anomie durkheim

see hedges

see putnam bowling alone

guessing on nihilism connect

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an 8 25

CNN data analyst Harry Enten crunched the numbers and discovered a large swathe of U.S. residents no longer believe in the American dream.

“America, we have a problem,” said Enten, describing a growing nation of economic pessimists.

“If you work hard, you'll get ahead: that is the American dream,” said Enten. “[Respondents answering] ‘Never/Not true now’, in 2010 to 2011, 15 years ago, it was 51 percent who said it wasn't true. Now look at this number! Whooo! Through the roof: 70 percent.”

Conversely, Enten discovered the percentage of Americans who still believed the American dream to be true “falling through the floor.”

IFrame Content

“It was 47 percent 15 years ago. Now it is just 29 percent, so we basically had a 50/50 nation on whether the American dream was still true 15 years ago, but now it's over two thirds of Americans who say it's never or no longer true,” Enten said.

Enten reported the group experiencing the most pessimism or loss in faith of the American dream was younger Americans between the age of 18 and 29, with optimism dropping from 56 percent in 2010 to just 21 percent in 2024.

“Look at where that number has absolutely tumbled to. It has dropped … 35 points to just 21 percent,” said Enten, adding that faith in the American dream also appeared to have dropped with some senior citizens, with those 65 or older experiencing a drop from 53 percent to 41 percent.

“What is essentially going on here is the American youth have lost faith pretty much completely in the idea of an American dream,” Enten said. “And that, of course, goes back to the idea of why there's poll after poll after poll that shows that younger people, more so than any other part of our nation at this point, have seen deepening pessimism in their personal lives as well.”

Another “scary” percentage that came up in polling was the falling number of friends that Americans appear to have, said Enten, with the percentage of Americans reporting “no close friends” jumping up from just 3 percent in 1990 to 17 percent now.

“No wonder pessimism is really taking a hold in the American public” Enten said.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Authoritarians who want to repeal democracy and pluralism can only do so through manipulating people. For decades, people on the center-to-left have generally outsourced educating the population to K-12 schools and public universities. But learning is something that takes place throughout our lifetimes, whether we realize it or not.

And so people who want to have economic and social justice need to educate the public about our viewpoints through all kinds of media (websites, podcasts, videos, memes, etc) and also through local organizations like service clubs and unions.

Our society has lost "third spaces" where we can come together and learn from each other, and more especially to partake in our community's collective memory. Without real progressive infrastructure, we are leaving people to be manipulated by authoritarian religion and deceptive media outlets like Fox.

Research has shown that people who are most likely to get sucked into authoritarian cults like QAnon and hardcore Trumpism are alone and isolated. Many of them gravitate toward the only people who are there. The same thing often happens with young people and gangs.

JS: What are the Democrats doing wrong? It seems to me they have no answer. Just hope that Trump, now that he has power, will implode.

MS: As of this moment, there are no funded political ecosystem projects. This absolutely must change as soon as possible.

As someone who has seen both sides of the political spectrum from the inside, it was a complete shock to me when I moved leftward that there was nothing to offset the massive rightwing media machine, which I helped build (for more about why I left the right, see this link.

social isolation gym story hedges again

https://www.alternet.org/social-isolation/

no lnx twt an 4 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/ny-times/

NY Times pummeled over piece on 8 conservative men who don’t feel 'free to be themselves in the culture'

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement April 13, 2022

Some might say The New York Times is the king of normalizing views from the right, even views that could be considered disturbing or, in some cases, even dangerous to their fellow citizens, the nation, or the world. The Times’ pre-World War II profiles of a young Adolf Hitler are a legendary example.

In 2015 The Times republished what it calls “1922: Hitler in Bavaria,” patting itself on the back for getting “a lot of things right,” like its “description of his ability to work a crowd into a fever pitch, ready then and there to stage a coup.”

The Times that year also reported that “several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea thatHitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.”

History knows how that turned out.

Fast forward to 2017, when The Times published a profile commonly referred to as “The Nazi Next Door,” originally titled, “In America’s Heartland, the Nazi Sympathizer Next Door,” which was written by Richard Fausset.

Salon’s Matthew Smith described the piece, bemoaning the “creepy trend of media outlets attempting to humanize Nazis and white supremacists.”

“Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall,” Fausset’s story begins. “They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.”

“Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.”

A caption of a photo reads: “Mr. Hovater and others in the loosely defined alt-right movement are hoping to make their ideas less than shocking, even normal.”

Some felt The Times, intentionally or not, certainly appeared as if it were trying to lend a hand. And in fact, after massive outrage, which forced a headline change (along with removing a link it included to “a webpage that sells swastika armbands,”) the Times’ editors defended publishing the piece by saying they thought “it was important to do so.”

Between 1922, and 2017, and after, no doubt the Times has published other works that normalize the radical right, extremism, and fascism.

Earlier this year a Twitter user posted his take on how the Times in 1935 covered a “large anti-Hitler protest in front of a Nazi ocean liner.”

And oh yes, 1924:

“22,000 Nazis Hold Rally in [Madison Square] Garden; Police Check Foes,” was a front-page headline in the Times about a stunningly disturbing NYC event in 1939.

Meanwhile, fast forward to today.

“These 8 Conservative Men Are Making No Apologies” is the headline in Tuesday’s Times Opinion section. The piece is by the Times’ deputy Opinion editor Patrick Healy and the Opinion section’s editorial assistant Adrian J. Rivera. And while no one should make a comparison to Hitler or Nazis, the question some are asking is why did The Times think it important to profile a group of conservative men, since conservative men have pretty much been in charge for decades?

