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My essay today in the Federalist expands upon my last few posts. You can read the whole thing by clicking on this link: https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/15/how-socialists-like-black-lives-matter-weaponize-our-fears-of-loneliness/ Slogans of George Orwell's 1984. When we overdose on group think, that's where we end up. Wikimedia Commons. Below is an excerpt: "The mob mindset is a trap, a form of mental solitary confinement, an ironic form of mind rape. Why? Because mobs of wokeness do not allow for anyone to express an original thought to another human being without the risk of being smeared and isolated. "As people invest in groupthink to remain in the herd, they end up spiraling even deeper into the mental isolation, cutting off normal conversation. They soon become “triggered” by other points of view. BLM activists have not only taken full advantage of the fear of loneliness already inherent in our culture. They also seem intent in perpetuating the fear by stoking more divisions within private relationships. "Political correctness and identity politics have long been used as tools of agitation designed to instill groupthink and stir up that threat of loneliness. Political correctness works by inducing self-censorship, cutting off conversation and the exchange of ideas, which might lead to friendship."People with politically incorrect ideas often confide they feel completely alone. Identity politics works by forcing people to focus only on a collective identity and collective guilt while erasing each of us as unique individuals. Both are alienating. Both empower bad actors. "Most of us have never had a chance to learn the history of how blind conformity breeds terror, and vice versa. Abject conformity led to the hellscapes of Stalin’s reign of terror, of Hitler’s Germany. Those who submit to false confessions of “white guilt” can just as easily submit to such regimes because the psychological mechanism is the same: seeking the social approval they crave and avoiding the social rejection they fear.

Tyranny and isolation always go together.  Let's always remember that. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt made the connection in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism. She wrote:  “Terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other. . . . Therefore, one of the primary concerns of all tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about.” Recent Cover of Hannah Arendt's classic The Origins of Totalitarianism, first published 1951 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pubishing Company) Below is an excerpt from from my (relatively) recent Federalist piece about the connection between tyranny and isolation and today’s dystopian atmosphere: "How much of the hype about this flu is really about public safety? How much is it about cultivating the social isolation that breeds distrust, division, and malaise, all to be exploited for political purposes? Should we really believe that blue city mayors and blue state governors, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, et al., are pushing the cataclysmic view of this flu only for our own safety? "Blatant double standards clarify that their hype is meant to continue our isolation, and is not for our own good. As far-left mayors and governors enforce social distancing for law-abiding citizens, they have pretty much smiled upon Antifa rioters as “peaceful protesters,” especially those who gather en masse for more than 60 nights in a row to provoke and attack federal officials protecting a federal court house in Portland." You can read the whole essay here: https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/11/how-forced-isolation-makes-huge-power-grabs-possible/ Once you think about it, you'll see evidence everywhere that every tyrant's first order of business is to isolate those they’re trying to control.  This is as true for the school yard bully as it is for the world class dictator.  Let’s go down a little list of them. Consider the queen bee diva. Recall how in the 2004 movie Mean Girls, the school’s cool clique made a point of controlling the relationships of all of their peers? Recall their Pelosi-esque line "The rules aren't real." What about the gas lighting partner?  Maybe his realm is just to control one person, but he makes sure she is isolated from all other influences. She can’t have any friends or be around anyone he doesn't control. And cult leaders? They control recruits primarily by some form of isolation. People's Temple leader Jim Jones even moved his thousand or so followers into literal isolation – to a jungle in Guyana – to make sure all were isolated and under his strict control. And of course all fascist/communist/totalitarian dictators are invested in human isolation.  Mao Zedong had his Red Guard zealots (very similar in behavior to today's BLM and Antifa agitators) force struggle sessions on people wherein they mobbed, isolated, and publicly humiliated anyone suspected of wrong think. (BTW, the toll was in the tens of millions killed during China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s.) And what does political correctness do to us? Induce self-censorship that results in self-isolation. What about identity politics? It divides us so that we are more isolated from one another. So what should we make of the enforced isolation of today? And what about the Covid shutdowns that did not end on April 1 – and then May 1 -- like they were supposed to?   Do they serve a political purpose. Of course they do. The point is to stretch out the misery, stretch out the economic devastation, stretch out the isolation in order to demoralize the population into doing the bidding of our would-be controllers. We have to call this out for what it is. And, hopefully I can offer a morale-booster next time!

