[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Senator Chris Murphy has proposed combating widespread loneliness in the country by creating a National Office of Loneliness. This new arm of the government would use the CDC to track loneliness statistics and develop a national strategy to fight loneliness including creating guidelines telling Americans how many friends they should have to be less lonely.
The only ones keeping company with the National Office of Loneliness would be the myriad of other White House offices including the Office of Public Engagement, the Office of Neighborhood Partnerships, and the Office of Communications which all claim to talk to the public. With so many government offices talking to us, how can we possibly be lonely?
Inviting the CDC to fight loneliness is like ushering an arsonist into a house party. Loneliness increased dramatically after the CDC’s lockdowns isolated people, tore apart families and broke down communities. There are still family members who are not speaking to each other due to the hard work of the boys and girls in the hazmat suits making dance videos at the CDC.
Young adults were some of the worst casualties of the CDC’s social isolation with obvious factors, like suicide rates and grade averages, tracking the lockdowns along with more subtle ones like delayed relationships and extremist politics that have made them much more lonely.
But the lockdowns were only the latest devastating example of state intervention leading to loneliness. After an environmentalist political program of wiping out industrial towns and shipping their jobs to China before encouraging the population to move to big cities, after educational culture wars undermined religion and divided parents and children, the gentleman from Hartford would like the state to end our loneliness and bring us together again.
Government does not bring us together. Collectivism, as anyone who has wandered the streets of a busy city or stood among a roaring crowd knows, is the loneliest feeling of all. Under the pressure of cancel culture, individualism is disappearing leaving behind dogmatic mobs. Or as Marianne Moore wrote,“the cure for loneliness is solitude.” Collectivism has taken away our solitude and made us feel truly alone. More government offices only make us lonelier.
Senator Murphy’s solution to loneliness is that “government should consider more direct subsidies for community institutions, like local newspapers”. If there’s anything that can make us feel less lonely it’s picking up the local version of USA Today and reading an article by an intern from the nearest college explaining why all the townies are a bunch of worthless bigots.
Murphy has trawled MSNBC shows to pitch his state-sponsored cure for what he calls an “epidemic of loneliness”, but loneliness, like the rising rates of suicide and drug overdoses, and the declining rates of religiosity and marriage, is a only symptom of the problem. Medicalizing loneliness is typical of big government wonks who only know how to declare war on symptoms and effects, whether it’s loneliness or guns, while ignoring the causes of what they fight.
“Loneliness is one of the most serious, misunderstood problems facing America today. It may not sound like a problem government should care about, but I believe it’s irresponsible for policymakers to continue ignoring this epidemic,” Senator Murphy has argued.
Government has failed at addressing core responsibilities like national security, the economy and basic services, yet Murphy would like the government to fix loneliness. And Murphy begins by misunderstanding the problem. Loneliness is a negative image. The positive image is meaning and purpose. People feel lost when their lives no longer seem to amount to anything.
The ideology that Murphy has spent his life fighting for exists to nullify the things that bring us together. Family, community, nation are sins to deconstruct as patriarchal, heteronormative, racist, imperialist horrors that will be swept into the dustbin on the right side of history.
What will the government use to rally us around and give us purpose and meaning in place of starting a family, running a small business or serving our country? Attending all-ages drag shows? Harvesting ballots for Biden? Building bombs for Hamas? Or doing what much of the country actually does: binging Netflix slop and expressing opinions on the latest viral video.
“I’m working on legislation that would just start by establishing a national strategy, a national conversation around loneliness and how to promote connectedness. Every agency should have a role to play in this crisis,” Senator Murphy promised. Every government agency has already played a role in this crisis. And every added agency will only make Americans feel worse.
Americans don’t need more national strategies and national conversations. We are already far too connected. What we are truly disconnected from, as Moore wrote, is ourselves. It isn’t the number of Facebook friends that make us feel connected, but the knowledge that what we matter. Teens need this knowledge more than any other group and have cruelly been denied it.
Murphy’s movement has been telling teens that sea levels are rising, racism is wired into our DNA and free will is a myth. Our parents are evil, our grandparents are worse, and our natural impulse to form normal heterosexual families is making transgender people kill themselves. Every breath we take is destroying the planet and all we can do is avoid having children and buy recycled products to slightly slow down the rate at which we’re a plague on the universe.
Now why are you feeling lonely, depressed, suicidal and unsure of your place in the world?
“Loneliness is one of the few issues that defies traditional political boundaries, cuts across almost every demographic from teenage girls living in cities to white men living out in rural areas, blue states to red states, unaffordable cities to left behind manufacturing towns. There’s a ton of room for us to come together to combat this growing epidemic of loneliness,” Murphy argued in Congress. Leftists like Murphy thrive on coming together against something, some social construct, a social problem, when what is really needed is to be for something.