“There was no talk of a stolen election, no conspiracy theories about voter fraud or rants about President Biden’s legitimacy. Yet listening to our 90-minute focus group with eight conservative men, you couldn’t help but worry for our democracy a bit,” it begins.

“The men didn’t see themselves fitting into American society today. They didn’t feel free to be themselves in the culture,” the piece claims. “Seven of them said they felt like a stranger in their own country. At a time when democratic institutions are under pressure — and even under attack — and the United States feels so ununited, what causes these Americans to feel so alienated from America?”

The Times, to my knowledge, has never done a focus group of, say, eight LGBTQ men over 50. Or eight LGBTQ people of any age. What about doing a focus group of eight Northeast Democrats? How about visiting a diner and listening to supporters of President Joe Biden? Or Senator Elizabeth Warren? Or Reps. Jamie Raskin or Val Demmings?

When does the paper of record start highlighting views of people from the left, rather than a Nazi from 1922 or conservatives from 2022?

Again, The Times defends its piece, claiming these are “Americans whose voices are often not heard in opinion journalism.”

The Times apparently has never heard of Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, or Facebook.

The Times piece includes one hour and 22 minutes of audio it titled, “8 Conservative Men On Being a Man in America Today.”

To give a taste, here are some of the men and their top concerns about America or American society:

Tony (white, 72, retired, Massachusetts): Government spending.

Derrick (Black, 63, software engineer, Georgia): Inflation.

Michael (white, 67, retired, Florida): Economy.

Christopher (Black, 51, small-business loan broker, Maryland): Elitism.

Danny (Middle Eastern, 47, Realtor, Florida): Disgraceful.

Joe (white, 37, apparel manufacturing, New York): Weak.

Joe says: “This is not the America I remember growing up in, and it’s just sad to see what’s going on.”

Robert says: “You’re not free to be yourself anymore because of crime. You’ve got to be concerned about ‘If I go out, am I going to be a victim of crime?'”

(Most crime is actually at historic lows, but you won’t hear that on TV or social media. The Brennan Center reports the “violent crime rate in the United States has decreased sharply over the past 25 years.”)

Later in the piece, Robert reveals, “I voted for Trump. I like Trump from when he was with ‘The Apprentice.’ I knew him as a businessperson. That’s why I voted for him. And then — oh, Lord — from church to every place, people just had a problem with it. You can’t have a different viewpoint.”

One interviewer asked questions like “What does it mean to be a man?” “Is masculinity important to you?” “Who would you all think of as good examples of masculinity or manliness these days? Who’s a good example?”

Responses to The Times’ piece were strong and appropriately unforgiving:

no lnx

Defeating fascism's 'loneliness and alienation' has a simple solution: author

John Stoehr March 14, 2022

The former president held another of his tiresome rallies last night. I say “tiresome” because it was more of the same spleen and bile.

But he did say something useful to my purposes, which is talking about John Dewey in a world gripped by tyranny. Below is a long interview with Nathan Crick. He wrote Dewey and the New Age of Fascism.

Amid Donald Trump’s laundry list of grievances, including reiterations of the Big Lie, he said: “Getting critical race theory out of our schools is not just a matter of values, it’s also a matter of national survival.”

“We have no choice,” he said:

The fate of any nation depends upon the willingness of its citizens to lay down – and they must do this – lay down their very lives to defend their country. If we allow the Marxists and communists and socialists to teach our children to hate America, there will be no one left to defend our flag or to protect our great country or its freedom.

That’s boilerplate fascism.

Just ask Jason Stanley. In 2018, he told Vox:

The story is typically that a once-great society has been destroyed by liberalism or feminism or cultural Marxism or whatever, and you make the dominant group feel angry and resentful about the loss of their status and power. Almost every manifestation of fascism mirrors this general narrative.

Per usual, the crowd was so rapt with attention, so immersed in the grume and gall, you wonder if it’s possible to reason with fascists.

Yes and no.

“You can’t argue a person out of a cult by walking into it,” Nathan told me. “There is hope only when they step outside of that experience.”

One does not ‘reason’ with fascists. It is more that you get outside the fascist vocabulary and talk about something different. The hope is by connecting with ordinary experience, perhaps they find life is more valuable than Donald Trump’s talking points.

What would that “outside life” look like? For Dewey, it meant more than protecting and advancing democracy. It meant protecting and advancing the capacity all humans have to be more fully human.

But first, get them out and back into ordinary experience.

As Nathan said:

Propaganda is totalitarian when it encircles a person. It creates an entire identity for them that tolerates no gods before it. It is a lifestyle and gives you an identity that you can share with other like-minded people.

Dewey used to be central to our discourse, but his appeal has faded. What brought you to thinking he'd be worthy of a new book?

Dewey lived through two world wars. As a young man, he absorbed the spirit of the early 20th-century progressive movement. He believed in the upward ascent of society toward its ultimate end in democracy.

What he saw instead were fascism and global catastrophe.

I believed his life would be instructive for our time to prevent catastrophe from happening again. I believe there is something called wisdom about human beings we can learn. He had that wisdom.

Let's break down some of that "progressive spirit."

The foundation of Dewey’s thought was the possibility of experience to be educative. Everything he wrote revolved around that basic idea.

We were born to learn and grow. Although Dewey was a Christian in his early writings, he came to look skeptically at organized religion and adopted a more naturalistic perspective toward human experience.

He believed human beings are born to live on earth like all other organisms. We are gifted with certain powers that other organisms do not possess. It is our gift to use those powers for our own growth and the growth of our community, not for any transcendent idea or aim beyond this world. This world is our home.

So by “progressive," he meant we could always learn to grow.

I love that, but how can this view face the fascism of his day? One wants to grow. The other to destroy. They seem irreconcilable.

