Jacob Siegel has done it again at Tablet magazine. He charts the rise of the term “whole of society” to describe the way the Democratic machine works across government and industry, taking nominally private institutions by the neck and leading the country around like a dog on a leash.
In other words, the government enacts policies and then “enlists” corporations, NGOs and even individual citizens to enforce them—creating a 360-degree police force made up of the companies you do business with, the civic organizations that you think make up your communal safety net, even your neighbors. What this looks like in practice is a small group of powerful people using public-private partnerships to silence the Constitution, censor ideas they don’t like, deny their opponents access to banking, credit, the internet, and other public accommodations in a process of continuous surveillance, constantly threatened cancellation, and social control.
And there’s an additional catch. “The government”—meaning the elected officials visible to the American public who appear to enact the policies that are carried out across the whole of society—is not the ultimate boss. Joe Biden may be the president but, as is now clear, that doesn’t mean he’s in charge of the party.
I merely described the creepiness of living under liberal conformism. Siegel is taking a stab at describing the mechanism by which it operates.
Read the whole thing. Twice.