What is Senator Chris Murphy for beyond a government that is getting bigger all the time?
Senator Murphy would like to create an office to study why human beings, deprived of everything that makes us human, are perishing. Leftist experiments always end with the death of the subjects and the destruction of the habitat. Ivan Pavlov, of the Pavlovian Reflex, once said that if Communism were an experiment, he would not sacrifice a frog’s hind leg to test it out.
Murphy and his ilk have not sacrificed a frog’s hind leg, they have sacrificed a nation.
People thrive when they are able to make a difference in their lives. They wither away when they become dependents. Even the healthiest person who spends two weeks in a hospital comes away dazed after losing normal routines, free will and a sense of self-discipline. The same thing happens to prisoners and people who become dependent on the government.
The more the government takes away our ability to do things, the more we lose ourselves. The COVID lockdowns with their bans on going to the beach, breathing fresh air and living our own lives brought that home to millions of people. Some people, like POWs in Korea and Vietnam, refuseniks in Soviet gulags, have the moral will to retain their internal self and remain free.
Most people however don’t walk away unimpacted. America was a nation built by free people. Government has stripped away freedom, culture, faith, family and everything that comes with it. Now, having noticed that the ants in the ant farm seem to be sickening and dying, the government starts playing with the air, the temperature and proposes a change of diet.
Our state of loneliness can end when our lives are not defined by the ant farm of the state.
Superb article Daniel, thank you.
This statement intrigued me:
“how to promote connectedness”
What on earth are they going to recommend? More zoom meetings?
I like Zoom meetings. I can go get coffee or take a whiz. And my Church meetings let me skip the singing and hugging. I’m not into that shit.
Excellent reason why people should love zoom meetings but I would have thought that you liked the “hugging”
Well I like to hug the chicks, but the dudes not so much.
More brilliant and poetic analysis from Daniel Greenfield. This one, like so many others, will be sent out to many friends.
Thank you. I really appreciate that
Daniel, this is an excellent review of what is really going on. And how the Bolshevik Communism is already damaging our people.
Yes it’s not just politics, it’s a very personal form of destruction
Thank you
The Bolshevik Communists are making us lonely!!! Run for your lives!!!
This was a superb analysis of the issue which was created by the very policies advocated by Democrats for decades which were anti family faith and community
Yes, most probably more Zoom meetings will be in order.
Zoom has just recently updated their terms of service and it has been reported that if you use Zoom, you will be giving permission for Zoom to use all of your meeting’s specific parts and/or it’s entirety to them to use in anyway they see fit including to teach ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI). Let me remind everyone that AI can not distinguish sarcasm from serious language. This to me is a huge threat. Zoom also has the right to duplicate and publish your meetings as well as alter them.
Hopefully Zoom will be exposed for its evil plan and will go out of business.
Of course they will only create another such venue for their users.
It’s Time to fortify our Constitutional Right to Privacy.
Contact your elected officials or right an editorial in your local paper to help get this invasion stopped.
That’s a cool illustration. That Fawstin guy never seems to run out of ideas.
I wish I had that much imagination. I can render better illustrations but I don’t have that ability to come up with novel concepts.
A guy carrying the Capitol building up a mountain in the pelting rain? Brilliant.
I can still kick your ass though, Fawstin.
Whoever down voted me will be smoking turds in Hell before too long. Purse your lips and prepare, you damned mongrels.
A national office of loneliness? How about an Office of leave me the fuck alone? Real men don’t whine about being lonely. Boo Hoo. Who gives a shit? Loneliness is like any other irritant. You just deal with it and don’t piss and moan about it.
Shit. I live alone and you won’t catch me crying about it. I wish I had a full time woman but I don’t need one. Only weaklings need constant company, in my opinion. It would be nice, though.
You wouldn’t want a man to be lonely, if he’s lonely for too long he might start thinking. If he starts thinking he might become self-reliant. If he becomes self-reliant, he might become independent. And if he becomes independent, he might tell the government to go to hell.
The only people that are never lonely are the ones who are too dull to experience loneliness.
“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer
“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.” ― Jodi Picoult
“Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.” ― Janet Fitch
“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion, for the moment, that we’re not alone.” – Orson Welles
I would bet you are great fun at parties. No wonder she won’t date you.
I wouldn’t cite Schopenhauer next to a pulp lefty like Picoult. From the sublime indeed
Exactly. You beat me to it!
Daniel, I wonder if this suggested office of loneliness isn’t just a ploy to get people registered as Lonely so that the government can, as they have already, identify such people who admit to feelings of depression at times as potential terrorists.