It’s important to see the world from the perspective of fascist anti-humanism. Fascists also wanted to grow in the 20th century. They just wanted to grow in one direction toward a fixed aim.

The anti-humanism of the fascist is not anti-growth.

It is anti-experimental.

The fascist has one idea of what it means to be human and excludes all others. Fascism’s destructive power is the annihilation of alternative visions, of difference, of diversity of views and practice, of anything that, from the fascist view, obstructs the one way vision toward utopia.

So the idea of “growth” might need to be modified. Fascists want to grow in the sense of feeling a fixed mold, like pouring water into a jug.

For Dewey, humanism meant seeing the human being as a source of potential power, diversity and creativity. Nothing inherent in us meant we’re going in one direction. This was his resistance to religious fundamentalism. He saw power as very general. It is through individual practices and cultures that we develop these powers in different ways.

So there is certainly a conflict here.

Unfortunately, there is no ultimate reconciliation of these forces.

I think trying to reconcile them at a philosophical level is somewhat futile. I think it comes down to creating the conditions of diversity to continually get in the way of a singular totalitarian mindset.

Unfortunately, technology creates the conditions for that totalitarian view by combining like-minded people into a single vision that prohibits alternative realities. When those unities become strong enough and resourced enough, one ends up in contests of force.

Dewey recognized that, although he wished it to be otherwise.

Please explain the three parts of fascist antihumanism that you talk about in your book. 1. “Ragged” individualism. 2. Animist nationalism 3. Totalitarian propaganda. Can you walk us through each?

From my reading of Dewey, I looked through every single moment he talked about fascism and authoritarianism in the 20th century.

I tried to reduce these characteristics to their absolute foundations. I found there were three conditions that make fascism possible: ragged individualism, animist nationalism, and totalitarian propaganda.

Each foundation was built on top of the other, but all of them were grounded on the modern destruction of the self and community.

By “ragged individualism,” Dewey was playing on the utopian notion of “rugged individualism.” This was the idea connected to the cowboy of the American West and the self-made man of the industrial US city.

The rugged individual was someone who found strength in being different from other people, in being separate from and even contemptuous of society, and who through trial and error would intuitively discover the virtues and the methods for success.

Dewey saw the opposite.

Rugged individualism tended to celebrate primarily industrial capitalism that came about not through individual creativity but the harnessing of capital and the exploitation of weaker populations.

Meanwhile, ragged individualism created an ethic of contempt for community. It saw that if you needed help, you were weak.

Rugged individualism was “ragged” because it didn’t exist.

In a modern society, individuals were dependent on machines and techniques, not just for industrial production but through social organization. From birth to death, we are dependent on organized technology and automated systems to regulate mass society.

Human beings simply cannot get on in the world without being connected, in one way or another, to some kind of system. The idea that a person should “make it on their own” is virtually absurd.

That does not mean human effort is unimportant. Dewey simply says we cannot pretend, if we truly want to be individuals, that we can do all of these things on our own. We are intrinsically connected to each other. To pretend you are not is to leave you helpless and alone.

I am loving this so far. Keep going!

Worse ragged individualism creates conditions for animist nationalism.

I use the word “animist” to distinguish it from more traditional political nationalism which simply refers to any geographically organized citizenry that feels connected to a state and a common history.

Animism is when you invest a non-living entity with animal spirits. The state is that spirit. Animist nationalism speaks of the nation but it ignores the citizen and our common bond with each other.

Instead, it talks about the national spirit and the origin and destiny of the nation as if it was a kind of creature. What you get in fascist states is the mythology of, say, the “Aryan” as a complete fabrication.

But that’s a natural outcome of rugged individualism.

The more we are set apart from one another, alienated from our community and our families, organized by technology and machines in a way that loses any sort of personal relationship, the more we seek a relationship with something that is simply non-living.

We try to justify our lives by connecting to something deep inside of us and outside of us. This force of the living spirit that we can tap into that is superpersonal, somehow above and beyond everyone.

Once you get into this position, there is no more responsibility either to oneself or to other human beings. You get tied up into a vision of history totally detached from the experiences of ordinary people.

The fascist state or movement is the result.

It’s pathetic because it’s driven by a genuine desire for belonging.

Totalitarian propaganda organizes animist nationalism. I say “totalitarian” to note total absorption into a propaganda message.

Propaganda isn’t necessarily totalitarian. I teach propaganda frequently, as a college course. It can be simply a collection of methods for persuading on a larger scale than rhetorical argumentation can. We see propaganda all the time in social movements we find very noble.

Totalitarian propaganda is not specific to fascism by any means.

It can happen in any cult-like situation and is not subject matter dependent. Any idea whatsoever can be exploited by propaganda.

The key difference is totality, a vocabulary and a worldview so dependent on media the individual no longer experiences the world.

Thus, we come full circle.

Fascism is the destruction of the individual in the name of some higher ideal of personality.

What were Dewey's counterpoints? This is important, because I think most people still believe fascists can be reasoned with.

I think Dewey’s response is never about persuading fascists. You have to confront power with power. And I don’t mean force or violence.

I mean the capacity to act in concert for a common end against resistance. This is where rhetoric and communication become so valuable. One has to fight fascism by establishing a community.

By creating conditions that allow people to experience what they wish to recover. It is loneliness and alienation that sets the possibility for fascism. The way to battle that is by fighting for a community that allows self-expression and love and connection and creativity.

