Note: The Monday Taki post is up. Behind the green door is the Sunday podcast as well as some thoughts on the Army – Navy football game.
Thirty years ago, the typical right-wing person would have held a dim view of whistleblowers and their media accomplices. Those whistleblowers were always left-wing people with the strong odors that come with it. They were motivated by left-wing morality rather than republican virtue. Their complaints about the government were motivated by their opposition to America. These stories usually made those who stood for republican order look like the villains.
Probably the most famous example is Daniel Ellsberg. He is the man who released the top-secret Pentagon study of the U.S. government decision-making in the Vietnam War to The New York Times and Washington Post. This was in 1971 and Ellsberg was a fanatical left-wing antiwar protestor. He violated a number of laws in releasing those documents, but he was on the Left, so it was okay. Left-wing lawbreaking was always okay as long as it served left-wing interests.
That was another country ago. Today, the typical right-wing person has a new respect for the government whistleblower. You see this with Julian Assange, who is being transferred to the United States for a show trial. The only people speaking out about his treatment are conservatives. Here is a story in Breitbart that manages to tie Assange to an old paleocon concept. It is one of those times when you know they do not know the source of the phrase, as otherwise they would never use it.
The Assange story is a good example of how partisanship within the mainstream makes rational discourse impossible. When Assange was leaking information damaging to the Bush crusades, they were not fans of Assange. Of course, the Left loved Assange and treated him like a modern day Che Guevara. When WikiLeaks embarrassed the Democrats then the Left suddenly hated Assange. It took a while, but eventually the conservatives figured out how to back the whistleblower.
Interestingly, those same conservatives have nothing but contempt for Chelsea Manning, the sexually confused former Army soldier who provided documents to Julian Assange back in the Bush years. For a lot of reasons, Chelsea Manning makes for a troublesome hero for them. Of course, Democrats moved heaven and earth to get their favorite crossdresser out of prison. Then “she” turned on them, as it were. Saying bad things about the police state is no longer left-wing.
These cases, and you can probably put Edward Snowden in there as well, present some interesting dilemmas. The biggest conundrum is the role of the media in these sorts of affairs. They are the platform for disseminating the information being leaked by the whistleblowers. They also shape the narrative around the leaks to paint the person doing the leaking as a hero. The TV tabloid 60 Minutes recently did a puff piece on the leaker, Reality Winner, painting her as a hero.
In a rules-based society, people who break the rules should suffer consequences commensurate with the damage done by the rule breaking. A general principle of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence is that the punishment fits the crime. If the crime, however, prevents a much larger crime from occurring, the rule breaking ceases to be a crime and becomes a public service. While this theory makes sense to a sensible person, its abuse by the deranged and dangerous suggests a serious flaw.
Then there is the issue of the media. In the old analog days, it was easy to make an exception for the press. In these cases, they were treated like neutrals. Even though they knew the material they were reporting was illegally obtained, they were allowed to report on it because a free press trumps government secrecy. In the digital age where we no longer have a free press or actual reporters, this no longer makes sense. The media is just the marketing arm of the unofficial ruling party.
Can we have a civil society in the digital age when billionaire public relations firms are able to work with the state to embarrass opponents? This is what we saw with Trump when the New York Times got his tax returns. Clearly, someone in the IRS or Trump’s accounting firm stole the documents. Then they handed them to the press. This is trafficking in stolen goods. If the item in question was a piece of art from Trumps’ office, everyone involved would be in prison.
This is what makes the Assange case interesting. Whether the rulers know it or not, they are putting this idea front and center. If WikiLeaks is not allowed to publish leaked material, then how can the New York Times do it? There are only three solutions to that puzzle and one of them is the farce of a free press is now over. In other words, if only regime supportive media is protected, then we no longer have an independent media with constitutional protections.
On the other hand, if the courts decide Assange gets the same protections as the New York Times or Washington Post, then the age of secrets is over. In the digital age it is simply too easy to spill the beans on official shenanigans. This then spills into personal areas, as rich people make for good headlines. The NDA’s famous people make their staff sign suddenly mean very little. The only solution for the ruling class is to pump out even more disinformation through official organs.
The third option is the courts begin to nibble away at this media exceptions, which is something the Supreme Court has hinted at recently. If possession of stolen goods is the same for the media as it is for everyone else, then these sorts of cases become very complicated for the media. Suddenly, the SPLC publishing e-mails from one of the people they are harassing becomes a criminal case. At the minimum, it becomes the basis for a civil case against the outlet.
