Public Discourse and
the Totalitarians Next Door
Author’s note: This article uses the term public discourse to describe a specific type of communication used to gain understanding about matters of shared public concern. Public discourse is a process that involves dialog among trusted parties to discover the best outcomes for a community. Civic discourse is the traditional name for this activity. Unfortunately, civic discourse and civil discourse are now often used to describe rules for civility, politeness and being non-confrontational instead of the productive exchange of knowledge and ideas.
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Washington state was a very different place not that long ago. Disease outbreaks ran their course without the authorities imposing a never-ending medical dictatorship. Where were the public debates about lockdowns and potential remedies for COVID-19?
There were public comments on these issues but not all comments are public discourse even if the speaker is addressing issues relating to governance. Most public comments at our local meetings are statements for the public record. While a three minute presentation is an appropriate format for rants and sales pitches, it is useless for sharing complex information like scientific studies or in depth personal experience in a trade or profession.
Effective public discourse involves dialog. It is a seat at the table. It provides a feedback mechanism that all complex systems require to continue functioning for their intended purpose. A thermostat is necessary to keep a heating system or vehicle engine safe and operational. Complex systems help control train speeds to prevent derailments. Public discourse prevents ignorance and corruption from driving a community off the rails.
Public discourse was once an integral part of the dominant culture in our region. From academia to local watering holes, contrarian views were welcomed and debated – not labeled misinformation and used as evidence to banish someone to the gulag. Over the past several decades, the cancel culture replaced discussion with ostracizing anyone who challenged experts and ideologies favored by powerful government and corporate interests. There is no role for public discourse in the cancel culture.
The Evolution of the Cancel Culture – From Tribal Cohesion to Totalitarianism
Shaming, shunning, and exiling outcasts are ancient tools for dealing with threats to a community like thieves and child molesters. The cancel culture uses these same techniques to enforce loyalty to a political ideology.
My personal experiences with the local cancel culture all involve over-the-top outrage inflicted on individuals who have not harmed anyone, broken any laws, used foul language, or even displayed bad manners. The attackers have no doubts that terrible humans must be purged from their community and they proceed with ruthless precision. The true reasons for the attack are rarely revealed.
One example is a boycott planned to run a small business out of town a few years ago that I was privy to. The owners provided useful services and appeared to support themselves with income from this small business. The alleged reason for the attempted cancellation? People were not comfortable with advertisements the offenders were running in the local Leader newspaper. The ads were cringe-worthy but I never noticed anything kinky or alarming in the ads or my interactions with the owners. I did not join the boycott. I never found out why these people were targeted but I have seen patterns in situations where I had firsthand experience with the cancel culture.
Refusal to join boycotts and hate mongering will mark a person as a potential problem. Questioning or opposing a popular narrative or majority political opinion is unacceptable. It means a person does not share “community values” and is subject to removal. I have witnessed (and thwarted) attempts to have an undesirable evicted from their apartment based on false accusations. Apartment dwellers and small business owners were ideal cancel culture victims in the pre-Covid era – disposable people easily pushed into financial ruin. When totalitarian societies treat people this way, it is called a purge.
“The essence of totalitarianism — regardless of which costumes and ideology it wears — is a desire to completely control society, every aspect of society, every individual behavior and thought. Every totalitarian system, whether an entire nation, a tiny cult, or any other form of social body, evolves toward this unachievable goal… the total ideological transformation and control of every single element of society (or whatever type of social body it comprises). This fanatical pursuit of total control, absolute ideological uniformity, and the elimination of all dissent, is what makes totalitarianism totalitarianism.” – CJ Hopkins, The Great New Normal Purge
Totalitarian systems are effective at controlling the population in the short run. They eventually fail but not before inflicting significant misery on their subjects. Covid tyranny appears more extreme in places infested with an existing cancel culture, for example, Jefferson County and college campuses. Even if the tyrants recently rode in on the SARS-COV-2 virus, they do not appear to be going away anytime soon. Dealing with totalitarians requires recognizing and repelling the destructive purge techniques they use to acquire and maintain power.
Cancel Culture and the Practice of Ritual Defamation
The journey to real and virtual gulags usually begins with character assassination. The technique used across time and cultures is often described as Ritual Defamation:
“Ritual Defamation is used to hurt, to intimidate, to destroy, and to persecute, and to avoid the dialogue, debate and discussion upon which a free society depends. On those grounds it must be opposed no matter who tries to justify its use.” – Laird Wilcox
According to Wilcox,
“the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.”
Learning ritual defamation characteristics is useful for protecting your reputation in the community. Wilcox’s element 2 may be the most difficult and important one to deal with during an attack.
“2. The method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.”
The best defense against Ritual Defamation is to anticipate an attack or at least quickly recognize it is happening if you are taken by surprise. Don’t ever apologize or attempt to justify any alleged character flaw or opinion that has offended your accusers. If someone attacks your character instead of your ideas, they are probably not interested in your opinions.
Eventually these individual attacks eliminate effective public discourse. When the price of challenging a belief system is too high, silence is usually the best short term economic decision especially for someone with limited assets or employment opportunities. Even long term residents may be reluctant to risk their standing in a community that they, and often their ancestors, have built and nurtured.
Lessons from the 4th Grade Mean Girls Club
My grade school classmates defeated the cancel culture of their time. There is much to learn from their success.
Imagine being forced by law to meet with your worst social media tormenters every weekday – in person. That describes my first few months in 4th grade. Several girls formed cliques and started a practice called “blackballing”. This involved identifying outcasts by drawing a black circle on a slip of paper followed by a person’s name. It was never clear why anyone was being blackballed or who would be next.
One day, all the girls were invited to an important meeting after school at Marilyn’s house. There were no adults in the large living room when the three clique leaders stood together an announced the end of cliques and blackballing. The rest of the meeting was spent planning some fun things we could do together.
In the years between that meeting and 8th grade graduation, we had many wonderful times together – parties, picnics, trick or treating and hours playing kick the can in the network of ally-ways behind the school.
The 4th graders first rejected their toxic system and dismantled the leadership structure. They then started rebuilding their community with input from the experts – every kid there who had an idea about what they considered fun. Even though our situation is much more complex, this two part model is useful for evaluating problems and possible solutions.
No End in Sight to an Entrenched Medical Dictatorship
There is always the possibility that the upcoming elections will provide better leadership. Unfortunately, six more months of destruction to essential services could be devastating. Medical care, utilities and schools are mostly public in our region. They are political entities controlled by the Covid tyrants.
Reliable utilities and emergency medical care are essential services for almost everyone. Our local providers made the decision to prioritize Covid tyranny over the well-being of the people who depend on them. There does not appear to be any future here for those of us who cannot afford our own off-grid power system or a helicopter to fly us to trusted health providers.
The legacy news media and the majority of registered voters in Jefferson County appear to favor a medical dictatorship form of government. There are no plans to change the state laws (RCW – Revised Code of Washington) or codes (WAC – Washington Administrative Code) used to justify this abuse of power.
Most elected local officials do not have the capability to evaluate the Covid scientific data themselves. They accept information exclusively from official sources often staffed by bureaucrats with unreliable past performance. There is a preference for authoritarian governance that may not change anytime soon.
Building / Rebuilding
While a voting majority is necessary to rebuild some Covid captured institutions, there are many opportunities for building replacements and walking away from the ones which no longer serve their purpose. Education is the most obvious with the growth of homeschooling.
Another example is the Port Townsend Free Press, which has replaced the area’s legacy media as a source of investigative reporting. Their comment section is a rare local source of diverse opinions. This is a good place to sharpen the public discourse skills that are necessary for citizen-directed governance.