How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

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From The New York Times: “According to a recent large-scale survey from the health care provider Cigna, most Americans suffer from strong feelings of loneliness and a lack of significance in their relationships. Nearly half say they sometimes or always feel alone or ‘left out.’ Thirteen percent of Americans say that zero people know them well. The survey, which charts social isolation using a common measure known as the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale, shows that loneliness is worse in each successive generation.

This problem is at the heart of the new book ‘Them: Why We Hate Each Other — and How to Heal,’ by Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska. Mr. Sasse argues that ‘loneliness is killing us,’ citing, among other things, the skyrocketing rates of suicide and overdose deaths in America. This year, 45,000 Americans will take their lives, and more than 70,000 will die from drug overdoses.

Mr. Sasse’s assertion that loneliness is killing us takes on even darker significance in the wake of the mail-bomb campaign against critics of President Trump and the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, both of which were perpetrated by isolated — and apparently very lonely — men. Mr. Sasse’s book was published before these events, but he presciently described what he believes lonely people increasingly do to fill the hole of belonging in their lives: They turn to angry politics.

In the ‘siloed,’ or isolated, worlds of cable television, ideological punditry, campus politics and social media, people find a sense of community in the polarized tribes forming on the left and the right in America. Essentially, people locate their sense of ‘us’ through the contempt peddled about ‘them’ on the other side of the political spectrum.”

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Turn off your TVs, don’t listen to the divide and conquer “punditry” and left vs. right “politics.” The left and right are two wings of the same bird. And when politicians, and their controlled media, start spewing “divide and conquer” and/or fear based propaganda, we have the wrong “bird” at the helm.

    Those of us who knew the wrong people were in charge in 9/2001 were proactively attacked by the ‘political abuse of psychiatry’ psychiatrists, who think 9/11 and the subsequent never ending wars are wonderful.

    Despite the reality that never ending wars against a concept are not wonderful, insane psychologists and psychiatrists, but they do bankrupt a country. I wasn’t wrong then, and now our society’s problems are magnified for all to see. Attempting to murder the “insightful” and “intelligent females” in a society is not beneficial for that society, paternalistic pastors, psychiatrists and psychologists.

    And our society as a whole is not benefitted by having a multibillion dollar, primarily child abuse covering up, group of highly DSM deluded, iatrogenic illness creating “mental health industries.” Such industries merely function to aid, abet, and empower the pedophiles.

    Oh, and goody, now it’s being pointed out by world leaders that “The West is Controlled by Satanic Pedophiles.” The women who know raping children is morally repugnant are not actually “irrelevant to reality,” insane psychiatrists, nor are we “fictional.” But the iatrogenic illness creating, DSM deluded, psychiatric and psychological pedophilia cover uppers and profiteers are now scientifically “invalid.”

    https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml

    How bizarre that pointing out the impropriety of never ending wars, raping children, and the impropriety of profiteering off of covering up the rape of children, is a lonely job. Because our paternalistic religions and “mental health professionals” have been profiteering – in the tune of billions – off of covering up such crimes on a massive scale for over a century, even according to their own medical literature.

    https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freudian_Coverup

    And neither the religions, nor the “mental health professionals,” nor the mainstream doctors want to get out of the business of turning millions and millions of child abuse survivors into the seriously “mentally ill” with the psychiatric drugs, because “it’s just to profitable.” “For the love of money is the root of all evil….” “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

    We can’t fix our societies’ problems, unless we confess to the reality of these systemic, societal problems. We can, however, all “Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.” And ending the abuse of children, including the massive in scale psychiatric abuse of children, is such a “quest.”

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  2. Writing 10 pages on the stuff that bugs me about Alcoholics Anonymous would be easy but I could travel or move anyplace and get to know dozens of people within a week. I think the main reason AA works for anyone is it gives them a way to escape loneliness now that going out drinking is not an option.

    I don’t have a sponsor and I don’t count my sober days, I don’t believe in that. I try and keep it to a minimum but I do drink a few times a year and that’s my business.

    It would take too long to write in this comment how to use AA as a support group without getting sucked into the dumbshit. The dumbshit works for some people but I think it also chases an equal number of people away.

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  3. “people find a sense of community in the polarized tribes forming on the left and the right in America. Essentially, people locate their sense of ‘us’ through the contempt peddled about ‘them’ on the other side of the political spectrum.”

    Of course its designed that way, that left vs right thing [CNN Vs FOX news same corporate sponsors] is divide and conquer brainwashing cause our criminal government and its mass incarceration police state knows it would be in deep shit if it ever becomes a true us vs them situation. It almost happened with the protests of 2014-15 till they opened a can of divide and conquer.

    “So busy is America managing the predictable conflict amongst themselves, they have neither the time nor the energy to recognize their true tormentors. https://www.sott.net/article/289519-Ferguson-This-isnt-a-revolution-its-the-same-old-divide-and-conquer-technique-used-throughout-history ”

    I don’t agree with all the politics of that web page but its the very best I can find on subject divide and conquer.

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