Taken together, all of this points to a central question that lurks beneath all of the recent troubles in America. Can a large culturally authoritarian society like American maintain itself in the digital age? The Assange case is only possible in the digital age and the contradictions it reveals are also only visible in the digital age. In fact, much of what ails modern America is made possible by the Internet. It may be that a secular theocracy like America is impossible when information flows even semi-freely.
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The digital age is making even groups like Wikileaks obsolete. Instead of sending the docs to some third-party to upload to a safe location, anyone can use the IPFS to upload the content, permanently, to computers all over the world. Then anyone can read for themselves and no one is technically “in control” of the documents. The only issue now is proof of authenticity, and there are ways to prove that also.
The floodgates are opening regardless, and the only way to circumvent it is to flood the space with so much disinformation people believe literally nothing. While that ill work short term, you can’t have a complex society like ours with zero trust.
5
I think this will continue as long as the Administrative State functionaries are well paid. Thus far whistleblowers have been shockingly rare. That will change as the economic situation deteriorates but that could be next week or in twenty years.
3
“Flood the zone” is exactly right. It’s the obvious solution, so that’s what they’ll try… but because they’re stupid, they don’t realize that propaganda only works if there’s some residual trust in the propagandist. Baghdad Bob doing his thing as the city burned around him, or that CNN twit standing in front of a burning building at a “peaceful protest”… that’s their speed.
And it’s all good, because this encourages localism. Even now, quite a few large problems could be solved simply by going and staying local. And who can you trust in an age where everything is a lie? The person you can talk to personally… which means “the person you can beat the crap out of for lying to you.”
(What’s going to be extra fun is re-learning all the tradecraft of early 20th century espionage. How do we communicate with each other in such an environment? Well, it’s Tuesday, so we wear pink carnations in our lapels. The man holding his newspaper upside down is your contact. He will know you by the green band on your fedora…)
2
” propaganda only works if there’s some residual trust in the propagandist.”
I tend to agree, but there is some indication people have become so estupidfied repetition works even when the recipients know the information is false. Twitter writ large, really..
What kind of a retarded name is Reality Winner? WTF Amerika?
And a dissident writer unironically using “Chelsea” Manning as if that was Bradley’s actual name. Is the so called “deadnaming” illegal in the US?
7
People have a right to name themselves as they please. Note I use the word “hero” instead of “heroine” in reference to Manning.
4
This is not the usual case of a pseudonym or an artistic name. This is a mentally ill man, most likely driven to insanity by the system. His new name is one of the very few things that the system approves of.
1
The Assange case always seemed like a farce to me. He is a foreigner who allegedly did his so-called crime on foreign soil. Trump’s failure to quash the attempt at getting him was a real disappointment. Instead of pardoning Assange, who helped expose the war in Iraq he so vehemently opposed and what his base wanted him to do, he pardoned black murderers and drug dealers.
16
Myself, along with many others would have forgiven Trump’s weak term if he came out and pardoned Assange, Snowden, and the J6 protestors. The betrayal of the latter showed everyone he wasn’t our champion, but at best an unstable weapon we could try to control and wield.
15
Betrayal of the 1/6’ers is unforgivable.
12
I wonder if he knew or understood on January 20th that they were innocent. I believe he was fed inaccurate information by people he trusted. I wish I knew if he was supporting them in some way. If he has in fact turned his back on them, then you are correct, unforgivable.
Even after all these months, he only dips his toes in the water when it comes to Jan. 6 to see if it is politically advantageous.
I suspect they told Trump they would put him in prison if he pardoned Snowden or Assange.
6
Irrelevant. At some point the excuses for Trump need to end. He did some good things and some bad. This was the latter. In all of the instances Chet mentioned (particularly J6) he was wrong.
1
I have a problem with believing this. If Trump was really worried about prison or even assassination, why is he back running for president again? I mean, if he believed his enemies could and would snuff him, why would he think their attitude has changed? I think the truth is that Trump was just part of the dialectic from the beginning. The fact that he didn’t really contest the treasonous voting farce and pushed, and still pushes, the vaccines make me think the only reason he is still in the spotlight is that he makes money from it. I wonder how much he gets from his rallies?
You had a great closing paragraph at Taki, and this one was better.
