Hillary Clinton and “The Weaponization of Loneliness”

August 12, 2023 | Books, Culture, Family, Free Speech, History, Isolation, Loneliness, Propaganda, Society, Weaponization of Loneliness

I was dismayed, though not hugely surprised, when I saw Hillary Clinton’s recent article at the Atlantic headlined with the exact title of my book, The Weaponization of Loneliness. You can read further about my reaction in this Federalist article, “Yes, Hillary Clinton is a Big Fan of ‘The Weaponization of Loneliness.’”

One purpose of Clinton’s Atlantic article is to promote Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s recent advisory on the loneliness epidemic, which, as I’ve written, serves as a blueprint for government invasion of the private sphere of life. As author of the 1996 book It Takes a Village –a soft treatise on collectivism–Clinton also presents herself as a forerunner to the advisory.  But another purpose is to set up a propagandistic narrative that positions her political opponents as the only folks who create and exploit social isolation. It co-opts the term “the weaponization of loneliness” to try to do that.

Was Clinton’s headline a coincidence, or made up on the fly by an editor? Highly unlikely. A major publication must carefully consider how to title a 3500-word article with Hillary Clinton’s byline. My book has been out since October, and its title has been circulated publicly in hundreds of interviews, op-eds, articles, and reviews, all related to my book’s thesis about social isolation as a political weapon. In fact, when I first considered the title and googled it several years ago, I couldn’t find it anywhere in print. Numerous interviewers and podcasters have remarked on how unique and compelling a title it is.

So it certainly seems like an effort to co-opt the term and associate it with a high profile public figure on the political Left instead of as the thesis of a lesser known author such as myself. If Hillary Clinton has a thesis for “the weaponization of loneliness” (which she does not) it is 180 degrees apart from mine. I focus on social processes and human impulses and agendas in which weaponized loneliness–and especially the fear of isolation–it is modelled throughout modern history. Clinton’s Atlantic article rails against all things “right wing” and then places the blame for our society’s alienation on what she once termed “a vast right-wing conspiracy,” featuring villains such as Newt Gingrich, Steve Bannon, “incels,” and Rush Limbaugh.

Hence, Clinton’s essay is not an exploration of the process of isolation as a political weapon. Rather, it seems intended to distract from many of her pet policies and programs that actually cultivate loneliness by building dependency on government as well as censoring and demonizing anyone with different ideas. Many of those policies have actually resulted in social fracturing and despair, including family breakdown, urban blight, addictions, attacks on free speech, and now the transing of children. Clinton’s Atlantic piece is meant to bury all of that and shift blame. Ultimately, if the invasive programs and policies of the surgeon general’s loneliness advisory are enacted, we are bound to see far more atomization and misery, not less.

The Exploitation – and Weaponization – of Loneliness: Now the Feds say they plan to “solve” our Loneliness Epidemic

July 31, 2023 | Books, Brainwashing, Bureaucracy, Community, Conformity, Culture, Freedom of Association, Friendship, Identity Politics, Isolation, Loneliness, Media, Persuasion, Political Correctness, Politics, Propaganda, Society, Weaponization of Loneliness

I recently had the honor of being interviewed by Jan Jekielek for his Epoch Times program “American Thought Leaders.”  Epoch Times posted it on Twitter and here, along with a transcript: Stella Morabito: Technocratic Totalitarianism, the Impulse to Conform, and Astroturfed Mobs versus Organic Protest

You can view the preview here:

Jan and I talked at length about the subject of my book, The Weaponization of Loneliness.  We covered a lot of ground on the human fear of social rejection and how it causes people to shut up –and even lie — about what they believe. The consequences are massive because mass self-censorship always gives a lot of oxygen to destructive agendas.  What are the dynamics involved in that? We discussed them in the context of conformity impulse, political correctness, identity politics, public opinion polling, mob formation, and how power elites build the illusion of consensus, even when there is no consensus.

Ultimately, this is all ramping up to be a war on the private sphere of life: family, faith, true community, and friendship. Those are the only institutions that give us the strength to resist totalitarian designs.

This is evident now that Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) recently introduced legislation called “The National Strategy for Social Connection Act.”  The bill is a follow up to the surgeon general’s advisory on “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Social Isolation.” It’s ironic because government policies–particularly those that promote family breakdown, addiction, urban blight, dependency, and more–are largely responsible for the loneliness epidemic in the first place! As I wrote in the Federalist, both the advisory and the legislation read like a blueprint for government takeover of the private sphere of life.  My latest article on that is here:  “Beware of Bureaucrats Wanting to be your BFF.”  

