They Never Learn (Nor Do They Want To)

As part of my Hugo Award web site tasks, I see a lot of pings against stuff we post to the Hugo Awards site. Today I saw one (no, I won't link to it; they don't deserve the traffic, and there's no way to reply anyway) complaining about how the Hugo "voting committee" gave out No Award to a bunch of things. The fact that there is is no "voting committee" in the form of a tiny, select, probably secret cabal doesn't even cross this poster's mind. Presumably the fact that every member of WSFS — thousands of them, and not difficult to join — can vote, and a huge (relative to previous turnout) proportion of them did so, doesn't mean anything to the poster.

The most generous thing I can think of with willfully ignorant posts like that is such people's minds can't even process the possibility of an award like the Hugo Award being open to vote of anyone who wants to join WSFS. It's a blind spot to them. They assume that of course a tiny group of Bad People make all of the decisions, because of course that's how Things Really Work. In fact, I reckon that this says a lot about how they would run things if you put them in charge.

The really sad and even dangerous thing is that this probably reflects the opinions of a lot of people in a more general sense. Participating in politics is irrelevant. Voting is irrelevant. All decisions are made in secret, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. We just need Strong Man to save us from Bad People. Oh, and Strong Man will never hurt me, because I am Good People.