Is this an actual contributing factor? I find it hard to believe some vague political ideology popular in wider society is a major issue when it comes to software development

No. It is just a modern version of complaining about women and minorities. "DEI caused this" is the same "I bet it was a diversity hire" whinging that reactionaries have been doing for decades.

The majority of politicians are white and diligently keep their jobs at the expense of women and minorities. The Chinese even have a name for it: Baizuo.

In fact, personally I find it much easier to work with Chinese and Indian "minorities" or women than with the highly paid Baizuo politician.

no idea what you're even talking about, this discussion is about software quality erosion

If you have an idea what UncleMeat was talking about, you should understand this rebuttal as well.

If you do not have an idea what UncleMeat's distraction was about, you should have posted your comment as a reply to them.

In what way are experts made to be silent on any practical matter?

Experts are allowed to silently fix mistakes of the politicians. They are not allowed to criticize them for bad practices, even in the case of major mistakes.

The coercive measures are vicious verbal backlash from the politicians, expulsion from a project, not being promoted or being fired as a "problematic" person.

What are some specific examples? I see experts criticize politicians all the time.

Just because firefox sucks doesn't mean the global economy is collapsing

Uh have you read what jwz had to say about Netscape?

Considering that I started using Linux in 2008 or so, I feel qualified to disagree with your assertion that 2010 had the best Linux distributions. At least in the case of Fedora, it's better now. Or at least was better a year or two ago before wayland (and the Wayland bugs do keep getting fixed, so it's getting better again).