When the loudest voice comes from a minority

In the age of political correctness gone crazy, the influence with social media from a few high profile personalities tends to shape new standards in society behaviour regardless of whether this opinion is shared by the wider community or not. A feel good exercise with a few keystrokes berating someone else or highlighting an injustice without actually doing anything can be a worry. Especially if those actions provokes anger in other fringe groups. Then there is the media, plus a lot of corporate identities who jump on this bandwagon influencing advertising, TV series, opinion panels, or even reality TV. Along with Hollywood, who will go to great lengths to write minority characters into movie scripts as though they are ticking all the boxes in order to be politically correct. This in my view is just tokenism which can be far more offensive than being ignored, if the story line involves a minority then well and good. There is nothing wrong with highlighting minority causes, the downside of having it go too far attempting to brand mainstream as the outlier is not the way to highlight your cause nor is disinformation trying to advance a political cause. A growing concern in some European countries now, along with the would be autocrats who feed off this invoked anger to promote tribalism. This is how misinformation gets started, trying to incite anger with conspiracies or lies. Whether its around crime rates, gender identity or anything else you can be guaranteed none of it is based on fact. Technology also plays its part allowing these groups to gain a higher profile by connecting with each other and being able to live in a sham information bubble. So if I believe the earth is flat, then when I engage the internet for articles on that concept I am very unlikely to be presented with a counter argument or if I only watch a certain news service its the same deal. The bubble information scenario has also played a major part with inaction on climate change. In the 80’s both conservative and liberals were unified in purpose to what was a global problem that needed addressing. What happened between then & now was an avalanche of fabricated propaganda passed off as real science that only helped to create a political divide. Allowing almost four decades to slip by without any decisive action combined with a massive global increase in emissions that came at a price. The extreme weather events we now deal with continue to play out almost on a weekly basis somewhere around the globe is testament to what real science tried to warn us. Also likely to have catastrophic long term consequences, not only with infrastructure but with the whole global economy, along with mass population shifts and conflicts, taking some countries to the brink of bankruptcy. In the USA alone they have had yearly $157 billion dollar hits with weather events for the past five years. This is just one example of a minority opinion getting the loudest voice, as climate change action has always been the majority choice globally in every decade. Dealing with it now, just makes the pain worse as a gradual transition would have been far easier. Then if we include other things like the overturn of Roe v Wade or action on gun control, not to mention an attempt to overthrow a government based on a lie. These are all part of a long list of where minorities scream the loudest while the truth with the majority is a whisper in the wind. Just look at the vote on Brexit with Britain, another disastrous move that points to great economic hardship ahead for them mainly due to false information. People tend to vote on an easy answer to a complex problem without looking too much into the details. When misinformation is so readily available in the internet age, it puts the whole of society at risk because a lie can be weighted higher than the actual truth. It also shows up in the quality of candidates in the current political spectrum. Instead of the smartest & brightest stars rising to the top, misinformation also hampers those individuals as well. It’s as though in the internet age despite having access to all of human history’s knowledge library the larger fake library is right there alongside it. So instead of this making us smarter, it’s actually dumbing us down. Then if you translate those same blue-sky expectations across the full social spectrum, marriages keep dropping each decade along with birth rates in most countries. There are more single people now in ratio to population than any time in world history. There may be all sorts of answers to the reasons why, however there is not much future planning in what this means long term in economic modelling. Life has always presented a lot of uncomfortable moments throughout history, learning to deal with them with smart solutions rather than deny they exist is also part of evolution. Now I’m sure the trolls will point out this is hypocritical and not politically correct highlighting the misjudgement of others. Well this is the whole point of this post, the moment you let minorities rule then you are on that road to the cliff edge. Take the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the Religious extremists in Iran or even a dictator in Russia. This is what happens when your political philosophy doesn’t match up to facts or a belief that is proven. If you run on a lie, then the laws of probability means that lie has a limited life span, yet truth is forever. Just ask Alex Jones, Putin, Trump, Fox News,  the GOP  ( and now that a speaker has been finally chosen in the US congress expect constant chaos from the same small minority within the GOP to make sure gov doesn’t function. )  The same with Wall St profiteering on myths, the final outcome will always be the same and it will also be the exact opposite of the picture they painted.