Ingrid Bergman in "Gas Light" (Wikipedia Commons) I’m looking for suggestions from my readers! I'm currently working on compiling a multi-media bibliography on the theme of social isolation. As you know if you read this blog, I am interested in how the fear of social rejection causes people to conform and comply with bad policies led by bad actors.  In particular: how social isolation -- and the threat of it -- is used as a weapon to control people. Such dynamics are evident in every level of life: in our personal lives, professional lives, and in the socio-political landscape. I have a pretty comprehensive list of books and articles, but I'd really like to expand my list of movies and documentaries on this theme. BIG QUESTION: Can you think of some movies or documentaries that are good candidates for the theme of social isolation and how isolation affects us? If so, I invite you to please send your ideas through the contact form on this blog so that I can consider adding them to my list. To give you an idea of what I have in mind, let me provide a sample list below.  As you will see, there are a variety of genres that appeal to a variety of audiences.  You can suggest popular movies as well as classics or scholarly documentaries. The main thing is that the theme should really stand out. Here's a brief list: The Experimenter – 2015 movie about psychologist Stanley Milgram’s “shock” experiments in the 1960’s, which he later wrote about in his book “Obedience to Authority.” He was astonished to discover how often ordinary people were willing to harm others when directed to do so by an authority figure. Marty – won Best Picture Oscar in 1952.  Tells the story of two lonely people who become smitten with one another. But the main character feels socially pressured to dump his newfound love because his gang of buddies deride her as a “dog.” Angi Vera, Hungarian Film by Pal Gabor (1978) with English subtitles – After communism was imposed on Hungary in 1948, the leadership made sure that all institutions were run only by those loyal to the party line.  The film takes you into an education camp in which future leaders are trained to replace those from the “old order.” We see “struggle sessions” and the psychology of snitch culture emerging. The Children’s Story, by James Clavell – Short television movie (1980) which shows how a class of second grade children are emotionally manipulated to get with a program of promoting a new communist order and hating America. The Wave -- dramatization of social experiment at a Palo Alto High School by history teacher Ron Jones. When his students learned about the Holocaust, they could not understand how the German population would stand by and allow it to happen.  Jones’s students agreed to re-enact the basics of social conformity and compliance – and they actually lived through the process. It’s a fascinating look into how good people very often let bad things happen when they are motivated by the fear of social isolation. There is a German version of “The Wave” with English subtitles. Mean Girls (Lindsay Lohan) 2004 – provides a picture of clique culture in a mega high school whereby meddlesome queen bees dictate all relationships and label everyone for either social survival or social death.  Key lines:  “You can’t sit with us.”  “The rules aren’t real.” Gaslight (starring Ingrid Bergman) 1944.  This is the film that brought the psychological term “gas lighting” into psychological parlance.  The term is now embedded in social media.  Officially it means the sort of psychological abuse that causes a person to think they're crazy. The Lives of Others, 2006 (Academy Award for Best Foreign Film) A look at private life under the control of the surveillance state of communist East Germany. Psychological warfare writ large. (William F. Buckley stated that he thought it was the best movie he had ever seen.) If you'd like to add to the list, please let me know!

