I discovered this book through the venerable Mark Tapscott. He exposed me to Stella Morabito.
Periodically, a book comes along that is essential reading in order to understand a particular period or movement in history. James Burnham’s“Suicide of the West” in 1964 for the inevitable decay of modern liberalism and Paul Johnson’s“Modern Times” for the spread of totalitarianism in the 20th century come immediately to mind.
Neither of those classics were the first products of their authors, both of whom were well-established as heavyweights in their respective fields. “The Weaponization of Loneliness” is, however, Stella Morabito’s first effort and it is a sterling one that is essential reading for anybody who hopes to grasp at the deepest levels why the decline of individual liberty and freedom of thought and belief has so accelerated in recent decades.
Morabito’s subtitle captures the heart of her analysis: “How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide and Conquer.” As Morabito explains in her introduction:
“Americans have long sensed tyranny creeping into their lives. The disquiet hovered in the background for a long time, though most couldn’t put their finger on it. When signals surfaced — such as anti-speech codes written into federal law in the 1990s allegedly to curb hate — we tended to shrug them off.
“After all, wouldn’t acceptance of the code simply mean we were promoting civility over hate? It was too frightening to believe those speech codes could really lead to direct attacks on freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.
Stella Morabito in her own words, quoting from her book:
But the fuel for acceptance comes from within each individual’s psyche: our need to belong and our terror of social rejection. Through various methods that play on those needs and fears, people suddenly will clam up about their opinions and attitudes if they perceive that expressing such opinions will get them ostracized. They will lie about what they believe and even about what they see before them.
and,
So, most of the power of group pressure—and our susceptibility to the conformity impulse—comes from the illusion of unanimity. But whenever that unanimity is punctured—even by just one voice—the power of the group starts to collapse. This is a critical point. It reveals why propagandists always insist on shutting down every single voice that challenges their narrative. Partnering busts up the manufactured illusion of unanimity, making it easier for others to create a cascade effect by chiming in with an opposing view.
this as well,
Noelle-Neumann’s central point in her spiral-of-silence model is that our deep fear of loneliness often dictates whether or not we express our beliefs to others. The stronger the fear, the more likely we will go along with the majority view, or, rather, the perceived majority view, or perhaps the view deemed acceptable by the authorities.
In the context of political correctness, this means that people tend to keep quiet when they think their opinion is considered unacceptable or held only by a ridiculed minority. Conversely, when people believe their view is held by the majority in a society, they’re far more likely to express it. Those social forces then take on a life of their own, creating a spiral of silence for the perceived minority viewpoint even if it is, in reality, the majority viewpoint. The term “silent majority” grew in part out of this.
and,
But it wasn’t a sudden development. Public acceptance of gender ideology was a highly organized campaign decades in the making. It depended upon an availability cascade in which the illusion was repeatedly injected into public discourse, though we barely noticed. It reached critical mass during 2014–2015 when it exploded on the scene with a Time Magazine cover story “The Transgender Tipping Point,” and Vanity Fair’s cover story on Olympian Bruce Jenner’s new identity as female, titled “Call Me Caitlyn.” Popular culture was soon saturated with transmania.
Many in the general public quickly got on board as the transgender lobby rallied all the forces it had been cultivating for decades: the courts, Hollywood, the medical establishment, the media, state legislatures, academia, large corporations, and their “allies” in the military and religious institutions. Very quickly, any dissent or questions about the agenda would get you socially destroyed. More people started falsifying what they believed and went along with the propaganda, adding to the spiral of silence and promoting the illusion of consent.
There is so much to see and know here. I could go on and on.
The Weaponization of Loneliness by Stella Morabito.
Read everything linked and mentioned here. Read it all. RTWDT.
Nite all.
Tedtam, the C&C guy’s writing is marvelous – I subscribed a long time ago 🙂
The biggest trader on Capitol Hill happens to be my local Democrat congressman Josh Gottheimer. the Devil’s Rejects only care about money, power and control. nothing more. the GoopeeCon party is dead. long live Kentucky soft shelled Swamp Turtles, Texas cornholes and all the rest of the money laundering, insider tip trading crummy critters that inhabit the decadent Halls of… Read more »
I post therefore I am.
I finished the earrings, got the load moved from the washing machine to the dryer, but I think I’ve lost my momentum on the rest of the chores.
Gotta get momentum. It’s the only way things get done.
I shall try to paraphrase more, but dang – I like his style.