There is really no other option.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/american-authoritarian-mind/

to understand the American authoritarian mind, look to evangelical Christianity

no lnx

John Stoehr July 21, 2021

Michelle Goldberg is a superlative Times columnist. To my way of thinking, she's a quintessential liberal. I mean that in ways positive and negative. Positive in that she's a warrior for liberty, morality and self-government. Negative in that Goldberg does not, and probably cannot, understand the authoritarian mind, nor its perennial threat to us. Liberals are right to have sympathy for the devil. But there's such a thing as too much.

In her newest column, Goldberg talked about her experience reading Michael Bender's book about the 2020 presidential election, Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost. Bender, who's a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, recounts not only "White House disarray and Trump's terrifying impulses," Goldberg writes, but "the people who followed Trump from rally to rally like authoritarian Deadheads."

Bender's description of these Trump superfans, who called themselves the "front-row Joes," is sympathetic but not sentimental. Above all, he captures their pre-Trump loneliness. … There are many causes for the overlapping dysfunctions that make contemporary American life feel so dystopian, but loneliness is a big one.

Goldberg suggests strongly that loneliness might be the cause of the current drift in the United States toward authoritarianism. She quotes The Week's Damon Linker, who cites Hannah Arendt: "Lonely people are drawn to totalitarian ideologies." "'The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships,' Arendt said in The Origins of Totalitarianism, describing those who gave themselves over to all-encompassing mass movements."

I love Arendt, but she's wrong here. She has things in reverse. I don't know if the chief characteristic of the mass man is brutality and backwardness, but I do know that loneliness is the result of brutality and backwardness. In other words, authoritarianism causes alienation, not the other way around. Democracy does not, and cannot, constitute "normal social relationships" to the authoritarian way of thinking, because democracy, to the authoritarian way of thinking, is a moral perversion of the natural order of things, which is to say, "normal social relationships": God over Man, men over women, black over white, etc. Democracy always runs against the grain of "God's law." The authoritarian is always already alienated—from her nation but mostly from herself.

Goldberg cites the American Enterprise Institute's Daniel Cox, who found a link between loneliness and support for the disgraced former president. The "share of Americans who are more socially disconnected from society is on the rise," Cox said. "And these voters disproportionately support Trump." His survey found that "17 percent of Americans said they had not a single person in their 'core social network.'" He added that these "socially disconnected voters were far more likely to view Trump positively and support his re-election than those with more robust personal networks."

Like I said, Michelle Goldberg is a quintessential liberal. She's reading Cox's findings as loneliness causing authoritarianism. It's the reverse, though. How can I be so sure? If loneliness causes authoritarianism, what are potential solutions? Among them would be more social networks, more community, more human bonding, and so on, right?

Guess what? White evangelical Protestants are very social, very communal and very bonded by religion and conviction. God over Man, men over women, black over white, etc.—God's law is the basis for their "normal social relationships." White evangelical Protestants are, moreover, united by their collective authoritarian belief that they have been chosen by God to rule America in God's name for the purpose of hastening the End Times, so that anything is justified as long as it serves Him. Put more plainly, nothing matters but authority and power. There are plenty of lonely people in this world, but making them less lonely isn't going to make many of them less fascist.

How can the authoritarian be alienated from her nation but especially herself while at the same time appear to find connection in communities like white evangelical Protestants? That's a very good question! It gets to the heart of the real problem. The authoritarian mind is taught to never ever ever come to its own conclusions about the world. Truth is whatever Dear Leader says, not what your eyes and ears tell you. This "education" begins before birth and lasts a lifetime. As a consequence, there's no such thing as independent thinking. There's no such thing as freedom of choice. In the collective, there's no such thing as you. As a result, you will always be lonely. Big rallies might seem communal, but they're illusory. You're filling a hole that can't be filled.

Goldberg again cited Hannah Arendt who "described people shaken loose from any definite place in the world as being at once deeply selfish and indifferent to their own well-being: 'Self-centeredness, therefore, went hand in hand with a decisive weakening of the instinct for self-preservation.'" Goldberg said the pandemic did that. It shook people loose from "any definite place in the world." No, it didn't. The covid, the lockdowns, the isolation—these did affect authoritarian minds like they did all other minds. The difference, however, is that the authoritarian mind was already shaken loose from its definite place. And their always already-present anxiety rose to ever more feverish pitches the more democracy prepared to overthrow their fuhrer. We should not ease this mind with sympathy. We should break it with more democracy.

Again, it's the reverse. Being "shaken loose from any definite place in the world" does not necessarily make you "deeply selfish and indifferent to their own well-being." Not if you're already there. If so, already being "deeply selfish and indifferent to their own well-being" is what shakes you loose "from any definite place in the world." Indeed, you aren't selfish so much as selfless in the most literal sense, as in there's no daylight between you and the collective. You have no sense of self-preservation because you never developed a self to preserve. This makes it very easy for authoritarian people to throw their lives away for the leader. And that's what Michael Bender's reporting shows.

"Toward the end of Bender's book, Saundra reappears," writes Goldberg, referring to a Trump supporter mentioned earlier. "She'd just been at the Capitol for the Jan. 6 insurrection and seemed ready for more. 'Tell us where we need to be, and we just drop everything and we go,' she says. 'Nobody cares about if they have to work. Nobody cares about anything.'1 If you give people's life meaning, they'll give you everything." I don't know why we should read this in any way that's not literal. Saundra says she doesn't care about anything, because she doesn't. Sympathy won't change that.

