelcome in their own country.

Even the minorities whose causes have been taken on board can find themselves used, stereotyped and labeled in ways that they don't own. Even those who have recourse to the 'positive' discrimination of the diversity ethos, don't necessarily want it.

I don't want to be labeled or advantaged or disadvantaged because of my (so-called) indigenous or convict or conqueror heritage, because of my 'disabilities' or my 'beliefs' or my 'gender' or my inherited (and often rewritten) 'history'. I want to be seen as myself, as how I am, through what I can contribute, in terms of my own abilities and capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.

I don't want to be silenced just because what I have to say doesn't push a lobocracy agenda!

Why should I have to start at a disadvantage because I'm seen as part of the underepresented majority?
Or because rebels without a cause of their own have ousted control of my minority group?

Why do I feel like I'm an alien in my own country?

Why do I keep silent about it?

Why am I afraid?