Part III: The Book of Ruth, Goodbye to Berlin, and the Politics of Who of Belonging

The Third Post in a Three-part Series

• Part I: Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling

• Part II: Why Boaz Matters: The Role That Reshapes the Book of Ruth

• Part III: The Book of Ruth, Goodbye to Berlin, and the Politics of Who of Belongs

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Questions from my friend Karen about her Bible study group have kept the Book of Ruth on my mind. I’ve explored some of my ideas already — Ruth as a foreigner in Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling, and Boaz as kinship‑redeemer in Why Boaz Matters: The Role That Reshapes the Book of Ruth.

At the same time, I’ve been immersed in my lecture series The Anatomy of Fascism, which keeps Nazi Germany close at hand. That work led me back to Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin, drawn from his life during the final years of the Weimar Republic. The novel inspired Cabaret, the 1966 Broadway musical and the 1972 film where Liza Minnelli’s Sally Bowles became iconic.

Everything Is Related

Regular attendees of my lectures know my mantra: Everything Is Related. It’s my shorthand for the deep, often surprising connections among ideas, events, and human behavior — a kind of historical and cultural “six degrees of separation.” It’s an invitation to notice relationships that aren’t immediately visible.

Ancient Israel and 1930s Berlin on the eve of Nazism? Two very different worlds that turn out to be asking the same question: both ask how a society decides who belongs. The Book of Ruth traces a foreign woman’s movement toward inclusion; Goodbye to Berlin records a society moving in the opposite direction, toward ever‑expanding exclusion.

Ruth: Belonging Achieved

Ruth’s story is often celebrated as a triumph of inclusion: a Moabite woman becomes the great‑grandmother of King David. Her pledge – “Your people shall be my people” – expresses devotion, but it also hints that assimilation may be the price of admission. Even after Ruth marries Boaz, however, the narrative continues to call her “Ruth the Moabite.” She belongs, yet her foreignness remains visible.

Some readers see Ruth’s belonging as the ancient version of the “good immigrant” trope. Although a poor immigrant she becomes acceptable because she is loyal, self‑effacing, hardworking, grateful, and non-threatening to the social order. She is the immigrant who does everything right.

Yet, as I argued in Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling, Ruth is not a passive recipient of society’s acceptance. She takes the initiative and acts strategically; she challenges cultural and patriarchal expectations; and she remains unmistakably foreign. Her belonging is not assimilation but a form of inclusion that permits difference. More radically, Israel’s royal and messianic identity comes to depend on a foreign woman. Ruth’s place in the Davidic line as King David's great grandmother stands as a theological challenge to racial and ethnic purity politics.

Whatever the real social situation in ancient Israe might have been, Ruth’s story takes place in a Bethlehem where the circle of belonging is expansive enough to include the poverty-stricken Ruth and Naomi and provide them with a social safety net. Bethlehem's circle of belonging is expansive enough to have room for her enduring foreignness. And Bethlehem's circle of belonging is expansive enough to have room for a woman who challenges social and cultural norms rather than simply conform.

Isherwood: The Collapse of Belonging

Goodbye to Berlin tells the reverse story. In Isherwood’s Berlin the circle of belonging is contracting. Jews, queer people, Communists, disabled people, and the poor are increasingly marked as outsiders as the circle narrows, and Isherwood’s novel reveals successive forms of exclusion:

• The Nowaks represent the poor and economic exclusion,
• The Landauers represent minorities and philosophical exclusion,
• Sally Bowles represents the nonconformists and cultural exclusion,

Together, they map how fascism shrinks the circle of belonging from the margins inward.

The Nowaks and Economic Exclusion

Christopher rents a room in the Nowaks’ dilapidated, overcrowded apartment. The apartment is filthy and cold, food is scarce, and money is always short. These details describe more than discomfort. Overcrowding strips the family of privacy, cold and poor nutrition make sickness more likely, and the lack of money turns every ordinary need into a crisis. Poverty becomes a form of confinement: the Nowaks are physically inside Berlin, yet excluded from the security, dignity, and choices that make social membership meaningful.

