Part 10 of a 10-part Series:

What Are We To Do?

What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience.”

Hannah Arendt

We might ask ourselves whether America is a pathocracy—or might have been a pathocracy on January 6^th? I believe we can safely say that America has never been a full pathocracy like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, but has, at various points, demonstrated elements of pathocratic tendencies. Leaving aside the sordid issue of slavery, historical examples are the forced migration of Native Americans and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. More recently, we had official Dept. of Justice documents supporting the torture of detainees in Guantanamo (2003) and the inhumane treatment of migrants at the U.S. border, particularly children. At the local level, I have completely lost count of the number of unarmed Black people killed by police. 

As much as Americans convince themselves of their own exceptionalism, we are nonetheless subject to the same dark side of human nature as everyone else. However, we have avoided becoming a full-blown pathocracy because most of the aforementioned atrocities were eventually subject to popular backlash, investigations, and (sometimes) accountability. The January 6^th coup attempt itself was prevented because there were honorable persons still occupying positions of power. Regardless of our own opinions of these individuals, the coup was unsuccessful because former Vice President Pence refused to do anything other than his duty to count the Electoral votes. Election officials in Georgia, Arizona and other states refused to submit to Trump’s threats and certified a valid election. Republican-appointed judges (some appointed by Trump himself) upheld the rule of law. If any one of these individuals had been dishonorable, we would likely not be living in the free United States of America anymore. Fortunately, legislators and other pro-democracy groups are working on “fixes” to our antiquated electoral system to prevent another January 6^th-like coup attempt from happening again. 

Although America has not succumbed to a full-blown pathocracy, we seem to be at an unusually high point in a “hysteroidal cycle” (to use Lobaszewsky’s term). A sizeable minority of the population continues to subscribe to the Big Lie that Trump used to perpetuate his coup attempt, and a lot of media (right wing outlets and social media) continue to feed it. Even the right-wing oligarchs who stoked and fed the anger that ultimately resulted in January 6^th admit they may have created a monster they can no longer control. Shortly after the 2020 election, Charles Koch admits to “screwing up” —and this was before January 6^th 

A significant percentage of the US population subscribes to either (or both) Q-Anon and election denial, which represents a disconnection from the reality that most of the rest of us live in. Cult deprogrammers have been overwhelmed with requests for help from family members concerned about one of their own who has gone down the rabbit hole. Most of us simply do not have the skills and training to deal with this level of delusion. Logic, along with arguments about facts and evidence will not work. Rather, the strategy is to help these folks re-learn to think for themselves and connect the dots using a form of “reverse engineering” of the same tactics that led them into the cult. These folks must be able to see a way back to their old lives, which will never happen if they are confronted with shame and humiliation.

In order to heal and recover from a pathocracy, Lobaszewsky advises us to build a society based on an equitable distribution of resources; to promote education, particularly education about the human capacity for evil; and to encourage the formation of social bonds across diverse groups. Ironically, Lobaszewsky urges us to refrain from “moralizing,” but rather view evil from the dispassionate position that it will always be with us and the best we can do is to understand and manage it.  

In essence, we will have to build solidarity out of the post-January 6^th remains of a tattered social fabric and a dis-United States of America. It is an understatement to say that this will be hard to do. When doing his own research into the nature of macrosocial evil, Lobaszewsky reported having to suppress his own revulsion and “moralizing impulses” to maintain scientific objectivity. He admits that his training in psychiatry (which most of us don’t have) helped him with this. How can we re-connect people back to reality and the fundamentals of prosocial thinking—especially if they hate us? If we only return the hate, then the dark side will have prevailed.

We can begin by recognizing that many (but not all) of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6^th are both perpetrators and victims. I personally will probably never find it within myself to forgive the people who planned the coup and knew the “Big Lie” for what it was but continued to push it anyway. Easier to forgive are the folks who simply voted for Trump—perhaps they did not follow politics closely or habitually voted Republican no matter who the candidate was. A little harder (but not impossible) to forgive are those who continued to support Trump even in the face of overwhelming evidence of corruption. Here, the issue of blameworthiness depends on how much of the delusion is the result of willful ignorance (I have to believe Trump is right because he gives me permission to hate the people I don’t like). 

The hardest thing we will have to confront is the huge propaganda machine that continues to poison individual minds and our body politic to this day. The oligarchs are still pumping it out, but now they have been joined by hostile foreign governments, who now have all the evidence they need that America can be destroyed by disinformation. Disinformation that taps into the darkest recesses of the human limbic brain. Disinformation that makes the media oligarchs richer. Disinformation that keeps the rest of us divided, not just on values, but on the very definition of reality. America can be brought to its knees without firing a single missile or sending a single soldier, because Americans can be made to do it to themselves and each other.

Holding those responsible for January 6^th accountable to the law and fixing the loopholes in our electoral system is a good start—but it is only a start. The dark side of human nature (what some religions term “original sin”) is probably something we will never be able to fix. But we can come up with ways to contain it. We certainly should be able to find ways to structure society where we don’t reward it. Perhaps we could require some sort of character test (complete with documented history) for every candidate for public office above a certain level. Perhaps we could articulate limits to the First Amendment, permitting (well-defined and narrowly tailored) restrictions on speech that is both false and provably harmful to public health. 

We stand at a crucial juncture in humanity’s history. I do not know what the result will be. But somewhere, a butterfly flaps its wings.