” It may be that a secular theocracy like America is impossible when information flows even semi-freely.”
You nailed it here. The principal mission of propaganda organs in an authoritarian police state is to disseminate favorable information and to squelch damaging counter-narratives. The United States’ propaganda organs, which are privately owned, can simultaneously do great damage either way and also be of limited utility to that mission. For example, the widespread blasting of the Russia collusion hoax did massive damage to Trump yet discredited the United States government simultaneously. Blatant censorship of oppositional views has become the norm and squelched counter-narratives, but it, too, has damaged the United States’ already shaky standing in the world and at home.
Censorship tools are available today that are unlike anything previously available to Stalin and the Kim clan but the race is constant to keep apace. The technological tools that empower our police state ironically expose its soft underbelly. We are close to registering “journalists” and outlawing the spread of “disinformation” by the unlicensed. As China has learned, it is tough regime to manage so it has allowed a larger degree of unapproved information than likely will be allowed here in the near term.
To end on a down note, so far the Administrative State has produced shockingly few whistleblowers. It is quite something that no one in the FBI and intelligence services came forward to blow the whistle on the Russia hoax and weapons of mass destruction fraud among other outrages. As long as the State functionaries are well paid, they will play along with only a rare Snowden now and then toppling the applecart. We may be in the moment a long time if the dollar can be propped up another generation or so.
6
The Whistle Blower is as obsolete as the investigative journalist.
Joe Biden shat himself at the Vatican, and it was in the public domain so fast that no one could even think of doing PR damage control.
And who needs proof of anything anymore? People run around in home made space suits trying to escape the deadly corona virus, buy into global warming, and think their rectums are sex organs. At least 50% of North Americans are incapable of critical thought. The last election was a fraud and people just shrug and do whatever the reigning queers, pedos and grifters tell them.
On the priority list of America’s problems… flow of information is a little ways down the list of things that need to be fixed. People no longer know what to do with solid info…
4
One example where this would be needed, and it uses “whistleblower” loosely, was when senior FDA officials resigned over the vaccine. Apparently, they were too concerned about their pensions to discuss why.
You make a good point, though, that apathy has made whistleblowers almost superfluous. I do think cases like the FDA resignations would have still gotten attention.
again, all this effort by the regime to keep normie in the dark, despite normie never wanting anything but that in the first place.
“The principal mission of propaganda organs in an authoritarian police state is to disseminate favorable information and to squelch damaging counter-narratives.”
Jack, you highlighted an issue that I struggle with. Is a fair and free press even possible or is everything propaganda? Is there a historical example of the ideal that many of us feel should be possible?
Perhaps I’ve become cynical but I think there will always be a media organ that programs the masses and it’s either them or us. I can’t say I’m happy with my conclusion so maybe someone can prove me wrong.
1
When you have a ruling elite as corrupt as ours, few good things are possible. Corruption in this context means irresponsible and derelict, not financially corrupt. None of these people thinks they have a duty to the country or society. It is one of the things that binds them together as a ruling class. Civil society is not possible when the people at the top are hostile to the basics of civil society.
1
It is a great question and you onto something. During the so-called “Free Speech Movement” at Berkely in the Sixites, some critics noted free speech would be encouraged until the Left achieved power, at which point it would stop and be suppressed. It is hard to argue that is not what took place.
Censorship has previously been prevalent throughout the United States, particularly during times of war. The most egregious examples were Lincoln closing newspapers and Wilson raiding newsrooms thought insufficiently loyal to the war effort. To be fair, the United States has had periods where there was unfettered free speech, primarily via admittedly partisan outlets going at each other, and the First Amendment was unique. But those times are in the rear view mirror now, and, yes, the “press” generally has been propaganda.
Leaking and Whistleblowing should probably be regarded the same way as voting: of some short term utility in terms of winning battles and demoralizing enemies, but of no long term good. It’s nice when someone like Assange embarrasses someone like Clinton, but ultimately the problem of bug-eyed sociopaths like Adam Schiff or weasel faces like the Podestas is not going to be solved by leaking info about the bad things they’re doing. The solution is in not having such people around, or having a ruler or a genuine republic to dispense justice rather than book deals to such slimeballs. Intriguers, subversives, camarillas, Praetorian guards, are all good so long as they are on our side and their actions lead to ends we want. They’re bad inasmuch as they hurt or undermine normal white people. In Washington right now, it’s mostly evil against evil with both sides occasionally taking a break to do things like kick their January 6th prisoners or to somehow otherwise piss on ordinary whites. Win first, invent the moral rationale to lock in the gains after we win. I think Assange deserves to walk because he hobbled that mullet-headed, marionette-mouthed Hillary Clinton, not for some principled stand he took.
