A Sceptic's view of our socio-political discourse

As I read and watch and listen and think, I realise that the main reason there is so much error, so much unhelpful & confusing noise, is because so many people start espousing their views from Step 2. They take Step 1 for granted. This corner-cutting (from either arrogance or laziness) is an error because all it does is almost guarantee the reaction of the watcher/listener/reader. i.e. you aren't making anyone truly think; and without genuine thinking, no-one changes their mind; in which case, what's the point?

If the watcher/listener/reader agrees with your assumed Step1 view, they will nod in approval. If they disagree with your assumed Step 1 view, they will immediately start finding fault with you. Thus you achieve nothing valuable.

What do I mean by Step 1 & Step 2? I'll give a current example.

In the current UK virus enquiry, it's all about who said what to whom and when and whether we locked-down too late or not. This is Step 2, with Step 1 being deliberately (I suspect), ignored.

Re-visiting Step 1 would entail things like, looking at what was forecast to happen and what actually did, and genuinely (as opposed to backside covering or reputation defending) assessing the extent to which what we did or didn't do affected those initial forecasting models. After all, the models were wrong on a massive scale and we need to open-mindedly understand why so we can avoid the same errors next time.

Additionally, re-visiting Step 1 would mean assessing whether more harm was overall done by the virus itself or by the policies put in place to combat it, yet this isn't happening.

Therefore, the enquiry is pointless since those who agree with the establishment (politics and media) consensus about Step 1 will nod approvingly or concentrate on the drama of personality clashes, while those who think huge mistakes were made at Step 1 will dismiss it entirely. Therefore, no truly useful purpose will be served by the enquiry, yet at great expense. It is smoke & mirrors and no genuinely useful learning will come of it.

The same problem arises on all major societal issues of our time. Climate change; immigration; the NHS etc.

The establishment consensus (political and legacy media) has decided that Step 1 is a given and that's it's not worth, or worse, verging on an ethical crime, questioning the establishment's Step 1 view. They label it dis- or mis-information and use that as an excuse not to allow such questions to be asked or such views to be heard.

Therefore, all speeches, discussions, news articles etc start at Step 2, leaving those with perfectly legitimate, reasonable and logical questions about Step 1 feeling frustrated and disaffected.

'So what?', the happy to assume Step 1ers may ask.
Well Brexit tells you the answer to, ‘so what?’

The establishment took Step 1 as obvious; unquestionable except for a small minority of deplorables and evil-doers. i.e. to them, the benefits of being part of the EU were clearly greater than any dis-benefits. As such, they took the result for granted and ran a sneering, arrogant, dismissive, half-hearted campaign. The same was largely true when Trump was elected in the States. Step 1 was taken as a given by the majority of the establishment and it came back to bite them.

So, to me, it's vital that we have continuous conversations about Step 1 as well as discussing possible actions in Step 2. By doing so, changing times, changes in society, changes in economic circumstances, changes in technological capabilities etc can continue to feed in to the discussion. We can be dynamic and swift-footed rather than stayed and plodding, usually 5 or often many more years out of date in our thinking and policies.

But will it happen?
Well, it is for the moment on certain social media platforms but a) you have to make the effort to find and engage with them; and b) Governments all over the world are bringing-in legislation effectively given themselves the ability to shut-down information that questions the establishment view.

The only hope we have is a mainstream media which questions everything and everyone with power and influence in as objective a fashion as possible, irrespective of their personal views.
Sadly, the mainstream media is largely dominated by a narrow view of social morality and only robustly questions people or ideas they don’t agree with. This is becoming more and more true in policing as well.

This is the establishment blob and it is no good for any society as it gradually strangles the freedoms of its supposedly free people.
We are moving inexorably toward a soft-dictatorship imposing elitist views of how society should work. And, as ever when elites impose their self-serving esoteric views, it’s the poorest who suffer most.

Middle-class complicity is how they will get away with it.

Not that the middle-classes will be immune from the debilitating effects of the elite’s imposed predilections; rather, by the time they realise that it’s not only the poor that are adversely affected, it’ll be too late to do anything about it. The stranglehold will be complete.
We will have returned, albeit in modern guise, to a feudal system.
Instead of absolute monarchs or Big-brother dictators, we will have a synergy (a new fascism) between undemocratic, and thus unaccountable, global quangos (think the UN and the WHO) and large global corporations. It will be a dictatorship not of a single individual, but of a vastly wealthy global elite served by their brainwashed useful-idiot apparatchik wannabes.

Pity.
We almost had a democratic system that worked tolerably well.
But in the end, are we really surprised that the intellectual and financial elites were only prepared to play the game of democracy while they got the answers they wanted?