ZERSETZUNG

"The Stasi often used a method that was really diabolic. It was called Zersetzung. The goal was to destroy secretly the self-confidence of people, for example by damaging their reputation, by organizing failures in their work, and by destroying their personal relationships. Considering this, East Germany was a very modern dictatorship. The Stasi didn't try to arrest every dissident. It preferred to paralyze them, and it could do so because it had access to so much personal information and to so many institutions."

—Hubertus Knabe, German historian 

I have been cleaning up all the content I've spread over 3 blogs and varied platforms over the past decade.  It's been enlightening and entertaining and concerning, to see how much the dialogue has coarsened over the past ten years.  It's been interesting to look back at my work, but I have to confess that I'm so damned sad about looking at all the blood that gets spilled on social media, particularly as we live through COVID-19, economic dislocations, and a bitter election. 

I've spent a lot of time writing about my experiences living in Carlsbad It's been horrible to see a once harmonious tightly-knit community torn to shreds by a demagogue and the viciousness of her online surrogates. I confess never really understanding how the Kremlin's troll farms could tear our nation apart. or how the Stasi worked. But I've lived with a case study for nearly a decade by now. It's awful to have been a witness. And then the term hit me.  Carlsbad has fallen victim to the same techniques of psychological harassment of perceived enemies the East Germans used known as Zersetzung. It literally means "decomposition".

I am at a loss for words to state how surreal it is to see a community ripped apart over issues bordering upon trivial. You can be bounced from the local Nextdoor for an emoji. There is a network of often anonymous Facebook platforms dedicated to a soulless derivative of the "cancel culture". there is a group called "Wake Up Carlsbad" which is the local equivalent of North Korean state television.  All this is on behalf of a retired surfer with delusions of political and intellectual grandeur, who their supporters may as well call "Dear Leader." 

The discourse in Carlsbad will never be normal as long as our surfer savant and "Cori-ism" is in the ascendancy. It's a success because of the Councilwoman's use of her online surrogates. Rather than making her community better and more united, she and her supporters call upon the darker impulses of the human spirit,.  The voices that like to gossip about neighbors, now "doxx" their personal information and feed it to the trolls to destroy, literally destroy, their target of the day. 

My wife ran for City Council in Carlsbad. She is in many ways, the model of what a public servant should be, passionate about a leader’s responsibility for righting wrongs, and somebody who would view public service as a calling. Bright, energetic, and well prepared as she was she still lost. We knew that her candidacy was doomed from the outset, but believed deeply that the people we had once supported had lost their minds. For in their minds hatred towards opponents counts as some high civic virtue and has come to border on gaslighting on social media, if not mind control.

Of course, I have some strong feelings about what went down in that election, it was only after seeing another person I value greatly going through a similar experience this spring that I realized we needed to clear some very toxic air that transcends simple partisanship. If the discussion were based on an ideological divide it would be understandable.

But it's not and never has been. It's about the energy a social zero assumes when suddenly they get to be a bully themselves and gets to balance the scales of their resentments by targeting somebody else with the support of those equally empowered. Hannah Arendt captured exactly the world we are speaking of when she discussed the "banality of evil."

We read stories about cyberbullying and hear of young kids who killed themselves because of it. But what should we expect from children when grown-ups are their examples of how bullies behave? 
  If the day ever comes that somebody kills themselves over being put "on blast" on Carlsbad's Nextdoor, the perps will undoubtedly say she should have been less sensitive or he should have been tougher. And if somebody ever gets harmed because they displeased our surfer, the reaction on the local "Nextdoor" or the Facebook groups she controls will be an orgy of victim shaming. "He or she should not have spoken against Cori" they would undoubtedly say while calling for a "civility" that equates to "you better shut up" or you will be next.

In this "new normal" running for office against Cori is only for the tough and the crude and the calloused. But should a private person get shredded for a Facebook post, or posting the wrong emoji? This is what local politics has become in an affluent community with comparatively few intractable problems, What decent person would want to be involved? We should want normal people, caring people to seek public office, or get engaged in a public dialogue, not to be driven away for simply uttering divergent thought, or crowd bullied by a group of toxic shills.

We often hear that words can’t hurt you and that anybody or everybody who opposes the surfer's online misery tour should simply "stop whining." Jesus said just the opposite, in fact, Christ clearly stated that words could be the moral equivalent of murder. He said in the Sermon on the Mount, if we insult a brother or sister we will be liable. He stated that calling someone a fool made us liable to visit hell. Well, how about that "doxxing"? And how about that whispering campaign about someone's wife? And all the libel stated anonymously and monotonously over and over again on Facebook pages with no stated administrator? I wonder how JC himself would have fared under Cori's version of East German psych-ops? I would bet he would at minimum be put under the microscope of a certain "scientific researcher" who is "Seldom Wright," and excoriated on Nextdoor on behalf of atheistic "Cori-ism?"

There is no mystery as to why politicians act this way. It works. They test their attacks in focus groups and opinion polls and test them on social media.  Toxicity wins elections, and that is the objective. These people I'm writing of actually claim their campaigns are based on only saying what is "kind, necessary, and true."
We witness the surfer savant's perpetual campaigns for higher office.  That has made holding office incompatible with public service because there has been no time for service. It’s all about winning, winning at any cost to the opponent, or to any sense of common decency. And that has descended down to those who are obsessive commenters on social media on her behalf. 

Well-meaning people try to speak out about how the last campaign was the low point of local politics, and now it’s time to make the last venture into hell a turning point. The last time that attempt was made, the peacemakers were viciously attacked for their efforts on "Wake Up Carlsbad". There was not a moment's respite. I was interested to see how a post speculating that even attempting to build some common ground in Carlsbad would be instantly politicized, and another person has speculated that a group using a term such as "Carlsbad Unity" or "Carlsbad Together" would end up being incendiary to the people benefitting from the toxicity.

For some, the support of a certain politician provides meaning to long-troubled lives. Those who are angry at those who they perceive have oppressed them eons ago, have found a respite from the quiet desperation of their lives by grinding others down in the name of Cori Schumacher. Sadly that means that the better angels of human nature have far less of a chance to sing in Carlsbad because there are too many people emotionally dependant on the almost orgasmic feeling they get every time they post about those lower on their totem pole.

We need to regain our sanity, to see these bullies for who they are. We should no longer allow them to hide behind their anonymous Facebook pages. We should not accept their way as the way of life in any community. We need to stand up to them and defeat them, no matter where we lie on the political spectrum. We are witnessing a place with 116,000 souls torn apart by a local demagogue and her army of trolls. It's time to say that culture must end, and we must partner to end it. We finally need to say to certain politicians and that we are fed up with the toxicity, the weaponized false victimhood, and the narcissism at everybody's expense. that we are not going to take it anymore. And in our private lives, its time to ostracize some people online and in the 3D world, block them on social media, and stop trying to reason with them. Because frankly, they do not care about truth or decency. For, in the final analysis, their derivative version of Zersetzung does not work unless we let it.