The thing about quintessential liberals like Michelle Goldberg is they don't imagine, probably because they can't imagine, human relationships completely devoid of the principle of political equality between and among individuals. They can't imagine being uncertain of who they are in the absence of authority. When you don't or can't imagine such a life, the authoritarian mind can seem so confounding that you search for some concrete reason for its suicidal behavior. To the liberal, loneliness seems to be rational cause for authoritarianism. The truth, however, is far uglier, scarier and more dangerous to democracy than most people, not just liberals, seem to know. Nothing causes authoritarianism. It has always been here. It always will be here.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/noam-chomsky-republican-party/

alexh

The United States has had 17 different presidents during Noam Chomsky's lifetime, from Calvin Coolidge to Joe Biden — and the left-wing author, now 92, has lived through major historical events including the Great Depression, Watergate, 9/11, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Chomsky discussed the challenges of the Biden era during a recent interview with author/journalist David Masciotra for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Chomsky discussed his most recent book, "Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance," in the interview with Masciotra, warning that people who are hurting economically can be manipulated by far-right extremists. Chomsky has been a blistering critic of neoliberal economics, which he said continues to fail millions of people in the United States.

"I've seen it over and over," Chomsky told Masciotra. "During the Kennedy and Johnson years, the technocratic and meritocratic elite, my colleagues from Harvard and MIT, were flocking down to Washington to show how the world should be run. Well, in Vietnam, we saw what came of that. It was not unpredictable. Those of us in the streets were warning of it all along. Now, it is the same. Neoliberalism, whatever is in the minds of people who advocate for it — maybe they don't even think about it — is an explicit effort…. to hand power to private institutions, which are dedicated to self-enrichment."

Neoliberalism, Chomsky added, only worsens the divide between the haves and the have-nots in the United States.

"The majority of the population gets by paycheck to paycheck," Chomsky told Masciotra. "Real wages have stagnated for 40 years. The gains of productivity growth concentrate in very few pockets. This leads to…. unfocused anger. Is it surprising? People aren't told what is really robbing them. Instead, they are told that it is immigrants, Blacks, some pedophiles from outer space, if you believe QAnon — anything but what is actually happening."

When economic conditions are unfavorable to the working class, Chomsky noted, Republicans try to distract their voters with "cultural issues."

"The Republicans, who are the party of the superrich, understood in the 1970s that you can't get votes by coming to people and saying, 'I want to rob you, and hand everything you have over to the rich and corporate sector,'" Chomsky explained. "Somehow, that doesn't work. You have to turn to what are called 'cultural issues,' meaning everything but what matters for your life. So, Paul Weyrich, one of the main Republican strategists, by the mid-1970s got a flash of insight and realized that if the Republicans pretend — stress 'pretend'— to be opposed to abortion, they'll pick up the evangelical vote and the northern Catholic vote."

Noting that the Republican Party is becoming "increasingly dangerous and brazenly antidemocratic," Masciotra asked Chomsky to discuss the political climate of 2021. And Chomsky agreed with his description of the modern GOP.

Chomsky said of the Republican Party, "They can mobilize the people they've turned into raging monsters, and get them to attack these communist rats who want the country flooded with rapists and murderers so that the White race suffers genocide. You know the whole story. That's the Republican Party. It's not a political party anymore. It's very dangerous."

The 92-year-old author added that scapegoating is an effective tool of the far right in 2021 just as it was when he was a kid during the 1930s and Jews were targeted by Nazis. He explained:

There are other parts of it that are just as dangerous. For example, just recently, Pew Research Center came out with one of its regular polls on major issues facing the country. They had a choice of 15 major issues, and people were asked to rank them. It was divided between Republicans and Democrats. Take a look at Republicans. At the very bottom — 13 percent — the most important question that has ever arisen in human history:global warming. They don't call it that. They call it "climate change," which is more neutral. But only 13 percent think that is a major problem.It is only the most important problem that's ever arisen — the question of survival. Then you go to the problems they are most concerned about — illegal immigration, the deficit. This is the result of very effective propaganda. Imposing common sense, manufacturing consent, year after year — turning people into the kind of people that supported the Nazis. Going back to my childhood, I remember them right here in the United States. These were the people who wanted to get rid of the Jews, because "the Jews are destroying civilization."

"If people are isolated, atomized, with no support groups, no involvement in constructive activities, they are prey to this attack on their moral and intellectual integrity," Chomsky continued. "Go back to what I said, the Republican leadership is overjoyed at the moves toward some humane behavior on the part of Democrats. They know, especially with (former President Donald) Trump — who is a genius at this —that they can organize and mobilize crazed groups who really believe they need their guns to save the White race from genocide. You can drive people to that."

deathcult

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-frightened-legions-show-a-pathology-at-the-root-of-our-cultural-nervous-breakdown/

Trump’s frightened legions show a pathology at the root of our cultural nervous breakdown

Written by Phil Rockstroh / Common Dreams August 9, 2019

The United States of America is less of a nation than a collective, psychotic episode.

Within day to day life in the nation, a cultural aura exists that shifts, mingles, and merges between a sense of nervous agitation and displaced rage, in combination with a sense of weightlessness. The fragmented quality of daily life imparts an insubstantial, unreal quality wherein the citizenry of the capitalist/consumer empire of hungry ghosts drift through a nadascape comprised of ad hoc, fast-buck-driven, suburban/exburban architecture and the ersatz eros of constant, consumer come-ons.

Yet beneath the nebulous dread and nettling angst of it all, there exists the primal human imperative for connection and social communion i.e., authentic eros. The most lost among the lost in the ghostsphere of the collective mind attempt to animate the realm of shades with libations of blood. The gods of the capitalist death cult demand no less.

“According to its own laws, the nation’s citizenry, sufferers of mental distress, should be restricted from purchasing a gun. Yet without a doubt, the most disturbed of all are the nation’s political class, those responsible for gun legislation.”

