Stella Morabito, senior writer for The Federalist, shares her thoughts on loneliness and how it s been weaponized as a political tool. She explains how the fear of loneliness has been leveraged throughout history and is being leveraged in America today to increase government interference in our lives.
00:07:26.480But COVID just really drove the, you know, the enforced isolation really drove home a lot of this.
00:07:32.900And we could see how it was exploited, you know, keeping us apart from one another.
00:07:37.560And I think this all ties into propaganda and censorship.
00:07:42.120And as I just mentioned, that advisory on loneliness and isolation that the Surgeon General just put out.
00:07:50.880And I believe that a whole lot more attention needs to be paid to that advisory.
00:07:56.560And you can see my, you can read about it in my three-part series in The Federalist that ran in the past couple of weeks.
00:08:02.640He is calling, this administration is calling for building an entire infrastructure under the pretext of saving us from our loneliness epidemic
00:08:13.520that would actually invade our private lives, invade the private sphere of life,
00:08:19.960which is really our only protection against loneliness and isolation.
00:08:26.140But it calls for a whole infrastructure, not only a physical infrastructure, but a, you know, social infrastructure.
00:08:36.260It mentions DEI, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion as a part of overcoming this
00:08:43.000because there are certain privileges that people who are socially connected have that people who aren't socially connected don't have.
00:08:50.560So you can see this all playing into a sort of, you know, exploitation of that loneliness epidemic in this advisory.
00:09:01.680You know, it calls for the medical sector to be brought in to track and monitor our levels of social isolation.
00:09:10.240I hope I'm not getting too much in the weeds here, but I think it's really important for Americans to understand
00:09:15.700how this will affect, if it's implemented, how this will affect our private lives.
00:09:35.260This interview will come out a few months, actually, after your three-part series for The Federalist was published.
00:09:41.860I do encourage people to still go read it. We will link it in the description of this episode.
00:09:46.360But can you tell us a little bit more about what the Surgeon General is actually proposing?
00:09:51.400Because I did see him say a few months ago that, you know, we are having an epidemic of loneliness.
00:09:57.420It's increasing rates of depression and suicide, especially among young people.
00:10:01.300I was actually pleasantly surprised to hear him say that.
00:10:04.060You don't typically hear that kind of thing from the progressive side.
00:10:07.520During COVID, we kept hearing, oh, we're better together, we're better together, as they are pushing social isolation.
00:10:14.480And so you don't typically hear someone from a non-conservative perspective say, we need community.
00:10:21.600We really do need in-person interaction.
00:10:25.660But what you're arguing is that underneath the surface of those platitudes is really just a vehicle for more government control of our lives.
00:10:35.080Exactly, Ali. That's exactly what I'm saying.
00:10:45.120I mean, the federal government has been, I have to say, responsible for it to a large extent for the loneliness epidemic and our isolation.
00:10:55.660I mean, if you look at all of the policies that they've pushed over the decades, and they continue to push, by the way.
00:11:00.980I mean, you look at urban blight, you look at fatherlessness, the family breakdown, you know, which leads to community breakdown.
00:11:09.940You look at addictions and, you know, all, you know, abortion and to the point of infanticide.
00:11:16.500You look at all of these things that break down human bonds.
00:11:20.660And yet they aren't dialing them back.
00:11:25.560Federal government's policies, these kinds of policies from this particular administration and other administrations like it, have actually made the loneliness epidemic worse.
00:13:21.400And so the social infrastructure also means, you know, every kind of relationship, you know, whether it's, you know, has to do with school or work or, you know, recreation, every kind of relationship has to be driven by this idea that social connection needs to be brought about.
00:13:47.600It's really a very collectivist, communist view of connection.
00:13:53.320It's not that we each have individual identities, unique identities, and we interact freely and speak openly to one another.
00:14:25.340I mean, you wonder, does policy mean that your personal relationships are going to be regulated?
00:14:31.960How do you spread the wealth of social connection?
00:14:35.800I mean, if you're, you know, you belong to a family that's cohesive, that gives you a lot of emotional support, and you get health benefits from that.
00:14:43.180I mean, just in general, you get, you know, economic education, maybe your dad has a friend who gets you a job.
00:14:51.960All of these benefits are so-called privileges that may not be available to someone who does not have those social connections.
00:15:11.740The pretext of overcoming social isolation.
00:15:18.020And of course, the other four pillars involve the medical community, all the medical sector to track and monitor.
00:15:25.940I mean, it uses those words, our levels of social isolation.
