Soft Totalitarianism Grasps the States of America

by

       George Sontag

      When I first began hearing that emigres from Communist countries see America inching towards totalitarianism, I took it seriously. Many of the older generation had their definition of totalitarianism formed during the Cold War. That definition is too narrow. Totalitarianism was the basis for Orwell's version in which the state controlled everyone through the infliction of pain and terror. That is one model. Another is one where the totalitarian state controlled the masses not through pain and terror, but by manipulating their pleasure and comfort.

      Today’s Leftist totalitarianism is not the result of the power-hungry who actively want to abridge freedom and dominate others arbitrarily. It is, instead, the result of zealous moral idealists who actively want to protect people and to create a better, more morally righteous world. They dream of a moral utopia totally controlled through technology. A society where people are happy to surrender their political liberties in exchange for guarantees of sex, drugs, and entertainment, and thus convincing people to love their slavery. This is the form of totalitarianism coming to the United States.

      To make the transition less violent, the legalization of drugs loosening of sexual taboos is necessary. Drugs to keep them blissed out, and all the sex and bodily comforts they desire. Who would refuse to live in a society that offers "Christianity without tears" -- life in heaven without having to die.

      The idea of a perfect utopia practically free from all pain and worry is firmly embedded in the Democrat party. As our society has become more affluent and pacifist, our tolerance of pain has declined. We have medicine to eliminate our aches and pains. Pills to alleviate our mental anguish. We find intolerable things our ancestors would have taken for granted. The societies decreased tolerance for pain can lead, paradoxically, to a kind of soft-totalitarianism.

       As our tolerance of discomfort has declined, our concept of threat has expanded. Ideas that cause mental distress are now seen not only as a challenge to be debated, but as a threat. Enter the “cancel culture.” They have created a bureaucracy, Facebook, Twitter, etc, a neighborhood "Big Brother," whose function is to seek out “wrong-think” and to remove it from the public sphere, and, if possible, to extirpate it from society altogether. People on the Left have come to love Big Brother, not primarily for fear of its power to punish, but because they identify with its goals or think it indecent publicly to contradict them or themselves be canceled.

      When we imagine a totalitarian society we imagine cowering citizens who are intimidated into submission by a small cabal of callous and ruthless Leftist elites. That's not how most forms of totalitarianism work. Instead, imagine a society mixed equally of true believers, cautious conformists, and uninterested spectators led by the fervid and righteous elites. Totalitarianism also monopolizes political power, but regards everything as political. And, as Orwell wrote, totalitarians not only want you to obey Big Brother, but to love him as well.