Government Plan to “Cure” Loneliness Will Cause Even More Loneliness

June 10, 2023 | Community, Conformity, Culture, Family, Free Speech, Freedom of Association, Friendship, Isolation, Loneliness, Political Correctness, Society, Weaponization of Loneliness

Loneliness, by Hans Thoma, 1880 (Wikimedia Commons)

Last month Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an 81-page advisory called “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” In it, he makes the case that loneliness and social isolation have caused a major public health crisis. There is no denying that social isolation contributes to health problems both mental and physical. This is well documented. Hence, the advisory urges immediate government action to address the problem. But the devil is in the details.

I recently wrote a three-part series for The Federalist in which I analyze the advisory and what it portends for our lives. I predict the advisory will cause even greater isolation if it is implemented. It provides an open door for the government to intrude on private life. See the following links to my three articles:

To Address the Loneliness Epidemic, the Feds Want to Control Your Town and Your Friends

Federal Loneliness Advisory Sketches Blueprint for Regulating Everyone’s Private Life

Federal Loneliness “Advisory” Threatens to Destroy Freedom by Occupying Private Life

Among the many points I make in my essays are the following. First, government policies are in large part responsible for cultivating our crisis of loneliness. But far from easing up on those policies, the government continues full speed ahead to implement agendas that promote family breakdown, abortion, urban blight, addictions, censorship, and more that serve to separate people from one another and to promote social distrust.

Second, after playing such a large role in creating this malady, the federal government is now offering its “cure” in the form of a six pillared strategy that will build an “infrastructure”–both social and physical–to monitor our levels of social connection, from the public library to your volunteer fire department to your church and your family. It will enlist the entire health sector as well as Big Tech to aid in that endeavor. And it expects everyone to participate.

Third, the advisory states that the divisive policy called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” will be a big part of the strategy to promote social-connection policies on every level of government, and everywhere people might gather. It further notes that the benefits of social connection–if you have a strong family and friendships, for example–are not equitably distributed. Those who have strong social connections have access to benefits (read: “privileges”) in terms of health, education, employment, finances, and so on.

The big question is how in the world would the government be able to “equalize” those benefits? Well, in some way, it would have to regulate the relationships that provide access to them.

Most Americans don’t realize that this advisory is a blueprint to invade the private sphere of life — the institutions of family, faith, and community–under the guise of bringing us together. This would be a totalitarian’s dream-come-true. Needless to say, it would be very dangerous for the survival of civil society. I fear that few understand that strong social connections can only develop in the privacy that allows you to speak in confidence. You need those connections to fall back on in order to speak openly, especially in these days when doing so can lead to major reprisals by the government.

The scope of this advisory is unprecedented. Anyone who is paying attention to current trends–and who loves their family and friends–should find it chilling. More Americans need to wake up and push back against such plans. Because, as psychiatrist Carl Jung noted many years ago: “The mass state has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man. It strives rather for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual.”

There’s a Connection between Loneliness and Political Censorship

March 1, 2023 | Conformity, Culture, Free Speech, Friendship, Isolation, Loneliness, Political Correctness, Society, Weaponization of Loneliness

Ask yourself this: If you cannot speak openly to people, can you develop relationships? Not really anything beyond the shallow. If you are always terrified of saying something “politically correct” and therefore constantly self-censor, how easily can you get to know anyone? Not very easily. When a government puts up roadblocks to open conversation, people become more atomized, more socially isolated, and therefore more lonely.

My piece in today’s Daily Caller considers all of this in light of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s call for a “Digital Bill of Rights” that would allow people to have more open conversations. I explore it in light of my thesis, which is the basis of my book The Weaponization of Loneliness.

Here’s a link to my essay: https://dailycaller.com/2023/03/01/morabito-after-defeating-disney-desantis-latest-legislation-might-solve-the-loneliness-epidemic/

And here’s an excerpt:

Intentionally or not, the enforcement of political correctness atomizes people.  The resulting isolation creates a vacuum for terror and social control. Americans must develop an awareness of this connection. It’s obvious from the history of totalitarian systems in which saying anything politically incorrect could land you in a Soviet gulag or put you at the mercy of Mao’s brutal Red Guard mobs. These are just two examples of many such recurring tragedies in human history. 

Furthermore, our loneliness epidemic both results from and contributes to the practice of self-censorship. Too often we self-silence in order to avoid social rejection for saying something that might be politically incorrect. This is a trap. Power elites use this fear of ostracism to enforce their narratives. They know instinctively that the human need to be accepted – coupled with the natural terror of social rejection – is a powerful driver of conformity. 

“The Line” is a Dystopian Hellscape — Presented as Utopian, of course

February 4, 2023 | Community, Conformity, Culture, Isolation, Loneliness, Media, Society, Weaponization of Loneliness

Several months ago I heard about this bizarre architectural endeavor called “The Line.” I recently saw the weird ad for it again and decided I ought to post something on it. Sane people need to hear about this because it illustrates just how power-crazed today’s billionaire class of globalists has become. Only then can we understand how critical it is to regain a sense of sanity. Check it out:

So you cram nine million people into a 100-mile long LINE that’s about 170 stories tall and just 650 feet wide. But it’s all supposed to be good because you don’t need cars. As best as I can figure out from the narrator, there are transports that can take you from end to end covering 100 miles in about 20 minutes. And it’s all good because it’s all divided into “neighborhoods” whereby you can get everything you need within a 5-minute walk. Or something like that. This is what they call “community.”