00:15:29.840And of course, big tech, that's the fourth pillar.
00:15:32.200They've got to, you know, come in on it all and, you know, and be involved in tracking our levels of social isolation.
00:15:39.340And then, of course, they say the fifth pillar has to do with extending our knowledge, which really is, in my view, euphemism for propaganda and not allowing any other narrative.
00:15:55.080You're going to see all kinds of research grants trying to prove what the government is saying about all of this.
00:16:01.020And then the sixth one has to do with creating a culture of social connection, which, you know, again, that goes back to the Orwellian use of terms.
00:16:10.800You know, we reach out and, you know, everything has to do with pushing us in this direction.
00:16:19.700And also the advisory also says that we need to, all of us, every single one of us needs to be involved in this.
00:16:26.600So it's kind of a mandatory requirement, individuals, families, churches.
00:16:33.180That's the only time they mention spirituality, by the way, or churches, is what they can do to promote the Surgeon General's advisory.
00:16:40.960You can tell me if my interpretation of this is correct just by reading what you've written in and knowing what I know about big government, but especially progressivism just as an ideology.
00:17:07.620Really, a lot of the things that they are pushing, as you said, under the pretext of fighting loneliness, are things that they've already been trying to push for a long time.
00:17:18.280For example, when you're talking about changing the physical infrastructure to promote community, well, Democrats have been talking.
00:17:41.760That's really what they're talking about when they're talking about, I think, changing these physical infrastructures so that we are forced to be together, maybe with people in communities that say someone grew up in a really difficult part of town.
00:17:58.400Say they grew up in the projects and they were able to go to school, have a good job, move their family to the suburbs so that they could live in a clean, safe neighborhood.
00:18:08.120Really, the changing of the suburbs, the changing of the physical infrastructures would make that kind of thing impossible.
00:18:15.780It would make that kind of mobility impossible.
00:18:18.260And so they're almost changing the definition of loneliness here.
00:18:22.560They don't actually mean that they're fighting social isolation.
00:18:26.060They're talking about fighting separateness.
00:18:30.280They're fighting a world in which there is a suburb and then a bad part of town and then a good part of town and the inner city, as we've seen in a lot of different progressive cities.
00:18:41.400They really want the democratic control of those major cities to extend to the rural areas, to extend to the suburbs.
00:18:51.180That, to me, is what it looks like when they talk about changing the physical infrastructures of places so that the government is taking control of libraries, of communities, of different places like that.
00:19:03.980In the name of fighting loneliness, it's really just a cover for what they've been trying to do for a long time, which is to make sure that, you know, well-off people, poor people, black people, white people, Hispanic people, whatever, are all living amongst each other and that there's no distinction and no ability to move out of one part of town to go to a better part of town.
00:19:25.240They've been trying to do that for a long time in the name of equality, and to me, it seems like that's what they're doing now, but now they're saying that it's, oh, to form community and to fight isolation.
00:19:39.880That's cover for an agenda that actually goes way back, as you pointed out, Ali.
00:19:46.800I mean, you can look at Stalin's reign of terror in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, where they had densified housing.
00:19:56.160I mean, housing was very hard to come by.
00:19:58.360I mean, you would have people living in one room, up to like 15 people.
00:20:02.900Read Orlando Figa's book, The Whisperers, Private Life in Stalin's Russia, to get a really stark picture of how that densified housing created a stitch culture.
00:20:17.920I mean, you know, surveillance, that's part of the whole picture is surveillance, not just in this advisory, but going back through history, where people are reported.
00:20:28.840In Stalin's reign of terror, people became hysterical and fearful of being reported, so they would go ahead and report someone else who was completely innocent just in order to protect themselves.
00:20:45.400You know, people would preemptively report others just to protect themselves, and that's a form of mass hysteria, as we really don't want to go there.
00:20:56.280But that's what this densified housing that they're proposing often leads to, especially with their intent, what their apparent intent is to create this kind of overlord situation where there is just one central command, one central government, and we lose our fundamental rights to speak openly.
00:21:22.360I mean, if you look at the First Amendment, this is something I've written about in the Federalist, and I also wrote about in this series recently.
00:21:30.560If you look at the First Amendment, and I think the founders understood this, it really protects the private sphere of life.
00:21:38.960And you think about the private sphere of life, that's where human beings derive their power, their real power.
00:21:45.640You know, the private sphere of life would be those mediating institutions that serve as buffers between the mass state and the individual.
00:21:57.080For example, family, that's the biggest one, or a big one, faith, that's the other big one, and community, or even just friendship.