This data will be used to confiscate weapons, for “everyone agrees” that depressed and lonely people are a threat to themselves and others.
These questions are already being asked by your doctors.
Be wise.
So which is it? Are guys who use women but live single lonely losers or swinging singles?
Yeah, that’s me, I’m dull
Women say otherwise.
“The Porcupine’s Dilemma” by Arthur Schopenhauer
“One cold winter’s day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order through their mutual warmth to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effect of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now when the need for warmth once more brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so that they were tossed between two evils, until they had discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another. Thus the need for society which springs from the emptiness and monotony of men’s lives, drives them together; but their many unpleasant and repulsive qualities, and insufferable drawbacks, once more drive them apart. The mean distance which they finally discover, and which enables them to endure being together, is politeness and good manners. Whoever does not keep to this, is told in England to ‘keep his distance.’ By virtue thereof, it is true that the need for mutual warmth will be only imperfectly satisfied, but on the other hand, the prick of the quills will not be felt. Yet whoever has a great deal of internal warmth of his own will prefer to keep away from society in order to avoid giving or receiving trouble or annoyance.”
“Yet whoever has a great deal of internal warmth of his own will prefer to keep away from society in order to avoid giving or receiving trouble or annoyance.”
Maybe you should take Schopenhauer’s advice and just keep away from society.
I’d like to read about your various dilemmas and oddball quirks, but I would probably fall asleep.
The older I get the happier I am to be married to the man I chose in my youth. We have shared our lives and now, as we age, we will continue to share until one of us dies. That will be the hardest part, but whoever has to deal with it will do so, with the help of our children and grandchildren.
It gives a whole additional twist to that old expression “I’m from the government, and I am here to help.”
lolol, good one 🙂
Right on point. Some Senator or Congressman should start working on the Department of Getting the Government out of People’s Lives.
Once again the ‘smart’ people have figured out another way to treat a symptom, loneliness, without addressing its root cause, godlessness.
We are doomed.
A self-reliant man isn’t lonely. Loneliness comes from selflessness. When a man has no self he cannot become self-reliant and independent of others. So he seeks a self in others, he survives through others like a vampire does, like Hitler, Stalin, Hillary, Obama, Bernie, or AOC. The selfless man seeks a self by enslaving those that do have a self, sucking the lifeblood out of them.
Look at Joe and Hunter Biden, they are thoroughly selfless, they survive and live through others, sucking the lifeblood out of those that are self-reliant and productive. The whole Biden family live as parasites, they could not survive on their own. The same goes for the Bushes, Clintons, Obamas, the American Ruling Class. Same for the British royals.
Your God, like Allah, must certainly be lonely, he just can’t leave men alone in peace to pursue their happiness on earth, can he? Or could it be that men who fail to develop self-reliance have the need to rely on God?
“[Peter Keating is] paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There’s your actual selflessness. It’s his ego that he’s betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish . . .
Isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison.” – The Fountainhead
I guess we don’t have to worry about you sucking any lifeblood out of us. Your biggest problem is you are neither self-reliant or productive.
But we got just what we needed. Right? Another unreadable lecture from a 60 year old book that was turned into an unwatchable movie.
Once again the ‘experts’ have figured out how to throw money at the symptom, loneliness, with attacking its root cause, godlessness.
We are doomed.
This is gold…. “If there’s anything that can make us feel less lonely it’s picking up the local version of USA Today and reading an article by an intern from the nearest college explaining why all the townies are a bunch of worthless bigots.”
The local colleges are cranking out weak, lonely, totalitarian and sexually deviant ghouls who love to “educate” the townies with local newspapers enabling them while censoring the townies. But thankfully, most of the townies are not buying it.
Some of those reporters are also funded by Google, Facebook and Soros
And it is true: most of the townies are not worthless bigots. Daniel Greenfield, on the other hand….
City slicker gaylord.
When Joe Bite-Me and them get done with “loneliness,” I’m told that they intend to block the sun in order to save the world from global warming. Query: Who or what will save the world from the likes of Joe Bite-Me?
Death perhaps.
But if he blocks the sun beforehand, expect famine.
You wouldn’t want a man to be lonely, he might start thinking.
Not in your case…assuming you are a man.
Excellent column. How about a National Office of Anxiety, a National Office of Hysteria, a National Office of Erectile Dysfunction, and so on?
A National Office of Nightmares
We already have that. It’s called Congress.
Yes! And I thought a national office of silly walks was a reach…
Erectile dysfunction? Don’t even write that. It’s every man’s fear. Imagine if I couldn’t satisfy a woman? That’s terrifying, even though it can’t happen. But damn, would that suck.