Where does an impulse to possess an unlimited number of firearms fit into the scheme of things? A firearm’s heft, for one. The weapon feels substantial when held and hoisted thus serves, provisionally, to mitigate a psychical sense of weightlessness. The act of engagement eases nervous agitation. Guns reality is antithetically to the weightless content of media reality. Focus is achieved when one aligns the weapon’s site to a target. Nebulous dread transforms into adamantine purpose. The presence of an Angel Of Death will focus the mind. The ground, for the moment, feels solid beneath one’s feet. Hence, there arrives a craving, in the sense of addiction, to hoard the object that provides relief; in addition, massive quantities of ammunition must be stored as emotional ballast. The mystifying, rankling, uncontrollable criteria of this weightless Age and the white noise of uncertainty seem to yield to the clear and decisive crack of a rifle shot. Relief is imagined in the concomitant carnage. Rebecca West captures the phenomenon in prose:

Because we, on a personal level, in most cases, choose the primary option, our hidden, shadow half will live out the latter on a collective basis. During the blood lust on display at Trump rallies, the mob finds a collective comfort zone in catastrophic longings. The domestic landscape of paranoia works in behalf of the profiteers of perpetual war, perpetrators of the U.S.-created deathscapes overseas, and vice versa, in a self-resonating feedback loop of carnage.

In our era, in which, the U.S. empire is in decline, as a consequence, the White supremacist order no longer seems inevitable, Trump’s frightened legions have personalised the decline. In their gut, they feel as if their identity is under siege. Seal off the nation’s borders. Construct an unscalable wall. Create a cordon sanitaire to protect and preserve racial purity. A strong authority figure is craved in order to set the world back in order. The phenomenon could be termed, Authoritarian Simpatico Syndrome (ASS)—a pathology manifested in personality types who have been traumatized by the authoritarianism of the U.S. socio-political milieu but who seek to assuage their hurt and humiliation by identification with the very forces responsible for their torment. The stuff of a cultural nervous breakdown.

To that end, according to its own laws, the nation’s citizenry, sufferers of mental distress, should be restricted from purchasing a gun. Yet without a doubt, the most disturbed of all are the nation’s political class, those responsible for gun legislation. There is compelling evidence that they present a clear and present danger to themselves and others. The political class is a menace to society; they make decisions, more often than not, based on delusional thinking, that are responsible for harm on a massive scale. Thus they should be subject to institutional-style restraint, within the confines of the most heavily secure, lockdown ward in an asylum for the criminally insane.

Although the so-called mentally ill, as a rule, are not any more inclined to commit violent crimes than are the general population of capitalist dystopias. The U.S. was founded in genocidal violence and the fortunes of its ruling class’ are protected by the state sanctioned violence of the police and are bloated by the violence inherent to imperialist shakedown operations.

It comes down to this: In our emotionally brutal era, those deemed mentally ill are suffering from capitalism. The pummelling stress and boot-in-the-face, hierarchy-inflicted humiliations inherent to the system inflict trauma on large swathes of the citizenry.

Epidemic levels of middle age, U.S. citizen’s are dying with needles in their arms. The inherent and internalised White supremacy of the societal order has been exacerbated by Trump’s self-serving, reckless agitprop and acts in a drug-like manner causing dopamine levels to rise in those experiencing emotional torment due to humiliation-caused despair. Demagogues such as Trump are aware and exploit the manner despair can be palliatively mitigated by the emotional displacement of rage.

Fascist insignias rise when the hopes and aspirations of the working class lay shattered across a capitalist economic wasteland. Hoisted torches provide the illusion that dark despair has been banished. The fascist mob becomes possessed by a belief that they, en masse, can ascend into the precincts of heaven by scaling a mountain of corpses comprised of outsider groups.

Fascism not only acts as anaesthetic to the wounds delivered by capitalism, it is a psychoactive drug because incantatory rhetoric and imagist psychical material get those susceptible to its crude allure high.

Capitalism is borne on manic wings. The economic elite move from corporate skyscrapers and high rise rooftops in order to travel by helicopter, where upon landing, they board private, luxury jets, then, whereupon landing again, they are transported by helicopter to corporate skyscrapers and high rise rooftops. Touching the earth is a fleeting experience. The ruling class have lost touch with ground level verities. In a classical sense, such displays of hubris were understood as the progenitor of madness. The gods first elevate those they drive mad.

And, yes, race-based fears and animus are in play. Racism engendered mass murder has been coming to pass since armed Europeans trudged ashore in the Americas, with their blood-sodden religion and their murderous craving for gold and land. Of course, the racist demagoguery of the Bloated Orange Tub Of Nazi Goo oozing into and agitating the limbic systems of violent cretins during homegrown Nuremberg Rallies and his compulsion to blitzkrieg the pixel-sphere with Der Stürmer tweets is fomenting racist mayhem that includes bacchanals of blood. U.S. mythos is rancid with the reek of the corpses of the innocent slaughtered by White men brandishing firearms. Mass murderers have been and continue to be enshrined as heroes, from Wounded Knee to Afghanistan.

The nation was established by gun-enabled genocide and the intimidation of African slaves held at gunpoint on capitalist plantations. The truth has never been faced, e.g. the suppression of the Nixon tape in which Ronald Reagan displayed his racist mindset.

The U.S. citizenry thanks the soldiers of its racist wars of aggression for their “service.” Perpetual shooting sprees origins can be traced to the heart of darkness of the nation and its concomitant White supremacist creed. The killings happened long before the rise and election of the Tangerine Tweet Führer. Of course, the racist shit-heel Trump has exacerbated the situation. He deserves all scorn cast his way. It is obvious his capacity for malice does not possess a governor’s switch.