So much. I truly appreciate a snarky phrase when it’s used properly and nails the topic.
The Rocket Ranch has had a pretty good week so far.
Texpat 9:29 am, Excellent description of Fair Use and why it has no hard and fast rules regarding how many words are the limit one may use. It is the essence of the whole of what is being quoted rather than a fixed number of words used. It is a sliding scale that has no permanent figures for use in… Read more »
Man, mention Rocket Ranch and only the crickets answer.
Hey Super Dave
Didja ever know a guy named Paul Lutus when you were at the Rocket Ranch?
Texpat
You mustaa meant the operative points above.
#63 – I could tell him to go to the kitchen or dining room – but since we have a “great room” where all three run together, it wouldn’t make much difference LOL
58 Squawk
Ima looks pretty cute to me.
She could have looked like this.
Also, is Ima Troll related to Ima Hogg ? She could be a famous Texan.
Imatroll?
Bsue must’ve kicked Squawk out of the living room again.
I got to show Hubby how his Christmas gift to me works. He gave me shredding/slicing attachments for my Kitchen Aid. It shredded up the Parmesan block nicely, and I didn’t have to engage the elbow. Not much, anyway. And he was happy that I was using what he bought for me.
My dinner break is almost over. Time for my daily chia pudding, then I have to clear the dining room table and make my keto lasagna noodles. If I have time, I’m agonna turn some small Christmas ornaments into earrings. I found some cute ones the other day, and they’re light enough not to rip out of my ear lobes.… Read more »
#59 – Tedtam, I’m athinking you are SPOT ON 😉
I believe Emetrol is a medication I took when pregnant. I was told that it would either relieve my nausea or make me throw up, thus relieving my nausea the hard way.
I’m thinking Imatroll does kinda the same thing.
GJT
Ummmmm well uhhhhhhhhhhh
BTW – I’m not sure if I heard this correctly, but I think Biden was given the choice of the Marine or the box checking basketball player. We all know what he decided.
/spits
Oh, and Texpat, I personally appreciate your erudite and informative articles here. I may not respond to all of them, but boy, am I impressed and thankful you’re one of us.
I’d be a lot dumber without you.
I agree with Texpat. There are many, many posts with which I’ve found: boring, redundant, aggravating, inconvenient, etc. I can’t ever remember calling those posts out. Bob42 was an exception, as he did not “fight fair” when discussing topics, and he relished creating discord here on the Couch. I scroll past them, because those people have the same right that… Read more »
I don’t understand why excerpts of the C&C need to be posted here on The Couch. Lots of us Couch Critters like the weekend powerline column, but simply posting the link to it is totally adequate for those who want to read it to zip over there and do it. ******************************************************************* An open letter to all who inexplicably believe they… Read more »
Re: Imatroll
Is it a she?
Is she pretty?
Is she married?
#50 – I think you musta been trying to post while Squawk/Imatroll was doing some work on the blog. He has now sewn the “Post Comment” button back on the comfy couch. While he’s tinkering with things, if you run into a problem, just wait a minute or so, and try again.
Was HimATroll experimenting with Da Blog while I couldn’t post anything, a while back?
Well that did not work
Out of curiosity, while I was trying to figure out how I could overcome the lack of “Post Comment” below my text (which I finally got in as #49), I noticed on the top bar of Hambone v3.0 the following “Need help?” But when I click it, I get: Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page. Still just… Read more »
I don’t understand why excerpts of the C&C need to be posted here on The Couch. Lots of us Couch Critters like the weekend powerline column, but simply posting the link to it is totally adequate for those who want to read it to zip over there and do it.
Well that did not work
Hi there, my name is Imatroll and I was created by Squawkbox to test changes he makes on Hamous 3.0. Just ignore me when I pass thru I am simply doing Squawk’s bidding. So if you are reading this, it means that what ever changes he has just made did not break the system. Or it could mean that what… Read more »
I spoke with a water line foreman this week while his crew was repairing a line – not 30 yards away from a break 4 weeks earlier. He said they have 720 active work orders and that the overwhelming majority of lines being repaired were laid in the 50s and 60s.