10
If Assange, a non-American who was not on American soil when he committed the acts they want to try him for, it seems the American police state is claiming global jurisdiction. That is in and of itself a huge problem. But worse, it opens the door to making it a crime for a, say, conservative Pole, in Poland, to say that there are only two genders and that btw, gender is the same as sex. That may be a hate crime to say under future presidentista AOC. So now she wants ‘trans-phobic’ Mr. Lavinsky in Warsaw extradited for his ‘hatred’. I expect that China, Pakistan and Iran will rather like this precedence. Jurisdiction has to be tied to geography and, secondarily, to citizenship. If neither is present I don’t think a country can claim jurisdiction (if you then say bin Laden planning 9/11 I’d make it an act of war, not a legal/police issue). Otherwise any crackpot state can hunt you in any part of the world.
7
And the Poles will tell her to “fuck off”. We’ve figured out that my wife is likely eligible for Polish citizenship and while this is something I would never have considered before, thinking of taking them up on it. Primarily because it would then devolve to my kids and in the times we’re in, “Plan Bs” that seemed absurd a decade ago, are now operative. Me? I’m coming up on the 400th anniversary of my namesake setting foot on these shores. I’ll have fight it out here.
1
I agree with you, but their case is not completely vapid, just…mostly. The accusation is that the person who wanted to purloin the secret materials (Manning?) didn’t know how and Assange instructed them as to the illegal steps that had to be performed in order to procure the information.
Now, there’s some debate as to whether or not that is entirely made up itself, though my own feeling is it’s irrelevant.
I know this is off topic though it is relevant in illustrating the general confusion. I sent my normie brother the Anton article on the unprecedented situation of western civ and his response is,
Culture is not a product of biology, it’s a product of education and we need more immigration to replace those bad white people that hate us so we can preserve the culture. Wow!
3
Do you really believe this is unprecedented?
I think the situation is not all that much different place than we were during the last time of mass immigration in early 1900s. Much of the confusion is that we all of a sudden have a bunch of foreigners around us, and my understanding is that the “heritage” Americans of that time hated the new arrivals just as much as we hate the immigrants today. But regardless, mass immigration creates confusion and hostilities and tears away at the social fabric. I know the immigrants then were white and so forth, but I doubt that mattered or had any real tamping down on the hostilities and confusion.
Second, and I am not an expert on WWI, but that may be a good thing so I don’t get caught up on the details, but the big takeaway that that was a war to end all wars. People were confused, things were tense all over, and the desire was to burn it all down so we could start over. This would be the last of it.
I have a problem with the Anton these for these reasons. Plus I know there is nothing really new under the sun.
1
And we shut down immigration in the 1924 Act. Post WWI, Europe was a Bolshevist powder keg and as the tide turned against the Left, they started fleeing to the US. You can thank the Poles for stopping the Red Army at the *first* Battle of Warsaw in 1920. While the 1924 Act has some flaws that would bite us in the ass later and the proponents were often denounced as the period-appropriate term for “racists”, it largely did what it was supposed to.
1
I agree, and I’d add there are enough parallels to say things today aren’t materially different today than what people were experiencing 100 years ago during the last “fin de siecle”
Other than the big difference today is that America may not be in ascendancy.
And I am not picking on anyone here but using the occasion to say that when any historian says “things have never been like this before” he is not talking as a scholar of history but as a salesman.
I can see how you sell books and yourself when you go big and compare America to Rome and, in turn, flatter American sensibilities. But we don’t compare to Rome in any substantial way. Anyone who has been to Rome can see that right off the bat. These comparisons never really did it for me because America has been around for less than 100 years as a power. Why don’t we start making comparisons to ourselves against other “100 year” powers like a Portugal? or a Spain? Or better yet, the USSR as Z and many others have maintained. Why not? A lot of the same stuff going on.
That is not to say that I think America hasn’t been carrying the torch of Western Civilization handed to it from Britain. As Greece handed it over to Rome and Rome handed it over to Iberia and Northern Europe and then Britain. But that’s another story imo. But the real fun is in trying to guess, if not America, who gets to carry the torch from here on out?