Trump is a two-legged emblem of the hypertrophy at play in late U.S. imperium. Gun-inflicted violence is steeped into the blood-stained fabric of the U.S. (sham) republic. Withal, Trump is not an anomaly; he is an emblem. Gun-strokers are no more going to shed their mythos than liberals and progressives are going to shed theirs that the U.S. is a democratic republic, governed by the rule of law, and progressive reforms will be implemented by its High Dollar owned and controlled political class that will serve to turn around the trajectory of the blood-built and maintained U.S. empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie

Anomie (/:{ˈænəˌmi:(style="border-bottom:1px dotted"):}:/) is a "condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals".^[1] It is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community, e.g., under unruly scenarios resulting in fragmentation of social identityand rejection of self-regulatory values.^[2][citation ^needed]

The term is commonly understood to mean normlessness, and believed to have been popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide(1897). However, Durkheim first introduces the concept of anomie in his 1893 work 'The Division of Labour In Society.' Durkheim never used the term normlessness; rather, he described anomie as "derangement", and "an insatiable will".^[3] Durkheim used the term "the malady of the infinite" because desire without limit can never be fulfilled; it only becomes more intense.^[4]

For Durkheim, anomie arises more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations. This is a nurtured condition:

Most sociologists associate the term with Durkheim, who used the concept to speak of the ways in which an individual's actions are matched, or integrated, with a system of social norms and practices… anomie is a mismatch, not simply the absence of norms. Thus, a society with too much rigidity and little individual discretion could also produce a kind of anomie...^[5]

History:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

In 1893 Durkheim introduced the concept of anomie to describe the mismatch of collective guild labour to evolving societal needs when the guild was homogeneous in its constituency. He equated homogeneous (redundant) skills to mechanical solidarity whose inertia retarded adaptation. He contrasted this with the self-regulating behaviour of a division of labour based on differences in constituency, equated to organic solidarity, whose lack of inertia made it sensitive to needed changes.

Durkheim observed that the conflict between the evolved organic division of labour and the homogeneous mechanical type was such that one could not exist in the presence of the other.^[6]

When solidarity is organic, anomie is impossible.^[7] Sensitivity to mutual needs promotes evolution in the division of labour. "Producers, being near consumers, can easily reckon the extent of the needs to be satisfied. Equilibrium is established without any trouble and production regulates itself."^[7] Durkheim contrasted the condition of anomie as being the result of a malfunction of organic solidarity after the transition to mechanical solidarity:

But on the contrary, if some opaque environment is interposed... relations [are] rare, are not repeated enough... are too intermittent. Contact is no longer sufficient. The producer can no longer embrace the market at a glance, nor even in thought. He can no longer see its limits, since it is, so to speak limitless. Accordingly, production becomes unbridled and unregulated.^[7]

Durkheim's use of the term anomie was about the phenomenon of industrialization—mass-regimentation that could not adapt due to its own inertia—its resistance to change, which causes disruptive cycles of collective behavior e.g. economics, due to the necessity of a prolonged buildup of sufficient force or momentum to overcome the inertia.

Later in 1897, in his studies of suicide, Durkheim associated anomie to the influence of a lack of norms or norms that were too rigid. But such normlessness or norm-rigidity was a symptom of anomie, caused by the lack of differential adaptation that would enable norms to evolve naturally due to self-regulation, either to develop norms where none existed or to change norms that had become rigid and obsolete.

In 1938 Robert K. Merton linked anomie with deviance and argued that the discontinuity between culture and structure have the dysfunctional consequence of leading to deviance within society. He described 5 types of deviance in terms of the acceptance or rejection of social goals and the institutionalized means of achieving them

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Anomie

Anomie refers to a condition or malaise in individuals, characterized by an absence or diminution of norms (standards) or values—a state of "normlessness" which leads to feelings of alienation and lack of purpose. Emile Durkheim invoked this concept in his account of the causes of suicide. He suggested that people need standards by which to live their lives. This allows them to achieve recognizable success by setting commonly valued goals that have socially acceptable means by which they can be achieved. When such standards are lost, socially recognizable success becomes impossible and people feel that their lives are futile. Thus, instead of liberating people, the removal of social norms actually imprisons individuals in meaningless existence. Communities of shared values and standards of behavior are essential to avoid such a state of anomie and maintain our psychological health.

Contents

Definition of Anomie

The word anomie comes from Greek, namely the prefix a-: "without," and nomos: "law." The contemporary English understanding of the word anomie can accept greater flexibility in the word "norm," and some have used the term "normlessness" to reflect a similar situation to the idea of anarchy. However, as used by Emile Durkheim and later sociologists, anomie refers to a situation in which there is a loss of the regulatory social controls of society, and thus is a completely separate concept from a situation of anarchy, which is an absence of effective rulers or leaders.

The economist Friedrich Hayek also used the word anomy with Durkheim's definition.

Anomie as a Societal Disorder

The primary use of the word anomie is a social condition characterized by instability, the breakdown of social norms, institutional disorganization, and a separation between socially accepted goals and the available means for achieving them. Individuals living in a society in which this state of normlessness exists often experience alienation from other people and a loss of purpose in their lives.

The nineteenth century French sociologist Émile Durkheim used this concept in his book Suicide (1897). He outlined the causes of suicide, describing a condition characterized by an absence or diminution of standards or norms (referred to as normlessness), and an associated feeling of alienation and purposelessness. He believed that anomie is common when the surrounding society has undergone significant changes in its economic fortunes, whether for better or for worse and, more generally, when there is a significant discrepancy between the ideological theories and values commonly professed and what is actually achievable in everyday life.