I took a quick tour of the garden as I decided to empty my compost liquid and feed the plants that were still active. Being on the Gulf Coast, our growing season is darn near year-round. My brassicas are doing well (except for the collards which seem to have become a host to some critter). I actually harvested some small… Read more »
I was curious about how much quotation percentage I’ve been using from other writer’s copyrighted material. Example: I found this free character/word/line counter. https://wordcounter.net/character-count RE: The article about Texas water from Texas Tribune, I quote in my 1:12 PM comment is: 8,322 characters / 1,355 words / 109 lines I quoted from those: 872 characters / 143 words / 9… Read more »
#43 Tedtam – I didn’t know just how adept you are at “understatement”
RE: Pelosi’s smile in the pic A true smile involves muscles in the upper face – around the eyes, etc. Fake smiles are “topless” and involve only the spreading of the lips and possibly the exposure of teeth. It’s hard to tell if Nancy is truly happy or not, as her Botox prevents her from looking authentic. But then, that’d… Read more »
Lasagna sauce is cooked and is cooling. I put a buncha eggs on for hard boiled eggs, so I could put out some deviled eggs tomorrow. The eggs I bought from the store were too fresh, and I ended up with some truly fugly peeled eggs. They looked worse than an acne ravaged teenager’s face. Could’ve been pics from the… Read more »
Texpat, et al – After being reminded of the fair use law, I do try to minimize what I post and keep it under the limit. That means I sometimes skip whole sections of the C&C. Despite passing over some of his best lines. And I do include the “breaking up” sections as part of the fair use. I break… Read more »
Unless the feds act, all Texans could be paying higher school taxes. The school construction boom in Texas has caught up with itself. The Permanent School Fund is a state endowment of about $56 billion funded through investments and land holdings. It was created in 1854 to give Texas’ public schools another form of revenue other than tax dollars. Through… Read more »
Shannon Water problems, mostly in East Texas. Aging infrastructure, coupled with inflation driving up costs of supplies, has left Texas’ water infrastructure increasingly brittle. This year, there have been at least 2,457 boil-water notices issued across the state — an average of seven per day. According to an analysis by The Texas Tribune of data from the Texas Commission on… Read more »
Texpat
Check your email
From texanadian’s linked article in #37: The last 1,000 days exposed the planet’s elected officials, politicians, public health bureaucrats, wealthy elite, economists, medical experts, scientists, celebrities, business titans, teachers, faith leaders, etc., as grossly ill-equipped to meet the COVID challenge. Let me be clear. America’s response to COVID was the most catastrophic collection of public policy decisions in galactic history. Unquestionably,… Read more »
I woke up before dawn this morning, after I had fallen asleep with the bedside radio on 1070 AM — I think I was listening to Dennis Prager when I dozed off. So when I woke up I was listening to Hugh Hewitt, who used to be a favorite before he went to 5-7 a.m. It is hard for me… Read more »
The women of the Capitol Hill press corps A purse dog ? Really ? These are the hard-driven, skeptical, cynical, investigative news people we are depending on ? Whatever happened to the tough guy in a fedora, smoking a cigar who had whiskey for lunch and never takes no comment for an answer ? Via Not the Bee and here is… Read more »
Today’s Hamousonian File this under: The more things change====== May 3, 2011 Hamous Thomas Sowell on Washingtonspeak: When people in Washington start creating fancy new phrases, instead of using plain English, you know they are doing something they don’t want us to understand. It was an act of war when we started bombing Libya. But the administration chose to call… Read more »
Here is a guy who tracks all the stock market trades of members of Congress. This is his report for 2021. The biggest trader on Capitol Hill happens to be my local Democrat congressman Josh Gottheimer. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been exchanged on the stock market by our elected officials in 2021 alone In just equities, Congress bought… Read more »
From CFP, worth the read
https://www.uncoverdc.com/2022/12/08/interrogating-covid-after-1000-days/
Morning all, and good luck Texmo
Fair warning to the men of HammieWorld. (Except for Super Dave, who routinely wears out his workshop feather dusters) I have been enjoying the clutter discussion that started yesterday. I have also observed that your women have really been taking it on the chin when blame is placed. When my very own beloved Clutter Queen left for much greener pastures… Read more »
30 El Gordo RE: Ammo Grrrll Column from Powerline & U.S. Fair Use Doctrine Copyright Law I seriously doubt the guys at Powerline would say anything to us, but I do try to abide by Fair Use Doctrine guidelines. Reposting a complete column, essay or article without written permission is a technical violation. There are no set percentages for what… Read more »
Only space that is MINE is an 8×8 storage building out back that tends to have, ahem, critters so she won’t go near it. It neatly stores my John Deere rider, a 4 wheeler (a project I’ll get to, someday), a generator and a push mower. Oh, and my son’s junk – S10 hood from a project truck he long… Read more »