This is a post in my Ethics, Lazy Management, and Flawed Thinking series - see https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/11/ethics-lazy-management-and-flawed.html.
I have, from time to time, wondered about those in bureaucracies and politics, and the strangeness of their thinking.
Actually, that applies elsewhere as well - for instance, I asked my state's blood donations service recently a simple, straightforward question: do your staff misgender trans and gender diverse (TGD) people, which is a yes/no question. Instead, I got evasive and irrelevant answers and, after multiple rounds of - to pinch an America phrase - "rope a dope", I finally got a "no, we don't misgender". (They also clearly showed that they have no idea of the differences between various TGD people, and referred to overseas research which I will now have to find and examine for transphobic bias - possibly in the language used.)
It actually took literally years, if I count the first time I asked the question, and the time taken, combined with the irrelevant answer, leaves me with an impression that those people are either:
(a) incompetent, in that they do not understand a key issue for an accepted group in society, orThose are my impressions: I may be wrong, but I'm certainly not going to endorse, use or recommend them as a result of their appallingly bad performance on that.
(b) trying to hide their bigotry.
I've got a similar impression of a major cancer hospital in my home city, where a doctor was so stupid - completely missing all contextual clues - that he asked me what pronouns I use.
I'm aware some people in the TGD world advocate for this, but it marks TGD people as "other", and sets up an excuse that gives bigots a way to abuse TGD people.
I have similar thoughts about gender-free toilets - I suspect advocates have never been stuck in a job with misogynists.
Going back to politics, the obvious concern is about the competence (and maybe the sanity?) of those who twist genuine concern about security into a excuse to commit human rights abuses against refugees.
There's been plenty written about the issues elsewhere, including by me, but what I am questioning here is the motivation and ability to think clearly and properly of both the political leaders and the public service implementers of that abusive policy.
This is partly being triggered by reading Telford Taylor's "The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir", which goes into the motivations of some of the most evil people of last century, but also by my personal experience - such as the time a very junior staff member in a politician's office wilfully misinterpreted a question about tiny homes into an excuse about housing policy. My anger at his irrelevant response led to me talking to the MP concerned, and he was dismissive. He was a conservative politician (this was many years ago), and I think I have only ever received one reasonable response to a letter or email I've sent to conservative politician.
The members of the public service who have written back at the behest of their conservative masters and served up political talking points have also tarred themselves and the public service with the taint of incompetence.
One area of personal experience that I find galling is the response to my attempts to depoliticise approaches to crime. I consider that we need an independent Chief Criminologist, much as we have a Solicitor-General, a Chief Health Officer, a Chief Veterinarian, and a Chief Scientist. People forms views on the basis of inaccurate perceptions, and, much as we need medical decisions based on evidence and not anti-vaxxer nut jobs and science based on evidence and not flat earth nut jobs, we need decisions about the management of crime based on real causes and real solutions, not racist fear, social media tropes (of the sort that lead to physical murders in India and elsewhere), or people's fallacious opinions that they are inherently different to criminals and circumstances have no influence.
In my home state we have an office which takes a consumer affairs type approach to reporting on crime and policing, but manages to also address to a small extent some of the criminologist aspects of preventing and "fighting" crime, but that isn't enough.
I've also read recently that an investigation is underway into "perceptions-based approaches to crime". WTF???
We don't need to indulge and enhance false perceptions, we need to replace false perceptions with evidence presented in a way that builds trust in the evidence (where it is merited - and I consider independent experts the arbiter of that, not members of the public, and DEFINITELY NOT police [although, to give them due credit, some due understand the broader picture - more than advocate for better thinking]).
If someone developed that out of any of the emails I've written on this, I have to wonder what is WRONG with their thinking processes.
And there are plenty of thinking errors around.
As examples, I'm come across people who think homophobic and transphobic responses to LGBTIQ kids are different and can't be addressed at the same time, others who don't see that bigotry is a universal underlying problem, or who think duck-shoving responsibility for refugees to another nation is inherently different to duck-shoving responsibility for renting to a real estate agent. The degree and expression is different, but the underlying problem is the same.
We've seen that more recently in infrastructure construction with the trend away from allocating risk to whoever can best manage it to coercive tendering processes that places costs, consequences and personal health and social disruption for tendering processes solely to Contractors. I saw that with a local Council job replacing stormwater drains: people in local Government stupidly and wrongly think that saving money by not having superintendents, or not engaging in such projects (if they lack the technical skills to do so, they are unfit for their jobs - incompetent, in other words) is better for the community.
It isn't: it creates much larger costs that are borne by the community elsewhere, and creates risks of projects going wrong, or going wrong and not being discovered until the consequences are devastating.
There have been problems with costs increasing in projects in the past: that was a combination of stupidity in the engineering professions ("if the cost is too high early on they may not do the work" - which IS THEIR RIGHT [I had a lot of arguments on that one in the 80s and 90s]) and clients - particularly some of the absolute shits I've known who arbitrarily decided that they'd spent "enough" money on investigations, even though we would tell them they needed to do more if they wanted certainty on costs. (The two worst for that who I've ever had the misfortune to encounter are, fortunately, long dead.)
The one last example of this problem that I wish to mention is evading the consequences of laws by passing implementation down to others, possibly people with no direct expertise. This is particularly important in the case of all legislation which introduces ID requirements - such as the ill-conceived engineers registration bill. Such bills can potential introduce "othering" mechanisms that can be used for discrimination or even genocide, in some nations. And it is a responsibility of good nations not to set an example that can be misused by others.
Where ID requirements are introduced, it is up to good governments to ensure the laws mentioned or acknowledge the importance of anti-discrimination principles.
My state has a mechanism for reviewing the "consistency" of laws with such principles, but, based on the rubber stamping of the engineers registration bill, I have to wonder how well informed those reviewers are.
Anyhow, I'll leave this at that for now. If I had the time and energy, I would edit it, but I don't - personal circumstances are getting in the way again.
