In Mercatornet, Carolyn Moynihan has a piece on Jacinda Ardern's Harvard talk on what she sees as the perils of disinformation.
Speaking at Harvard, Jacinda Ardern stokes the ‘disinformation’ wars
If keyboard warriors are undermining liberal democracy, so are politicians and experts
The foundation of democracy, Ardern said in her Harvard speech, is trust in “institutions, experts and governments”, but this trust is being eroded today by the peddlers of false information on social media.
Actually, trust is also being eroded by those very institutions and experts.
Indeed - anyone paying attention is aware that trust is certainly being eroded by those very institutions and experts we are supposed to rely on. The whole piece is worth reading, but one of the comments on Ardern's claim is also worth adding in here.
HermanGerman
The truth is that a foundation of democracy is mistrust in institutions, experts and governments. This mistrust is justified even more when these institutions openly declare that they are not bound by natural law or by the teachings of our lord.
That is why monitoring and control of these institutions, experts and governments by the people, by the common man is necessary.
Otherwise the door would be opened to turn experts and government officials into a dictatorship.
The truth is that a foundation of democracy is mistrust in institutions, experts and governments. This mistrust is justified even more when these institutions openly declare that they are not bound by natural law or by the teachings of our lord.
That is why monitoring and control of these institutions, experts and governments by the people, by the common man is necessary.
Otherwise the door would be opened to turn experts and government officials into a dictatorship.
8 comments:
Her policies might have worked if she had simply waited for Omicron to come along. She could then have re-opened the country, having abstained from mass vaccinations. Few would die from Omicron and the vaccine damage would have been avoided. But she (and the Aussies) cocked it up by mass-vaccinating.
Jacinda is one of the WEF 'young global leaders' I think that explains a lot, as with all of them they make a big mistake never apologise and double down, she comes across as one of the most insincere speaker I have ever heard, which doesn't help either.
When I still worked I like to think that I never told or reported a lie. I was very careful though to present bad news in the most positive way. I would put a 'spin' on facts.
Now you can argue that this reduced the passions surrounding a computer system outage and allowed the technicians time to fix the problem without endless interruptions.... but you could also argue that downplaying the problems meant that lessons were not learned so deeply and need for new software/machinery/networks were deferred longer. Eventually reality would catch up.
The main difference between my experiences and that of politicians is that politicians 'spin like fury' to avoid blame and then count the spin alone as 'job done'.
The UK has an Office of National Statistics which is meant to be independent. It seems to work. Wildly disproportionate 'spin' can be fact checked by anybody.
Perhaps we could do with an Office of National Programs? But I can't see any politicians being willing to be held to account. Shame.
'The foundation of democracy, Ardern said in her Harvard speech, is trust in “institutions, experts and governments”'
Probably true, as far as it goes. But the foundation of a specifically liberal democracy is trust in ordinary people's ability to discern their own best interests. That's why Ardern is a monster.
Aye, right.
But who gets to appoint your government, your experts and your institutions?
I think that her father was the school teacher, caricatured in Pink Floyd's The Wall.
She also was model for the Alien in film of same name.
Her orthodontist wishes to remain anonymous.
Sorry, the "Anonymous" above and in the last post is me - for some reason my phone is not recognising me!
"desperately naïve or something far worse."
Having watched Ahearn's policies play out, my money is on the "...something far worse..."
dearieme - yes she should have waited for Omicron to come along and avoided mass vaccinations. She may have calculated that vaccine damage would not be laid at her door anyway, but I think she just believed what she was told.
Wiggia - it's difficult to believe she is sincere, but she belongs to a political class where the things she says are entirely acceptable.
DJ - to some degree, politicians are able to 'spin like fury' because PR has become what almost seems to be a respectable profession. Almost as if we have reached a stage where telling it as it is has become unprofessional, but then it was always socially problematic.
Sam - yes that's why Ardern is a monster and why there are so many of them. The idea that ordinary people can discern their own best interests seems to have gone, in that it no longer seems to be part of any mainstream narrative.
Doonhamer - yes that's the key question - who does get to appoint our government, our experts and our institutions? Supposedly democratic accountability, but that has gone the way of the Dodo.
Bill - that's where my money is too. The forces of genuine political evil are far more powerful than most people seem to realise.
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