00:22:08.820And these are the places where you can let your hair down, where you can fall back on a strong family structure as a support system, even if the whole world is shouting you down.
00:22:21.820If you have your family to go to, you have that inner strength.
00:22:28.480And that is why, for example, the Communist Manifesto calls for the abolition of the family.
00:22:34.240And that was like nearly 200 years ago, because they understand that in that private sphere of life where they really have no business meddling, they just can't control you.
00:22:43.700You get influenced by your mother, your father, your, you know, generations, your grandparents.
00:22:49.540Or, you know, it's, and your faith gives you a strong sense of inner strength that can serve as a means of resistance.
00:24:22.600But we need to understand that if you don't have your private sphere of life, if you don't really have access, you know, to your family, your faith, your friends, without interference and meddling and eavesdropping and surveillance by the state and the state snitches, then you're isolated.
00:24:41.580This whole thing leads to more isolation, worse than ever.
00:24:51.440You can go back to the French Revolution, looking at the de-Christianization campaign, where they were attacking anybody who was connected with the Catholic Church that was not complying with the Jacobian, you know, reign.
00:25:06.460You can go look at the Bolshevik regime in Russia, where they claimed the private life really was a cauldron of possible counterrevolutionary activity, was the way they put it.
00:25:20.180So they sought to attack the private sphere of life.
00:25:26.420It was all about everybody getting behind this mass central state, and that was supposed to be your first loyalty, not to your family or to your faith or anything else.
00:25:40.180So, basically, what they're doing is they're taking control of our private lives, our private communications, our private conversations, even our private beliefs, how people naturally kind of organize themselves and sort themselves out.
00:25:58.400Because that's human nature, by the way.
00:26:00.000People of all races, of all backgrounds, will move when they can, when they have the ability.
00:26:06.140They will move where they want to move.
00:26:07.880They will move to a place that is best for them economically, is best for them safety-wise, within the capacity that they can.
00:26:29.720And when they talk about ensuring that we're extending our knowledge and that we're practicing kindness, what they mean is coerced agreement.
00:26:41.620That you have to, in order to be together, in order to be really unified, we have to have, as you've said, all the same thoughts.
00:26:49.540We have to have all the same definitions of words.
00:26:52.880We have to all agree that trans women are women and trans kids' rights are human rights.
00:27:04.860Extending knowledge, bringing together communities.
00:27:08.620It literally says enhancing healthcare surveillance into our lives, of course, under the pretense of protecting us, of protecting us from hurting ourselves, or, I don't know, protecting us from isolation in some way.
00:27:22.880So, basically, they're saying, we're going to force you guys to be together.
00:27:26.600We're going to force you guys to agree.
00:27:28.340And that's how we're going to solve loneliness.
00:27:30.580And as you said, that's just going to exacerbate the problem because proximity to people does not mean connection.
00:27:38.060We know that because I'm sure loneliness is still a big problem in these major cities where everyone is very densely packed.
00:27:44.860Those people aren't happier than the people living in rural areas where you can't see your neighbor.
00:27:51.940And you'll notice in this 81-page proposal that the government is putting forth, as you mentioned, they don't really talk about the importance of marriage, the importance of keeping parents together, the importance of a mom and a dad, the importance of cohesive family units, the importance of friendships that are off of a screen and are actually in person.
00:28:18.720They don't really talk about the importance of church.
00:28:20.800They don't talk about the importance of creating hobbies with like-minded people going outside because none of that helps the government grow.
00:28:28.220And, in fact, as you pointed out, it actually can inhibit government growth because the more you're depending on one another, the more you're depending on your family, the more you're depending on your faith, really the less you need the government.
00:28:39.220And the less people need the government, the harder it is for the government to have a justification to grow.
00:29:38.320No, they created the malady, and now they're proposing the cure.
00:29:42.600And this is a typical kind of tyrannical process.
00:29:48.720You know, they're really involved in something I call coercive thought reform, which is intended, just as you said, Ali, to push everybody into a kind of a framework,
00:30:01.580or kind of a hive mind, Borg kind of thought, where everybody agrees with everybody else, or everybody agrees with the government, and we don't really think our own thoughts anymore.
00:30:12.300And, you know, I'm not going to get into the whole thing with AI and all of that.
00:30:16.600You know, that's another dimension that we have to deal with.
00:30:20.860But in general terms, this is all very dehumanizing, and you're exactly right.
00:31:03.400You know, we can't fall into that trap.
00:31:05.500We have to understand the underlying truth of, you know, what we're all talking about, a loneliness epidemic.