It's high time we recognize that mask mandates today amount to little more than a social engineering tactic. I'm not going to get into the uses of masks as a practical means of preventing people from getting spreading viruses. It's pretty clear that we're being played, that the goal posts keep moving and that our "experts" have determined that these measures are here to stay permanently, vaccine or no vaccine. You can read about the intention for permanent lockdowns here: https://reason.com/2020/12/04/epidemiologists-masks-social-distancing-vaccine-forever-new-york-times/ Many epidemiologists want us to wear these FOREVER, even if there's a vaccine. I wrote up my take on mask mandates at the Federalist recently. They serve mainly to dehumanize us, to promote facelessness, estrangement, and more demoralizing isolation. All of this adds up to a boon for social control freaks. The more compliance they can extract from the population -- and the more divisions they can stoke by pitting us against one another -- the more control over us they accumulate. And that, of course, is the whole idea. You can read my piece here: Masks are Another Way to Control Society Through Isolation. Here's a short excerpt: Masks are a form of social isolation, and humans cannot survive emotionally or even physically when they are forcibly separated from one another. You may ask, how are mask mandates isolating in the context of safety? After all, you can still go out in a mask. You can still speak through them. All that’s asked is that you wear masks to avoid spreading potential viral droplets from your breath to those around you. How is this isolating? Even when medically necessary, mask mandates are isolating because facelessness is isolating. You don’t know — you can’t know — the person wearing the mask. The entire mood of masking is anti-relational and anti-friendship. Wearing a mask prohibits the communication of a smile and the clarity of expression. It gets us in the habit of wearing a flat affect underneath the mask.

This is a must read if you want to live in a free society. A lot of eyes are on Virginia's off-year gubernatorial election coming up on Tuesday because many see it as a bellwether for next year's midterms. I ask "bellwether" for what? That's because it's harder than ever to determine "winners" and "losers" because the entire process has become so riddled with irregularities and weirdness. In a word, fraud. And by design. If by chance there are tallies that show Dem Candidate Terry McAuliffe behind or having lost, you can bet his campaign would not ever accept the results. They would keep "counting" votes at least until Friday or until they can concoct a win. That's just the way it is these days. For a general look at how corrupt our electoral process has become, read Joy Pullmann's excellent wrap-up: https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/29/7-insane-things-i-just-learned-about-how-u-s-elections-are-rigged/ Pullmann shares some of the shocking back stories in Mollie Hemingway's bestseller Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections. I published two pieces in the Federalist last week that relate directly as well as indirectly to this coming Tuesday’s gubernatorial election in Virginia. I hesitate to use the word “election” since there are now so many ways to hide fraud. Worse, there are many ways to render elections unverifiable and unauditable. Ironically, those who push for chaos-by-design—such as the mass mailing of official ballots and no photo ID requirement--claim that such things make elections “free and fair.” Here’s a link to the first piece In which I address that folly: https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/28/democrats-claim-free-and-fair-election-in-virginia-while-rigging-it-again/ If we ever get out of this mess, it will because we finally realized that the only way to secure free and fair elections is to guarantee that all voters have the right to vote in person, at their local precinct (not a clearinghouse early voting center,) and in secret. And no state or local (and certainly not federal) government has the right to take that away from people by forcing universal mail-in balloting. There is really no other way to protect freedom of conscience in elections. I've therefore concluded that voting securely--in person, in a local precinct, and in secret--should be a constitutional right. Here’s the second piece that sums up what a truly free and fair election should look like: https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/29/4-indispensable-conditions-for-a-truly-free-and-fair-election/

When the US Congress passed the so-called "Respect for Marriage Act" in late November, I wrote a Federalist article about the real effect of such legislation: to muzzle and punish anyone who had a different opinion, anyone who stood up for the real definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. This trajectory leads to the abolition of state recognition of marriage altogether. There's a considerable paper trail on that, which I wrote about years ago in my Federalist article, "Bait and Switch: How Same Sex Marriage Ends Family Autonomy." If that agenda item is accomplished, then we as a society become thoroughly atomized, isolated, as individuals at the mercy of the mass state. This point segues perfectly into my thesis of my book The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer. Last month I talked about all of this with Tony Rucinski, a most thoughtful and insightful leader of the Coalition for Marriage in the United Kingdom. You can take a look at the interview below:

