The Danger of Disconnection

Hillary Clinton diagnoses what she calls the "weaponization of loneliness"—and prescribes solutions

Illustration by mathisworks via Getty Images

I’ve often wondered since the 2016 presidential election how Hillary Clinton has managed to maintain her sanity and carry on. If the Trump years have been hard for most of us—the daily malignancy in the White House and the cancer still spreading across the body politic—just imagine the psychic conflict that must be tormenting her.

While I don’t altogether have an answer, her new essay in The Atlantic offers some important insights into how she has kept her wits by seeking to make sense of what often can seem merely cruel and hateful, violent and senseless. Beyond diagnosis, she also offers thoughts and strategies to strengthen our democracy which she describes as “still highly vulnerable to attack and subversion.”

Clinton serves up some familiar and relevant signposts: “the influence of dark money and corporate power, right-wing propaganda and misinformation, malign foreign interference in our elections, and the vociferous backlash against social progress.”

But she highlights Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s powerful study about the growing “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” to get at a deeper strain that may be undermining the nation’s capacity to hang together. In Murthy’s estimation, the impact of this epidemic is not only felt in public health, but also in the health (or lack thereof) of America’s democracy.

As she describes in this essay, “The Weaponization of Loneliness,” the forces at work are both deeper and more dire that she imagined nearly 30 years ago in her bestselling book, It Takes a Village. The prescriptions she proposed then, she writes, “putting families first, investing in community infrastructure, protecting kids from out-of-control technology, and recommitting to the core American values of mutual responsibility and empathy have only grown more urgent and necessary.”

And in her estimation, the impact of this epidemic on our democracy has only grown more obvious: She cites Murthy’s words to connect the rise in social isolation with the decrease in civic engagement. “When we are less invested in one another,” he wrote in The New York Times, “we are more susceptible to polarization and less able to pull together to face the challenges that we cannot solve alone.”

What has taken this troubling tear in the social fabric to a more dangerous level that “saps the lifeblood of democracy,” she wisely notes, are “ the ultra-right-wing billionaires, propagandists, and provocateurs who see authoritarianism as a source of power and profit” and who target angry and aggrieved voters “susceptible to the appeal of demagogues and hate-mongers.” To say the least, she has some personal experience to draw on.

I have seen firsthand how dangerous lies can fuel violence and undermine our democratic process. During the 2016 campaign, a shocking number of people became convinced that I am a murderer, a terrorist sympathizer, and the evil mastermind behind a child-sex-abuse ring. Alex Jones, the right-wing talk-show host, posted a video about “all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped.”

She has witnessed what we all have about the power of social media to spread conspiracy theories and exacerbate the polarization. What’s more: “Fox News and other right-wing media outlets gave outlandish lies ‘credibility.’ And before Trump, we’d never had a presidential candidate—and then an actual president—who used the biggest bully pulpit in the world to be an actual bully and traffic in this kind of trash.”

Using the pandemic as an example, in what should have been “a case study in how Americans come together in the face of a common challenge,” she notes how Trump and other right-wing leaders exploited the deadly virus for political benefit. By turning public health “into a wedge issue,” she writes, the pandemic became “not a story of our common humanity,” but “a story of our fractured society and poisoned politics.”

Let’s not underestimate the continuing power of bad actors to seek new ways to feed the sickness of disconnection and loneliness. Much of the groundwork—to increase polarization and degrade the capacity of people to know what is true and what isn’t—has already been done.

Note a stunning, just-released poll from CBS News and YouGov, in which Trump voters were asked who they feel tells them the truth. More said they trust Trump (71 percent) than their own family or friends (63 percent), conservative media (56 percent) or religious leaders (42 percent). If that doesn’t confirm that there’s a cult that has been untethered from knowable reality, then I don’t know what does.

CBS News/YouGov poll

You also may recall a discussion in America, America in March about the impact of Fox News, in which a startling number of people in this community described the breakdown in relationships with their own family and friends. Tartly titled “How Has Fox News Infected Your World?”, among the over 150 responses were disturbing examples of divorce and friendships permanently broken.

Clinton reminds us that “As the trust and social ties that used to bind communities together have frayed, apathy, isolation and polarization have undercut the old ‘we’re all in this together’ ethos.” Much of this is not by chance, nor simply the result of media moguls or other billionaires determined to expand their fortunes. Their grievances become their followers’ grievances, which infect our institutions at all levels. Many nonpartisan volunteers at schools and election sites driven out by harassment and abuse, Clinton notes, are being replaced by “MAGA election deniers and QAnon enthusiasts.” Trump and enablers like Steve Bannon weaponized loneliness to undermine democracy and cut the ties that bind.

Even though the end of this reality is hard to see, the author of It Takes a Village who aimed to pursue her ideas from the Oval Office has not lost her capacity for optimism—at least in print. “I haven’t given up,” she concludes. "I still believe in the wisdom and power of the American village.”

That includes parents getting involved in local politics and pushing back against book banning, teenagers limiting their social media use to better resist big tech’s dangerous algorithms, companies recognizing their social responsibility and workers organizing against unfair and inequitable corporate practices. She still believes in the role of government and communities to help families and particularly to support “parents who often feel alone and overburdened” by the challenges of raising children.

In today’s current climate, her conclusion may be hard to see, but it’s surely useful to embrace its possibility as we make efforts to repair our torn fabric. She insists that beyond the toxic “mud of politics and polarization,” we can still find “a foundation of values and aspirations that bind us together as Americans.” That might elicit a solid maybe—or at least provide what she calls “something to build on.”

“Though we are divided in so many ways, though we are lonelier and more isolated than ever, it remains true that none of us can raise a family, build a business, strengthen a community, or heal a nation alone,” Clinton insists. “We have to do it together.”

In the coming months, as four indictments and 91 felony charges (so far) lead to trials, we will learn whether that task of coming together will grow more improbable or enough heads will be turned by the reality of crimes that they heretofore have refused to recognize. I wouldn’t underestimate the right-wing’s reluctance to change, but count me alongside Hillary Clinton and those hopeful for better, less broken days ahead.

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