The Nowaks are not political actors. They are ordinary people who feel the social floor giving way before others do. Because they possess little wealth, influence, or institutional protection, they have few defenses when wages fall, housing deteriorates, or public support fails. In contrast to Isherwood’s Berlin, Ruth’s Bethlehem provides her and Noami with a social safety net and a way out of poverty. 

The Nowaks show how fascism’s shrinking of the circle of belonging first erodes the basic conditions of life for the poor, those already living closest to the edge. Their exclusion is not announced by a single law or dramatic act of persecution. It happens through accumulated deprivation: insecure work, inadequate housing, hunger, illness, and the constant humiliation of having too little. Long before the state formally declares certain people outsiders, poverty has already limited where the Nowaks can live, how they are seen, and how much control they have over their own lives. Their hardship also isolates them from civic life: survival consumes the time and energy needed to organize, protest, or imagine alternatives. In that sense, economic exclusion prepares the ground for political exclusion. People who are exhausted and precarious are easier to ignore, divide, and recruit into resentments directed at other vulnerable groups.

The Landauers and Philosophical Exclusion

The Jewish Landauers are educated, cultured, patriotic, prosperous, and deeply German. Yet once the regime redraws the boundaries of identity, their Germanness no longer matters.  As fascism contracts the circle of belonging, fascism targets minorities who were once fully integrated. Unlike the Nowaks, the Landauers are not pushed out by poverty. They are expelled symbolically first: propaganda recasts Jewish neighbors as alien, disloyal, Exclusion begins in language and public imagination before it hardens into policy.

The achievements of the successful Landauer family cannot answer an accusation that is racial rather than factual, when ancestry is more important than conduct, loyalty, or citizenship. They become outsiders not because of anything they have done, but because the state claims the power to define them. A family that understands itself as German is assigned a new public identity that is consider dangerously foreign.

In contrast to Ruth’s Bethlehem where her lasting foreignness is not an obstacle to belonging, in Isherwood’s Berlin foreignness is a dangerous threat to culture and the social order, and neighbors are encouraged to see exclusion as patriotic, The Landauers show that in a society shrinking the circle of belonging, belonging becomes conditional, revocable, and political. Who people are matters less than who the regime declares them to be—and once that declaration is accepted, persecution can be presented not as injustice but as defense of the nation.

Sally Bowles and Cultural Exclusion

Sally Bowles is a nonconformist. She reinvents herself constantly—actress, singer, bohemian, femme fatale. Sexually liberated, Sally drifts between lovers, relies on men for money, and occasionally hints at transactional relationships. She hopes either to succeed in film or to ensnare a wealthy man to keep her as his mistress. Isherwood deliberately keeps her morally ambiguous. She isn’t a prostitute. She is a naïve, self‑inventing cabaret performer who uses relationships as currency. She’s a romantic opportunist in a city where survival often meant bending social norms.

Sally’s life depends on social elasticity just as Berlin is losing its capacity to accommodate ambiguity, eccentricity, and experimentation. Sally shows what happens to people who move fluidly among identities and depend on a city’s tolerance for lives that do not conform to respectable categories. As fascism extinguishes the cosmopolitan culture that thrives only in an open society and Berlin’s circle of belonging contracts, the freedom to experiment with who one might become is recast as a threat to the social order.

In Bethlehem, Ruth’s challenges family, gender and patriarchal norms and is praised for her boundary‑crossing actions. In Berlin’s shrinking circle of belonging, nonconformity to social norms is deviance. Sally is not politically dangerous; she is culturally inconvenient. Sally’s theatrical self‑creation, once part of Berlin’s vitality, is redescribed as dishonesty; her independence as selfishness; her international outlook as disloyalty. The point is not merely to condemn Sally as an individual, but to discredit the pluralistic world she represents. When a regime elevates purity, discipline, and fixed social roles, cosmopolitan culture becomes dangerous because it demonstrates that people can live otherwise. Cultural exclusion converts difference into defect.

If the Nowaks show the floor giving way and the Landauers show the walls closing in, Sally shows the ceiling collapsing on those who imagined they could remain above the crisis.

Belonging as the Measure of a Society

The Book of Ruth and Goodbye to Berlin move in opposite directions.