Durkheim explained that as social restraints are weakened, people's goals, previously limited by social order and morality, become limitless, infinite in scope. However, he noted that:

…one does not advance when one proceeds toward no goal, or—which is the same thing—when the goal is infinity. To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness. (From Suicide)

In other words, Durkheim argued that while societal norms and regulations may appear to limit the behavior of individuals, a lack of norms, allowing individuals the freedom to do absolutely anything, actually traps them in a situation where success is impossible. When there is no agreed upon definition of desirable goals or acceptable ways in which to achieve those goals, there is also no way to achieve success. Facing such an empty existence, devoid of purpose, people are likely to contemplate suicide as a means to end their futile, pointless lives.

Robert K. Merton adopted the idea of anomie in developing "Strain Theory," defining it as the discrepancy between common social goals and the legitimate means to attain those goals. In other words, an individual suffering from anomie would strive to attain the common goals of a specific society, yet would not be able to reach those goals legitimately because of the limitations in the social structure of their society. As a result, the individual would exhibit deviant behavior ranging from rebellion, delinquency, crime, and ultimately to suicide.

It will be remembered that we have considered the emphasis on monetary success as one dominant theme in American culture, and have traced the strains which it differentially imposes upon those variously located in the social structure. This was not to say, of course,—as was repeatedly indicated—that the disjunction between cultural goals and institutionally legitimate means derives only from this extreme goal-emphasis. The theory holds that any extreme emphasis upon achievement—whether this be scientific productivity, accumulation of personal wealth or, by a small stretch of the imagination, the conquests of Don Juan—will attenuate conformity to the institutional norms governing behavior designed to achieve the particular forms of 'success,' especially among those who are socially disadvantaged in the competitive race. It is the conflict between cultural goals and the availability of using institutional means—whatever the character of the goals—which produces a strain toward anomie. (Merton 1957, 220)

Merton's structural-functional idea of deviance and anomie

In his classification of deviance, Merton explored the relationship between cultural goals and the structural means to achieve those goals. When success goals were universally imposed on the members of society while the means to achieve them were restricted for some members, deviance could be expected on a broad scale. It is the type of consistency or inconsistency between goals and means that leads to either conformity or to one of the four "types" of anomic deviance:

The innovator adopts means deemed unacceptable by society some of which may be criminal(for example, theft) to realize success.
The ritualist follows the rules obsessively but loses sight of the overall goals (for example, the inflexible bureaucrat).
The retreatist abandons both goals and the means to achieve them (for example, the alcoholic or drug addict).
The rebel rejects both the traditional goals and means, but envisions new ones as the basis for a new social order, an extreme example would be the terrorist.

Therefore, the conformist internalizes the common success goals but also has access to the approved means to realize these goals. For the other relationships, a condition of goals—means dysjunction exists. Thus, Merton saw deviance not in terms of personality types, but as role responses to different forms of dysjunction between goals and means to achieve them.

According to Merton's analysis, deviance is not created by deliberate intent on the part of the actors, but rather is a response to a breakdown between universal expectations (to be successful) and the availability of approved methods to achieve those ends. Or, as Merton expressed, when a society professes that every office boy can become president but the avenues to such aspirations are socially limited, the stage is set for deviance on a broad scale.

Anomie as an Individual Disorder

Anomie has also been used to refer to the psychological state of individuals who experience a personal state of isolation and anxiety due to their perceived lack of purpose. In this usage, a person suffering anomie has lost all personal sense of social obligation, or trust in others as supportive or concerned about their welfare. Such a state of mind renders the individual incapable of forming close bonds with others and sharing goals and acceptable means of attaining them. Thus, their isolation increases. Such individuals suffer anxiety, feelings of futility and purposelessness, becoming amoral and disconnected from the social norms of others around them.

Anomie in literature and film

In Albert Camus's existentialist novel The Stranger, the protagonist Meursault struggles to construct an individual system of values as he responds to the disappearance of the old. He exists largely in a state of anomie, as seen from the apathy evinced in the opening lines: "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas" ("Today Mother died. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.")

Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose work may be considered a philosophical precursor to existentialism, often expressed a similar concern in his novels. In The Brothers Karamazov, the character Dmitri Karamazov asks his atheist friend, "...without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?" Raskolnikov, the anti-hero of Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment, puts this philosophy into action when he kills an elderly pawnbroker and her sister, later rationalizing this act to himself with the words, "...it wasn't a human being I killed, it was a principle!"

In film, the protagonist of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver could be said to suffer from anomie.

Anomie and Social Change

Durkheim was generally optimistic that changes in the structure of society due to division of labor would lead to positive developments for both society and the individuals in that society. However, he also noted that such changes might produce a state of confusion with regard to norms and increasing impersonality in social life, leading eventually to the breakdown of the norms regulating behavior. As societies become more technically proficient and careers more specialized, individuals inevitably become more alienated from their fellow citizens. Little common ground exists between investment bankers and street cleaners, making both feel isolated within their existing social circles. Anomie is an accurate term to describe this division.

Durkheim suggested that the problem of anomie could be overcome through social associations based on professions that would socialize with one another. He believed this would give people a sense of belonging, vital to preventing anomie. In his study, Suicide, Durkheim showed that Catholics committed suicide less often than Protestants because of the sense of community developed within Catholic churches. Thus he advocated the importance of communities within the larger society, through which people can share common values and standards of behavior and success, and so avoid feelings of isolation and the development of anomie.

References

Durkheim, Emile. 1997 (original 1893). The Division of Labor in Society. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0684836386
Durkheim, Emile. 1997 (original 1897). Suicide. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0684836327
Merton, Robert K. 1968 (original 1949). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. ISBN 0029211301

External links

All links retrieved April 1, 2016.

Robert Merton: Anomie Theory