00:31:12.940But we also have to understand the only cure for loneliness are these strong, healthy, personal relationships that we develop in the context of family, faith, friendship, through true community.
00:31:29.580Not this fake community that the left is always talking about, but true community where people actually come together.
00:32:47.180It kind of reminds me of when Facebook was created and social media in general, we were told that this is going to help connect us.
00:32:56.900This is going to connect the whole world.
00:32:58.720We're going to be more together and more relational than we've ever been.
00:33:02.420And I don't think it had the same necessarily malicious intent as big government does, because I'm sure that Mark Zuckerberg actually thought that he was going to bring local networks of people together and make it easier to build friendships.
00:33:17.840But the truth is, it's done the opposite.
00:33:47.960And Thomas Sowell has written about this in Quest for Cosmic Justice, how these forces from the top down believe that they can socially engineer societies.
00:33:57.560It is a communistic idea, as you as you pointed out, to make everything exactly equal, to make sure that there are zero disparities.
00:34:06.000Of course, they don't include themselves in the policies that they are implementing on everyone else.
00:34:11.820And they never have to reap the consequences of their bad ideas.
00:34:15.360Therefore, they never have to apologize for it.
00:34:17.700I think one of the best examples of that is Dr. Fauci.
00:34:22.000He never had to deal with the consequences, especially the long term consequences of implementing and suggesting the policies that he did that led to this social isolation, that led to the masking of children, that led to the shutdowns of schools and the increase in child abuse and all of that stuff that happens when you coop people up in their homes, especially vulnerable children.
00:34:43.320He didn't have to deal with the consequences and he didn't have to deal with the consequences and he is going to continue to fail upward.
00:34:47.500Can you talk a little bit more about how you saw this epidemic be exploited specifically during COVID and by people like Dr. Fauci?
00:34:58.080Well, as you can see on the cover of my book, Dr. Fauci is, you know, kind of the symbol of the weaponization of loneliness.
00:35:06.800He's there in a vintage TV wagging his finger at us.
00:35:10.380And you're exactly right that these elitist overlords, I mean, we can look at the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab and all of these people.
00:35:23.980John Kerry actually came out and identified himself among all the other World Economic Forum folks as, you know, kind of the select, you know, who understood what was going on, unlike, you know, the rest of us.
00:35:40.380And so, yes, there is always, and this has been throughout history, I have a long chapter on utopian, radical utopian revolutions.
00:35:50.620And I think that that urge, that urge for utopia, perfect kind of mechanically driven world that can be controlled by this vanguard or this elite group of the ruling class is so old.
00:36:10.680I mean, it goes, it goes way back and they're always pushing.
00:36:15.520They have the same methods and the same goals, you know, today as they did during the French Revolution.
00:37:02.860You've got the same search or urge to create this perfect utopian society in the minds.
00:37:11.340You know, they're going to remake humanity in their own image.
00:37:14.180But Klaus Schwab, by the way, even said that we're going to change what it means to be human.
00:37:18.200I don't know if you heard that, but he actually said that.
00:37:21.120And that, of course, goes back to the new Soviet man that was pushed forward in, you know, after Lenin, you know, Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
00:37:31.840So it's the same methods of control through the machinery of loneliness to make us fearful so that we can form and comply.
00:37:40.360And the same goals, but three things have changed that we didn't see back then that we see today.
00:37:48.780First of all, the reach is global today, right?
00:37:52.420I mean, it's not just confined to a region like Nazi Germany or Russia or China, Mao's Cultural Revolution.
00:38:06.480And number two, the technology to do that has skyrocketed.
00:38:12.820And so, you know, we see through, you know, all of these, not just AI, but the, you know, all the tracking that you feel and you see through social media.
00:38:26.500And, you know, all of this, the screen time that draws us inward rather than outward to real life, that is also used and manipulated to bring us into conformity and compliance with their agendas.
00:38:44.140And number three, you don't have one particular dictator anymore.
00:38:48.040You don't have really a Mao or Stalin or a Hitler or, you know, a Robespierre in the French Revolution.
00:39:56.080They want to control who we talk to, what we say, what we think.
00:40:01.140And, you know, you can see it take root in so many of these agendas that include this advisory on overcoming our loneliness and social isolation.
00:40:14.060So it's something we just, I wrote the book so that we could understand these things and spot them.
00:40:36.320Loneliness, isolation, and this new world, a new human that these elites want to create.
00:40:43.000It's the exact opposite of how God made us.