Revisit oldies “Only the Lonely” and “Lonely Teenager”.
Segregation of race doesn’t solve the solution. Cancel culture and censorship takes away personality. Tracking loneliness is none of governments business. Too much intrusion in already to the public eye.
Lonely every april 15 when separated from $
Thanks! It’s a line from our late President Reagan, but I doubt even he would think someone would come up with this employment black-hole for their woke allies in social work.
“…’the cure for loneliness is solitude.’ Collectivism has taken away our solitude and made us feel truly alone.”
A paradox, but deeply true.
Thank you for this beautiful article, beautifully written.
Thank you as always for your thoughtful comments
We are also less alone when we meaningfully communicate
Blowhards like Murphy are never asked why they continually propose unconstitutional remedies for non problems.
Since he is a Senator, the MSM automatically assumes he’s an expert.
Good gawd! Feeling lonely will soon be a crime.
Klaus Schwab: “You will own nothing and be happy.”
Or it will be taxed…
A National Office of Loneliness? Sounds like a make-work project for their cronies, and a way to try and convince Americans that they are fixing the loneliness epidemic which they themselves created!
Great article.
I knew that Thickskull, the lonely soul, couldn’t stay away from this one.
Marxism:
Govt controls expression, news, property, the means to earn, move about, & produce, while it dismantles peoples’ connection to their faiths, communities, families, gender (!), and other individiation. All that’s left for them is the state.
A NOTE about Putnam
Peter Putnam was from a wealthy Cleveland family. But he believed it was immoral to use money you didn’t earn by your own hand so he shunned the family fortune. Over the years he helped his mother give it away.
When Mildred Putnam died in 1984, the remaining 3 million went to Peter, her sole surviving heir. Following a life long practice, Putnam never touched a penny of it for his own use. Instead, just for the fun of it, (and I think to show that he could), he invested in stock. Sitting at his rickety kitchen table in
the Houma, Louisiana ghetto, he scanned the stock pages in the NY Times and phoned in changes. Over the next three years, before he died, Putnam increased the 3 million to 37 million.
In 1987, riding his bike on his way to his night watchman job, Putnam was killed by a drunk driver. He left the entire 37 million dollars to the Nature Conservancy. Putnam chose to live as a pauper.
The above is cited only to show the unusual circumstances of Peter Putnam’s life. For more on his life see the Princeton Alumni obituary at peterputnam.org
Every thousand years or so someone comes along and integrates the current science and current morals into a single comprehensive world view – think Augustine and Aquinas. I believe Putnam is in that order.
That’s tree-mendous! Nature conservancy!
My favorite part of the world is the high planes of; Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. I’ve seen the small towns devastated by our government and corporate over lords.
After retirement, I started thinking, maybe I’m not such a bad sinner after all, then I realized it’s easy to not sin (Lose your temper, gossip, lie) when you are alone most of the time. I would like to read a critical essay on the Desert Fathers. I my opinion they weren’t saints, they were taking the easy way.
Aww, Daniel, thank you for another terrific article. As another commented, I too will be sharing this wise article with friends. I look forward to your next article. Will you kindly consider writing about the bizarre rantings of Bill Barr? I would like to know your take on that whole fiasco. Thank you again!
Murphy should go live as a Hermit far away from everybody so we don’t have to put up with him being Such a total Pinhead and I mean so far away from other Hermits.
Incisive analysis. And yet it seems to me the government has been busy Balkanizing, separating and isolating us long before covid. Start with the government’s war against smokers, who were suddenly officially cast as toxic threats and kicked out of public life, losing family, friends and jobs along the way. . Followed by Obama’s derisive division between the coastal urban elites and those fly-over country rubes who cling to their God and guns and are implicitly racist, and Hillary’s categorically deplorable Republicans. Then add the split between officially toxic men and put-upon women, and the fostered division between Black and White—and all that, before we got to unvaccinated lepers and mass house arrest. You’d think they had some kind of arching plan in mind—either to test their power to make us hate one another, or the political strategy of Divide and Conquer.
Yes, it’s a political exercise communists use to destabilize a country and prepare it for “normalization.“
Many many years ago the defector said it is almost complete. He was surprised how quickly their plans took effect.
The Soviets at the time used Leftists in the country to indoctrinate others. They called them “useful idiots.” Their plan is still working in this cultural revolution. The retraining for the “greater good” has been effective. No war needed to take place. Just in the mind. They’re looking for us to voluntarily submit to their plan, and the left always does because it sounds so good and makes everyone equal. Taking over not just education but also one’s moods are finally focused upon.