1
Obviously I don’t know your brother, but based on your comment, he needs to be mocked mercilessly and often.
Do people even think about what they say anymore?
The left and the media created all kinds of loopholes and carve-outs with regard to law back in the 60’s and 70’s when they were working on their coup, that they are now frantically trying to close up before the Right can use them. THe Assange case is an attempt to close up the Ellsberg loophole, just like the 1/6 persecutions are an attempt to slam shut the riot/protest loophole opened up in the 1960’s, and used as recently as 2020.Whether, and how, they will do this in a culture that was taught to revere “whistleblowers” and “demonstrators” for the last sixty years is an interesting question.
4
The Left in America and probably everywhere is an ends justifies the means belief. It is why they can be for free speech and then be for corporate censorship. Things like the law, rights and democracy are a bus they ride from one stop to the next.
8
Was it Erdogan that once said something along the lines of “Democracy is just a bus we ride until we get to our stop”. The totalitarian mind is the same, whatever the politics.
4
Z Man: “The Left in America … is an ends justifies the means belief.”
Learn from those who are successful. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
I have taken this lesson to heart except that my end is a white ethnostate. Every kind of unethical behavior is acceptable to achieve the end.
We don’t owe ethical behavior to those who don’t reciprocate.
Journalism is as dead as Disco. You cannot even get the straight story on the proceedings of your local school board now. The journalistic Caste fused with the politician caste years ago. They recycle themselves like hockey or basketball managers. From CNN to the Harris campaign to Facebook to private equity back to MSNBC etc…..it’s a closed-loop system.
They have only one enemy: the people outside the closed loop. Witness the uproar when guys like Matt Taibbi or Glenn Greenwald go off the reservation and try to actually “do journalism”.
The regime doesn’t even bother itself with propaganda anymore because the propaganda arm has fused itself into the regime. It’s now an autonomic system in the regime, like breathing. “Reporting” is really just elements of the regime publicly settling cores with each other, like the Kamala Harris staff in-fighting story. Zman was correct many months ago comparing today’s journalism to the old Pravda editorials or May Day parade pictures, when you read the paper to see which factions were ascendant.
9
One reason why I throw each $5 a month. Disagree with both on a lot of items, but both shoot as straight as one can in the journalism business. Though am always alert for the old Chiat Day Mojo dictum taking hold…”How big can we get before we get bad”.
1
One of the turning points for me was a conversation, over a rapidly diminishing bottle of Col. Taylors finest, shortly after he returned from his second deployment in Afghanistan. He’d spent it doing analysis on after-action reports and interviews across the country. While he preserved “classification” it was clear we were being served a big shit sandwich by the Pentagon—partially confirmed by Manning’s documents. This was a light colonel, not some guy parked in a cube seeing 1/100th of what was crossing the general’s desks. And frankly, all the Snowden releases matched up with what I was told by one of the original developers of the Tor system, over lunch in DC, not long after the first incident. I’ll confess to being a bit more “gung ho” prior, but now understood better my childhood memories of my Dad (a Korean War vet, along with his brother and uncle) when he became loudly disillusioned with Vietnam in the late 60s. He knew what a stalemate was and what Eisenhower warned about.
4
“if only regime supportive media is protected, then we no longer have an independent media with constitutional protections.”
Huh? If only regime-supportive media are protected, then “constitutional protections” aren’t even “a thing”, as the kids say.
1
First, the Taki article today may well be one of the best pieces of writing Zman has ever done. Both the message and the style are off-the-charts excellent and borders on timeless literature. The metaphorical visual of George Will “and his wig” being escorted out of the ballroom with his nose high in the air and a stick up his ass is iconic.
But to today’s Zman post. It has to get worse before it can get better. IOW, Normie will not (really can not) wake up to the reality that almost all major news outlets are covert propaganda organs whose sole function is indoctrination of the masses. Lying is automatic, like a Pavlov response, and it’s so ingrained that they couldn’t tell the truth by accident. I often comment that watching TV is the equivalent of rubbing feces into your eyes and ears, but that analogy may be inadequate. TV exposure acutely destroys brain cells and ravages the mind like a runaway syphilis infection. And every Normie I know keeps the Idiot Box on ALL THE TIME.