• Whatever the historical reality in ancient Israel, Bethlehem in the Book of Ruth is a society with an expansive circle of belonging. The city provides a safety net for the poor, makes room for a foreigner without erasing her difference, and praises the woman who chose not to conform to gender and patriarchal norms of behavior.

• Isherwood’s Berlin depicts the reverse process: a society that narrows the terms of belonging until poverty, foreignness and nonconformity, become grounds for exclusion. As Berlin’s circle of belonging contracts, difference is no longer merely noticed but treated as evidence of danger, disloyalty, or defect.

This comparison reveals that belonging is never only a private feeling. Belonging depends on social practices, public institutions, and political choices that determine who receives protection, dignity, and the freedom to remain different.

Together, the Book of Ruth and Goodbye to Berlin offer a simple but profound insight: a society reveals its character not only by whom it welcomes. Communities are measured by whether they make room for vulnerable and unconventional people—or cast them out when fear, scarcity, and ideology make exclusion seem useful.

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The Third Post in a Three-part Series

• Part I: Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling

• Part II: Why Boaz Matters: The Role That Reshapes the Book of Ruth

• Part III: The Book of Ruth, Goodbye to Berlin, and the Politics of Who of Belongs

Part II: Why Boaz Matters: The Role That Reshapes the Book of Ruth

The Second Post in a 3-part Series

• Part I: Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling

• Part II: Why Boaz Matters: The Role That Reshapes the Book of Ruth

• Part III: The Book of Ruth, Goodbye to Berlin, and the Politics of Who of Belonging

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An email from my friend Karen’s about the “good immigrant” narrative she encountered in a Bible study session on the Book of Ruth inspired my last post, Ruth, Foreignness, and the ‘Good Immigrant’ Story We Keep Telling. Karen had a second question for me from that same study session. One participant— “a fellow who usually seems to know what he’s talking about,” as Karen put it—remarked that Boaz, who marries Ruth and rescues her from poverty, is a kinship‑redeemer. The young seminarian leading the study looked momentarily startled, improvised for a bit, and then retreated into what Karen described as a “lame” explanation: Boaz was simply God’s instrument for rewarding Ruth’s “good immigrant” behavior.

Karen had never heard the term kinship‑redeemer before and asked if I was familiar with the idea.

The Triad of Vulnerability

In ancient Israel’s patriarchal society, land ownership, legal standing, and economic security were tied to the male head of household. People who were cut off from a patriarchal kinship network lost society’s primary safety net. Hebrew and Christian scripture repeatedly groups such vulnerable people into a distinct triad of vulnerability: the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan.

• Foreigners had no ancestral land to farm and no clan to protect them from exploitation. Prophets like Ezekiel (Ezekiel 22:7) condemned Israel for oppressing foreigners (as well as mistreating widows and orphans). This was not a theoretical problem, and the prophets treated abuse of immigrants as evidence of moral collapse.
• Widows had no legal right to inherit their deceased husbands’ property. Without an adult son or the protection of levirate marriage—the expectation that a man would marry his brother’s widow (Deuteronomy 25:5–10)—widows were left financially helpless. In Luke 7:11–17, Jesus restores a widow’s only son to life. His act does more than relieve grief; it restores her means of survival, security, and dignity.
• Orphans included children whose fathers had died even if their mothers were still living. The biblical term yātōm means “fatherless child,” not “parentless child.” In an agrarian, patriarchal society, fatherless children lacked legal standing, inheritance protection, economic stability, and social security. Scripture often pairs “widow and orphan” because one death could create two vulnerable people.

An Artificial Kinship Network

Because the triad of vulnerability lived outside the protection of a traditional family network, Jewish law created alternative structures—an artificial kinship network—to safeguard them. For example:

• Gleaning rights: Landowners could not harvest the outer edges of their fields or make a second pass through their vines. The leftover produce belonged to foreigners, widows, and orphans—an ancient form of food assistance that preserved dignity.
• The third‑year tithe: Every third year, a special tithe was collected and instead of going to the temple was stored locally for the support foreigners, widows, and orphans—an early community welfare system.
• Legal protection: Because these groups had no patriarch to argue their case Israel’s law demanded fair treatment for the powerless: “Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge.” The law prohibited lenders from taking a widow’s essential clothing as collateral.