Human beings are always trying to figure out how other people perceive them. Are they in? Or are they out? Will they be accepted by the group? Or rejected? We might call it the “crowd’s syndrome” in the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. But even if you are one who sticks to your principles and defends your core beliefs when under attack, chances are you have a threshold for doing so. When the fear of social isolation or ostracism from a group kicks in, you may shift how you express your views. Or you may choose to remain silent even though your silence implies consent with the opposing view. If the group appears to be growing in numbers, we become even more susceptible to it. And when we stop questioning even the strangest of cues from the group think, we’ve reached our threshold. We do this because ostracism is dangerous to our survival. Resisting it is a primal instinct. Yet your silence only serves to bury your view from sight. Then your silence serves only to shift all power away from yourself. This adds to a cascade effect in society. Ironically, you will end up even more isolated when your silence has done the work of separating you from others who share your view. Separating people is the net effect of political correctness. And we’d do well to remember that “political correctness” is actually just a euphemism for thought policing. The elites who wield politically correct agendas – whether in academia, in the media, or in Hollywood — know these social dynamics very well. They understand your fear of social isolation perhaps better than you do yourself. How else could they manipulate that fear so efficiently? People who simply wish to live and let live may be the majority, but we’re far less likely to take a clinical look at all of this. So we’re more likely to fall into the PC trap. We need to pay attention. A fascinating work on this phenomenon is Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s book The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion — Our Social Skin ” http://www.amazon.com/The-Spiral-Silence-Opinion-Edition/dp/0226589366/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390336351&sr=8-1&keywords=elisabeth+noelle-neumann

Let’s take in this quote: “The climate of opinion depends on who talks and who keeps quiet.” Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1916-2010) wrote those words in her ground breaking book The Spiral of Silence, which was published 30 years ago. She was a German immigrant and an astute scholar of public opinion at the University of Chicago. Her words continue as follows: “The hypothesis [of silence] came to me out of the student unrest at the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies. I probably owe it to one particular student. I met her one day in the hall outside the lecture room and noticed that she was wearing a Christian Democratic button on her jacket. “’I didn’t know you were a Christian Democratic supporter,’ I said to her. ‘I’m not,’ she said, ‘I just put the button on to see what it’s like.’ “I met her again at noon. She was not wearing the button, and I asked about the change. ‘It was too awful,’ she said. ‘I took it off.’” Noelle-Neumann’s student was experiencing the pain of social ostracism. She likely felt she was a minority of one, even though the Christian Democrats in West Germany at the time were equal in numbers to the Social Democrats. Yet, she felt isolated. All alone. Why? Noelle-Neumann goes on: “. . . Those who were convinced the new Ostpolitik was right thought their beliefs eventually would be adopted by everyone. So these people expressed themselves openly, and self-confidently defended their views. Those who rejected the Ostpolitik felt themselves left out; they withdrew, and fell silent. “This very restraint made the view that was receiving vocal support appear to be stronger than it really was and the other view weaker. Observations made in one context spread to another and encouraged people either to proclaim their views or to swallow them and keep quiet until, in a spiraling process, the one view dominated the public scene and the other disappeared from public awareness as its adherents became mute. This is the process that can be called a ‘spiral of silence.’” If we hope to rebuild a civil society in which we are free to express our opinions and exchange ideas with others, we must first understand this feeling of isolation that causes us to be silent. Let’s start noticing this spiral of silence when we see it in motion. And let’s not get sucked into this trap. Then let’s learn how to best push back against it.

Here’s something worth reading in The New York Times. The IRS has demanded website access that would expose the membership list of “Friends of Abe,” the only circle of folks in Hollywood who happen to lean right politically. (The group applied for tax exempt status similar to that of the far-left People for the American Way, founded by Norman Lear.) Among Friends of Abe who are “out” are John Voight and Kelsey Grammer. Most of the 1500 members closet themselves to avoid the predictable career and social fallout from being exposed as independent thinkers in Hollywood. The purpose of the investigation is to make sure it doesn’t have a — are you ready? — a political agenda (unlike all the rest of Hollywood, right?) Executive director Jeremy Boreing has denied that it’s a political group, stating: “It exists to create fellowship among like-minded individuals.” I think this is pretty obviously true. In Hollywood, there’s apparently no other place to go if you wish to think out loud without being cast into the outer darkness. Friends of Abe is clearly a place to let one’s hair down and exchange thoughts and ideas. Freely and without duress. Kind of like what civil society is supposed to be. But that’s what is really unacceptable to PC Forces. The harassment of Friends of Abe is ultimately is an attack on its members’ fellowship. It’s really an attack on friendship. On freedom of association. For the IRS to probe for an active “political agenda” seems more like cover for a different goal, which is to isolate and separate people.