Seems likely the residents would be administered some form of “soma” — the drug used to keep people docile in Brave New World. But just think of the opportunities for surveillance when people are all herded together in such a vault. This one is pictured in the isolation of the Arabian desert. No escape! I’m sure there are some folks who find this appealing as a cool futuristic existence. But any thoughtful person can see that it’s all about dysfunction and loneliness and alienation.

How the Metaverse Would Serve to Atomize and Dehumanize Us

February 1, 2023 | Books, Community, Culture, Free Speech, Freedom of Association, History, Isolation, Loneliness, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Society, Weaponization of Loneliness

I was honored to speak to the great Laura Ingraham recently about my book The Weaponization of Loneliness. She focused on a chilling development at the World Economic Forum in Davos. One of the WEF speakers promoted everyone’s participation in the virtual reality of the “Metaverse.” The Metaverse offers a repertoire of such experiences in 3-D. It was promoted at Davos under the guise of “equity” since it allows us all access to the same experiences. Except for the fact that they aren’t real experiences.

In the Metaverse you can travel and meet others and buy and sell, no matter your location or status. The catch is that you’re basically all alone when you do it. You don’t have any real mobility, because your travel essentially takes place in your mind. Nothing there is tangible, though the sense of reality can be “augmented” through various accessories.

Ultimately, the WEF stands behind a future in which we are completely dependent upon a centralized globalist oligarchy for anything real. In the meantime, we can be subdued through the Metaverse which can act as an addiction. It is both dehumanizing and atomizing. You’ll find a clip of the interview above. But you need to subscribe to Laura Ingraham’s podcast on Quake media to hear it in full around the halfway mark at this link: https://quakemedia.com/episode/the-laura-ingraham-show-episode-194-featuring-stella-morabito/?type=show

Let 2023 be a year of Boldness for Free Speech and Truth!

January 1, 2023 | Books, Culture, Free Speech, Isolation, Loneliness, Politics, Society, Weaponization of Loneliness
Burgundy Glitter Happy New Year Free Stock Photo - Public Domain Pictures

Resolution #1: Overcome any fear of speaking the Truth. (And thereby help build a cascade of Truth.)

You can start building awareness about doing so by getting the book: The Weaponization of Loneliness

Just click here: The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer

There’s a deeper purpose to the First Amendment: It Protects Your Right to a Private Life and Personal Relationships

June 2, 2021 | Culture, Family, Freedom of Association, Friendship, Isolation, Loneliness, Propaganda, Society

In my latest Federalist piece I explore a much more profound reason for the First Amendment than we’re used to thinking about. It protects your right to form families and friendships. To better understand the connection, try this thought experiment. Imagine being unable to express your ideas to others, while they are unable to express theirs to you. No one may deviate from Big Media’s and Big Tech’s approved narratives in what they may say or write. Where do you end up in that state of affairs if it’s allowed to persist? You end up in a vacuum in which there’s no real conversation or thought exchanged. Relationships, and the potential for relationships, drastically erodes in such a vacuum. As does all private life. We end up in a miserable state of social isolation, an isolation that prepares the ground for a more authoritarian state.

Here’s an excerpt from my essay:

Political philosopher Hannah Arendt noted that all totalitarian systems depend upon cultivating social isolation in people. Isolation renders people powerless. So it’s no wonder that freedom of expression is always first on the chopping block during and after authoritarian takeovers. A cursory look at communist and fascist governments in the 20th century confirms that they’re always intent on destroying the entire sphere of private life and relationships.

I think if more people understood free speech in this light, they’d be more inclined to protect it. Because no one wants to be alone. You can read the whole piece at this link: How Ending Freedom of Expression Gives Up Your Right to a Private Life

This great article in American Greatness can help average Americans start taking their freedom back

March 19, 2021 | Bureaucracy, Community, Culture, Education, Freedom of Association, Identity Politics, Isolation, Political Correctness, Politics, Propaganda, Society, Uncategorized

“Until Lambs Become Lions” is a fantastic article in the online magazine American Greatness. It is one of many excellent reads out there, but for most people such reads are not so easy to find. Because of growing media and tech censorship — and extreme bias — we face more roadblocks to finding real information. We are inundated with propaganda that’s growing more vicious by the minute.

Nevertheless, if you look carefully, you can find many insightful essays online that expose readers to the truth and cut through the confusion of identity politics and cancel culture during these insane times. This is just one of them.

