THE WEAPONIZATION OF LONELINESS
THE WEAPONIZATION OF LONELINESS
To defend America against those who would exploit our social disconnection, we need to rebuild our communities.
Hillary Rodham Clinton-(https://archive.ph/goTP7)
Our greed culture is the root cause of this. You can trace the distancing of Americans back to when Ronald Reagan gave away the store to the rich and businesses went from valuing their workforces to seeing them as a disposable drain on their bottom lines. We were encouraged to applaud successful greed and condemn failure to be greedy enough.
A house divided cannot stand. When we aligned our values with "turn the bull loose" capitalism by destroying social supports and public education, we created an entire underclass of exploited citizens, the resentment rose between the have a little and have nothings, we decided to compete against one another instead of cooperating as a society would, and now a lot of us have a zero sum mindset of "If someone else is losing, that must mean there's more for me!"
The happiest nations on Earth are heavily taxed because everyone in those societies understand that their society rises or falls together. That is a foreign concept in the United States, with the have everything's having no allegiance to the society that facilitates their succes, they just want to take while giving nothing back, and with the power their wealth provides, they're permitted to.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/happiness/
Everything will continue to decline until we reign in our greed class and stop them from dividing us with the bully pulpit of all major media that they own toxifying everything we see with social wedges to keep us divided so we don't look up.
This is not a society anymore, it's a bunch of rugged individuals at each other's throats with a tiny owner class using their power to maintain that hatred and division to maximize private profit because their greed is insatiable. All this suffering, because a handful of asshole families with unethical levels of wealth demand to trade humanity for ever more currency, disgusting.
You seem to have a grasp of the root of the problems. Please contribute more to share your view. I appreciate it. I’m surprised America is 16 on the index.
I appreciate that a lot, thank you.
I would, but as other users have pointed out to me, I can get pretty nihilistic and depressing in my commentaries and assessments, which may be counterproductive.
My exact thought. Communities were stronger when people could feel secure in their home and livelihood, when they had enough free time to actually be a community. Finance ghouls hollowed out the industrial base of the country, neoliberal politicians (republicans and democrats both) gutted the labor movement, and fossil fuel companies and their handmaidens in the auto industry brought us a world where most people have to drive everywhere they go.
Like all liberals, she misses the point - if it isn't anti capitalist, it isn't helping.
Especially when it comes to discussion of alienation which is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.Ever get tired of Capitalism being the cause of all our problems? I do. I was discussing Capitalist Realism yesterday and was overwhelmed by the magnitude of its pervasiveness.
It really is at the heart of pretty much every problem that we face today, and one of the things it does best, as you mention capitalist realism, is convince us that it is not only the only way, but that it is the predictable result of "human nature". It really becomes more perverse, and more enraging, the more you look.
Interesting article. Too bad it's written by a hypocrite. HRC's campaign was rife with divisive tactics, from labeling a quarter of the country "deplorables," to playing the gender card relentlessly, to colluding with the DNC to hedge out her primary opponent (Sanders).
Not American, so I can't speak for any of that. But this article on its own seems pretty accurate and thought provoking
at least a quarter of Americans are very much deserving of the title "deplorable"
Extroverts thinking we need to be around one another again. blech
You know what is worse? Depressed bed blobs pretending that they are introverts and normalizing antisocial behaviour. Healthy introverts have and regularly meets friends. They just don't do it as often and in the same way as extroverts. I know these things because I went to therapy instead of trying to normalize my insecurities on the internet.
Also, you do know who wrote that article, don't you? As a liberal, I did vote for her, and felt very icky having to do so, but it was (barely) better than the alternative. Before you put her words on that pedestal, ask your therapist if they agree about this brief psychological profile of her:
A psychological analysis of Hillary Clinton — Democratic nominee in the 2016 presidential election — by Rylee Pool and Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D., at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, revealed that Clinton’s predominant personality patterns are Ambitious/self-serving (a measure of narcissism) and Dominant/controlling, infused with secondary features of the Conscientious/dutiful and Retiring/reserved patterns. In summary, Clinton’s personality composite can be characterized as an adaptive elitist narcissist. http://personality-politics.org/hillary-clinton
Is that someone's world view something you still think is good to promote? She IS the toxic extrovert.
I think you are projecting. Congrats on the therapy. Do the world a favor and keep going.