‘WEAPONIZATION OF LONELINESS’ IS A MUST-READ: 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.

“Other indicators of a new kind of authoritarianism multiplied over the course of decades, usually with the claim they were needed to ensure justice against racism or sexism. In the 1980s, multiculturalism took root, then morphed into identity politics and intersectionality.”

We all felt queasy about these trends, but, outside of those on the Right who pay particular attention to such issues and developments, for the most part we kept quiet. The signals kept coming but from so many different quarters — the campuses, Big Media, politicians in both parties, the corporate world — it was difficult to put a comprehensive label on it that succinctly conveyed the threat to the general populace.

Morabito observes that when a 2020 Cato Institute poll found 62 percent of the respondents admitting they held political views they feared to express in public, loneliness, isolation and alienation were advancing steadily and at an accelerating pace.

Then came Covid, the Pandemic and the seeming triumph of Wokeism.

“The whole Woke Revolution took controlled speech a giant leap forward by compelling speech, as with pronoun protocols that applied heavy penalties for ‘misgendering’ someone. All such agendas also carry a heavy dose of hostility against anyone who might disagree and enlisted social media mobs to enforce that demonization,” Morabito writes.

Totalitarianism at its root is the same regardless of when or where it manifests, but there is a unique quality to the Woke version that Morabito profoundly elucidates in a way that is imminently accessible to anybody with the slightest wisp of concern about where this country is headed. It is indeed essential reading for the present generation for the sake of those coming.