00:40:45.940And to me, like the fundamental disagreement that we really have when it gets down to it is were we created by a creator who created us with a special purpose and special needs in order to function well?
00:41:03.080Or are we just all overgrown clumps of cells that can be socially engineered by the people in charge that are completely malleable, that can be changed by our values can be changed, our desires can be changed, our goals can be changed by policy via, you know, government overreach.
00:41:28.300We can be made to all just live amongst each other without sorting ourselves out.
00:41:32.940We can thrive without family, without real friendships.
00:41:36.260Really, that's what totalitarians think that we are, that we are all just accidental clumps of cells that can be shifted into whatever shape the people in charge want us to.
00:41:48.640I mean, we certainly saw that, as you have mentioned, over the 20th century.
00:41:51.980That's why communism fails, because it goes against human nature.
00:41:55.520It denies the nature that God gave us.
00:41:59.200Progressives always believe that human beings are just product of nurture, that we're just product of society.
00:42:05.020We hear that all the time, but really, we have an innate nature.
00:42:08.440And when it is denied, that's when you get, as you mentioned earlier, that hysteria.
00:42:14.160That's when you get the desperation and the depression that we feel, because we were not meant to be alone.
00:42:20.520In the first chapter of the Bible, actually, it's the second chapter of the Bible, we read when God makes Adam the first man, he says, it is not good for man to be alone.
00:42:31.840And we read that in the very first book of the Bible.
00:43:33.560We were created for communion with God and for communion with one another.
00:43:37.820And if we can't have that, we have no love.
00:43:40.880There is no love in isolation, in total severe isolation.
00:43:45.640And we can't connect with one another.
00:43:48.360And so that's why we are so hardwired to connect with God and with one another, with other human beings.
00:43:57.420And if we don't have that, we're totally dehumanized.
00:44:02.320And it's interesting you mentioned that what is going on with these elites who are trying to fight human nature, even though they are just as susceptible to it.
00:44:15.120Or, I mean, you know, their families, they they you can look at all these different dynasties, really, of these elitist families.
00:44:23.420And, you know, they appoint like George Soros just appointed his son to take over his so-called open society.
00:44:30.160You know, they they have a bond, but this is a bond that they would deny the rest of us, I guess, if their agendas were implemented thoroughly.
00:44:41.180And so really what you see here, going back to the Bible, is the original sin, wanting to be God and to play God, which is what we have in these elites and these tyrants.
00:44:54.100That's what the totalitarian impulse is all about, is to play God and and to put yourself in the place of God.
00:45:01.800And that that's what's going on with this. And they harness the conformity impulse in everybody.
00:45:09.580I mean, we have because we need social connection, we are very susceptible to that conformity impulse.
00:45:17.720It's very natural for us to shut up about what we believe if we don't have other relationships to fall back on, you know, that allow us to speak openly to others in society.
00:45:30.620And then that creates a spiral of silence about the truth, really, that that gives tyrants their opportunity to take over.
00:45:43.540So we have to fight that. We have to understand what's going on.
00:45:47.060I wrote the book to try to build an awareness of these dynamics so that we don't fall into these traps.
00:45:54.160Yep. And we don't have time to get into all of this. Such a fascinating conversation.
00:45:58.660But like you mentioned, we need love. And in isolation, there is no love.
00:46:03.940And yet we also hear not just from the government, but again, it's just kind of everywhere.
00:46:09.260Definitely from like the progressive self-help world that I see targeting young women a lot is really we hear that self-love is all you need.
00:46:18.800All you need is to love yourself and then you'll be happy that everything will fall into place.
00:46:23.280But gosh, that's just not true. It's just not true.
00:46:26.840Like the love that you can give yourself is not sufficient for everything that you need.
00:46:31.340That's, again, kind of this God of self idea that we are completely self-reliant, self-defining, self-sustaining.
00:46:38.840And we're not. Gosh, there's so many, so many other things that that we could talk about.
00:46:44.840But so people can read your book and really understand.
00:46:48.500I mean, you bring in so much history and so many connections to different parts of American society.
00:46:54.100Can you tell people just a little bit more about your book, where they can get it, all that good stuff?
00:46:57.980Thank you. Well, it is available online, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads.
00:47:07.100And, you know, I've written at my blog, StellaMorobito.net.
00:47:14.160And you can follow me on Twitter at the handle is Stella underscore Morobito.
00:47:19.180And I write at the Federalist. And but the book is available mostly, I mean, pretty much online, not really in bookstores.
00:47:30.920But I hope your your listeners and viewers will will take a look.