Bretigne Shaffer on the cult of mainstream America

Somehow, the culture that I live in has come to be characterized by an outright disdain for independent thought.  Public debate has been largely reduced to the pitting of competing authority figures against each other, and the capacity of most people to engage in reasoned argument begins and ends with an appeal to those authorities.  Only a very few seem able to engage directly with information themselves, and those few are largely ignored. 

We have arrived at a point in history where the intellectual norm is now to abandon one’s own capacity for reason and to put in its place a collection of authority figures and institutions. Or rather, authority itself.

We have arrived at a point in history where mainstream America looks very much like a cult.

~ Bretigne Shaffer, "Letter to my Grandchildren from Inside a Cult," LewRockwell.com, November 18, 2020