Everyone should watch this scene from the academy award winning film The Lives of Others to feel chilling effect of political correctness and where it leads: the imposition of social isolation and control of our lives and minds.

“You can observe a lot by watching” is probably my favorite Yogi Berra quote. Of course, you can read a list of Yogiisms if you’re in the mood (and who isn’t?) and find your own favorite. But let’s first explore the meaning of “You can observe a lot by watching.” This is not pure tautology. What I believe Yogi meant — and what we all know in our gut – is that you can learn a lot by paying attention. We need to pay attention (watch) if we want to absorb (observe) or learn anything. If we don’t connect the dots, then we don’t get the picture. Some of us try hard to pay attention. We want to learn. We want to use what was once quaintly called “the imagination.” And we believe in Truth, real friendship, motherhood, brotherhood, and all that’s good. So we throw up our hands in despair when the rest of the world’s eyes glaze over in the vortex of all the shiny objects out there: tech toys and stuff, sex’n’stuff, power’n’stuff, “free stuff.” All that stuff acts like tractor beams pulling human minds into a thick fog. It diverts our attention from what we can learn about ourselves and the real world. The sorry state of public education, along with family breakdown and the excesses of pop culture have rendered so many incapable of paying enough attention to learn anything. Am I losing you now? If so, my problem isn’t so much with the facts as with how I’ve packaged them. Yogi understood this sort of thing, even if he didn’t know it. Yogi doesn’t tell you to pay attention so you’ll learn something, not in those words. That’s being a nag. Yogi’s a real friend. And he knows about packaging. So, instead, he just makes a friendly suggestion that makes you do a doubletake and laugh: Just observe by watching! When we pay attention we learn that being a scold doesn’t work. Shopworn arguments don’t work, no matter how true. You may believe in the United States Constitution, in reason, and in liberty and justice for all. But if you’re really watching people, you learn that you can’t win when you are competing with so many shiny objects. Today’s culture is saturated with glitter and glam. People can’t let go of it without fearing you’ve come to take that stuff away. The trick is to make the good stuff look like another shiny object. Be Tom Sawyer painting the fence. Come from a whole new angle. Shed unexpected light. Be a friend who says the unexpected, with love. Or just be a happy go lucky truth-teller for those who identify with you and like you. Sometimes you have to scramble your words to get attention. Sometimes you have to rearrange the furniture when nobody’s looking. After all, as Yogi might remind us: ninety percent of the game is half mental.* * Update: This reference is often attributed to Yogi Berra, but I’ve since learned it is more accurately a quote from Kansas City outfielder Jim Wohlford. The exact yogism is “Ninety percent of this game is mental. The other half is physical.”

The Federalist just published my article about Dylan Farrow’s open letter reporting that her father, the acclaimed director Woody Allen, sexually assaulted her when she was seven years old. This is the first time she’s told her story publicly on a scandal that broke in 1992. We ought to pay special attention to Dylan’s statement: “Imagine a world that celebrates your tormentor.” Because it’s really all about the fallout from our culture of idolatry and celebrity worship. Whether or not guilt can be established in this case, we can be sure of one thing: a system that allows elites to control the lives of others is a system that punishes the innocent. It’s an amoral system that allows some humans to act as gods who may use and abuse others with impunity: “If nothing else, Dylan Farrow’s letter is a wake-up call. It’s time for us to pour a lot of cold water on the notion that the elites those controlling the media, Hollywood, politics, and academia — are entitled to a separate standard of behavior or a separate moral code from everybody else. The biggest equality gap today is really one of accountability and personal responsibility.” You can read it in The Federalist here: http://thefederalist.com/2014/02/05/god-complex-why-hollywood-thinks-sex-crimes-are-no-big-deal/