I am sharing this particular essay by a retired marine officer, Max Morton, because he gives everyone the big picture. With clarity. His essay is a 30,000-foot view of where we are as a nation as well as where we need to be headed if America is ever going to win back its hard-won freedoms. It provides average Americans a good start for understanding what’s at stake and what we can do about it. And it goes beyond both hope and despair. Morton describes our current landscape in about 2000 words and five salient subtitles: What we are facing; How did we get here? Developing an Agenda; What lies ahead; and Building the Barricades. The piece is sobering and hopeful at the same time.

How do we recover from so many toxic trends in all of our institutions? Especially when those who are poisoning us have isolated us and are circling the wagons? How can we hope for Americans to regain the ability to relate to one another as human beings, rather than as enemies? It’s going to take a lot of courage by a lot of people to overcome the descending darkness. It’s going to take a lot of one-on-one building of strong relationships of trust and building of strong communities against forces that are committed to breaking up such relationships. The work towards renewal has to happen fast. It’s too late for anything else. We have the means. But do we have the will? Here’s an excerpt from the beginning:

In order to defeat this rebellion, we need to understand the terrain we are operating on and the strategy and tactics of our enemy. Even more important, we need a strategy of our own to guide our struggle and return to a functional representative government, bounded by the Constitution with the power fully vested in the people. Only a few decades ago, American politics was driven by shared interests of prosperity and well-being aligned with a free constitutional republic. We need to drive from the American consciousness the current docile acceptance of the fact that America has a ruling class—or a ruling elite—and we must banish these terms to the trash heap of racial epithets and aristocratic garbage.

And here’s the conclusion:

At this moment we are the weaker side in this asymmetric struggle. Right now, we are 80 million couch potatoes and keyboard warriors with rifles in our bedroom closets. This is not a force to be reckoned with. And the ruling elite know it because they control the information flow and own the power institutions. Traditional Americans will have to organize and band together to help each other and fight in this struggle. When we become 80 million strong, organized citizens with a tangible agenda, when we know where we want to go and what we want this country to look like, and when we can see the path to achieve this, only then will we become the lions we need to be to achieve victory. 

Please read Morton’s entire article in American Greatness by clicking here: Until Lambs Become Lions.

I refuse to be labelled “White.” I am “racial non-conforming.”

December 11, 2020 | Brainwashing, Bureaucracy, Culture, Freedom of Association, Friendship, History, Identity Politics, Political Correctness, Society

It’s been a long time since I checked a box for race when filling out a nosy form.  I used to find the question merely annoying. Today I find it enormously hostile as well as hopeless. Think about what you’re being ordered to do when you “check the box.” You are commanded to allow a faceless bureaucracy to define who you are. What’s your “color?” What’s your “ethnicity?” And so on.  Well, screw that.

Such questions are demeaning and dehumanizing because they obviously try to force us all into identity boxes. They insist you shut yourself into a darker time of history where you are pre-judged and demonized. Forever. I’d feel that way no matter what I looked like. To get a picture of how the “intersectionality” game works, take a look at this youtube video (which will likely be taken down for being politically incorrect) showing how people are “scored” according to their oppressor or victim status:

Let’s face it. If we are going to be living under a socialist/communist “Administration” we have to expect to be dehumanized through such pigeon-holing in more and more areas of life.  Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the re-packaging of an ancient tactic that poisons human relationships by shoving people into roles of oppressor or victim — or, today, the moniker “ally” which is intended to give “oppressors” a false sense of security.

One of the worst things about identity politics like CRT is how it serves to cultivate and enforce hostilities, especially where no antagonisms ever existed before. It worms its way into family relationships and friendships. Today we are being told that if you are defined as “white” you are automatically a racist whether you know it or not. There are no solutions, just false confessions. This is disastrous for any hope of a civil society, for any hope of goodwill or friendship. Don’t play that game. The least we can do is to REFUSE to allow others to define who we are based on what we look like.

Refuse to check the box

So I refuse to identify as “white,” and I hope you will too. I will also take to task anyone who casually insists I am “white.” I’ll try to be polite, but I’ll use their language and flatly state that I’m “racial non-conforming.”  I also reject any other classification such as “cis-gender” or “heteronormative” or any such bullshit.  It’s all poison intended to sow dehumanization and misery and loneliness in society.  No person of good will participates in such things, at least not if they are self-aware.   

The good news is that we are all human. We have names. We have unique personalities and experiences. If only we could clear the fog to see all of that. Or at least to WANT to see the real people behind the phony labels.  I hope you will agree.  Imagine how much more joy we could all take in life if we weren’t such pathetic navel-gazers. We could create real art. We could have real conversations.  We could build things. We could make real friends.  Love would prevail over the hostilities and fear. Isn’t that what we all should want?