Assange is neither hero nor villain. He’s just the latest snack being fed to the lions in the Roman Colosseum of the modern era. We are being both entertained and warned at the same time.
7
Off topic but related to Friday’s podcast:
I recently had to endure an orientation from a neighboring public school district. The entire orientation was dedicated to multiculturalism, diversify and equity. Very little was even mentioned about the actual education of children.
In case you are seeking a career change, the Diversity Recruitment Specialist position is currently open. In the near future, the essential function/typical task listed in the job announcement will simply be “facilitate and oversee the removal of white teachers and staff.” Middle class whites are working hard to pay taxes to fund programs designed to pluck then out.
On the bright side, you can earn up to $105,000 annually your first year on the job. Any and all who aspire to be a DiAngelo grifter, the woke Jim Snow world is your oyster.
5
I think an important role of the DR and just normal white people in general who value a true education will be in the formation of new private schools.
I can see, for example, home schools going through a “shake out” period where the people really good at it start scaling up and eventually found a new school. Or however it takes form, maybe just some guys get together and start one.
what makes me laugh, is the biden people think they are hiding all the bad news from the public, and and are “getting away with it”. meanwhile, every single person in the country see the prices of everything going up — a lot — they see the afghan debacle in all it’s gory mess, they see the crime images (or live in a place where it is happening), etc, etc, etc. so the only people they fool are themselves. but the absolute cherry on top, is biden’s vaxx mandates were never legal, and corporations were never immune, and now the woke companies will be BK’d by innumerable law suits.
4
“The third option is the courts begin to nibble away at this media exceptions, which is something the Supreme Court has hinted at recently.”
If TPTB can’t use media exceptions, they will eventually lose one of their most powerful tools. That’s why I don’t think the Supreme Court will ever rule against them in this regard. Oh, they may have a show trial to let the peasants think that they are really on their side, but it will have no teeth and just be more Kabuki theater. You saw how Facebook recently admitted that their “fact checking” was really just opinion so you can’t hold them liable. If they are ever held to the same standards as the media (which are not enforced) then there will be some evidence that the control of the judiciary by the elite is actually slipping. I won’t hold my breath.
2
Selective prosecution is SOP. Compare the prosecution of the J6 defendants with the 2020 rioters. I can’t imagine that it will be any different with this sort of thing. Who/Whom?
1
Another interesting facet of Julian Assange’s publication of the damaging Hillary emails, is the story of Seth Rich’s murder.
Rich was a Democratic National Committe employee who Assange implied was his source for those emails.
Cyber sleuths investigating the breach of the DNC computer insisted that the download of the emails from the DNC website happened too fast to be the result of an online hack; a data-transfer that quick could only have been done via an on-site download from the DNC computer to a memory stick.
Putting it all together, it seems likely that Rich downloaded the telltale emails from a computer at his DNC workplace, and gave the thumbdrive containing them to Assange.
Then Rich was murdered, at 1:30 one morning, as he was walking home from a DC bar he had spent the evening in. The “robbers” took nothing— not his watch, not his wallet.
By all accounts, DC police did little in the way of investigation, not even bothering to interview the other patrons from the bar. They wrote it off as a robbery gone bad— suggesting that someone or something had scared the robbers away before they had a chance to grab anything— though there’s no record of that happening.
Many people believe that Rich was killed as a warning to anyone else who may be tempted to out members of the Ruling Elite.
Like Assange, Snowden did all Americans a favor. The only reason we know about the NSA’s recording of American’s communications is because of the material that Snowden leaked.
Of course our Rulers need to anathematize these whistleblowers as ‘threats to national security’.
While in fact, the transparency they’re fighting for— which allows American citizens to understand what our Gov’t is up to— is the basis of a truly secure nation: one in which our rulers are unable to hide their nefarious deeds behind phony claims.
1
Meanwhile, the DNC and Democrats were insisting that Hillary’s emails had been stolen, and given to Assange, by ‘Russian hackers’
is every major country in the world going through the same madness? it seems so. this suggests to me it is epigenetic in nature. we see widespread mental illness, which supports this thesis. world leaders seem mentally ill to me; xi is busy destroying china, for example. i am personally changing my life (and lifestyle) to minimize all contact with other people. not going unabomber level of isolation, not going to be a hermit. just not letting anyone (outside of family and friends) get anywhere near my life (if that makes sense).
2