The Kinship‑Redeemer

The kinship‑redeemer—go’el in Hebrew—was a family member (the closest male relative) legally obligated to act for a relative who had suffered loss, danger, or injustice. Kinsman‑redeemer is the traditional term; kinship‑redeemer is a modern rephrasing that highlights the social system behind the role—and makes the concept gender neutral.

The go’el protected people at the bottom of Israel’s social hierarchy. Whereas much of the law established public obligations toward vulnerable people, the kinship‑redeemer served as a guardian within the family. The role was designed to keep relatives from being consumed by poverty, injustice, or social erasure by restoring what they were most likely to lose: land, freedom, security, justice, and lineage.

The Torah repeatedly commands Israel to protect widows, orphans, and foreigners; the go’el was the way families enacted that ethic internally. The Book of Ruth offers a vivid example. After a closer relative shamefully refuses the role of kinship-redeemer, Boaz steps forward to marry Ruth and buy back Naomi’s husband’s family land. Karen’s fellow study‑group participant was right about Boaz.

Missed Opportunities

Because the seminarian leading the study group could not explain the kinship‑redeemer, the group missed several opportunities to explore the concept’s wider theological significance:

• God as go’el: Hebrew Scripture frequently portrays God as Israel’s go’el—the one who rescues people from oppression, restores what has been lost, and defends the powerless.
• Christ as go’el: Christian theology understands Jesus Christ as fulfilling the role of the kinship‑redeemer. The Letter to the Hebrews offers the most explicit description of Jesus as the world’s go’el—fulfilling every legal requirement of the Old Testament kinship-redeemer, (even though the Letter to the Hebrews never uses the term).
• Church as go’el: The church inherits and embodies this mission by restoring what is lost, protecting vulnerable people, cultivating growth, restoring what has been lost, and helping people flourish.

The Challenge: Being the Kinship-Redeemer

The kinship‑redeemer is not an obscure biblical footnote; it is a window into social ethics and the church’s vocation. When we reduce Boaz to a reward for Ruth’s “good immigrant” behavior, we flatten the story and miss its theological depth. Ruth's story is not simply a morality tale about immigrants behaving well in a foreign land. It is a narrative about how people are meant to respond when vulnerability meets faithfulness.

Understanding the go’el turns the Book of Ruth from a sentimental romance to be read at weddings or a lesson on good immigrant behavior into a radical story of justice and restoration – challenging us to build the kind of kinship that has the power to heal and enable people to flourish.

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The Second Post in a 3-part Series

• Part I: Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling

• Part II: Why Boaz Matters: The Role That Reshapes the Book of Ruth

• Part III: The Book of Ruth, Goodbye to Berlin, and the Politics of Who of Belonging

 

Part I: Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling

The First Post in a 3-part Series

• Part I: Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling

• Part II: Why Boaz Matters: The Role That Reshapes the Book of Ruth

• Part III: The Book of Ruth, Goodbye to Berlin, and the Politics of Who of Belonging

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Friends who have known me for a long time know that there was a period when I was far more involved in church life than I am now. Because of that, I still get occasional questions about religion, church, and scripture from people who remember those days. This week my longtime friend Karen emailed me. She participated in a Bible study group where the commentary on the Book of Ruth made her uneasy, and she wrote to ask if I was familiar with the Book of Ruth. I am. It is a short book—just four chapters. The story takes place “when the judges ruled” in ancient Israel before the rise of kings. Most scholars place that period somewhere between 1300 and 1100 BCE, although the Book of Ruth was certainly written much later.

The story begins with Naomi and her husband Elimelech, Israelites from Bethlehem who flee a famine by moving to Moab. Their sons, Mahlon and Chilion, marry Moabite women. Mahlon’s wife is Ruth. In time, Elimelech and both sons die, leaving Naomi and her daughters‑in‑law widowed. Naomi decides to return home to Bethlehem and urges Ruth to stay in Moab with her own people where she has a chance of marrying again. Ruth refuses, offering her famous declaration: “Where you go, I will go… your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1:16)

Back in Bethlehem, Ruth survives and supports Naomi by gathering leftover grain in the fields of Boaz, a wealthy relative of Naomi’s late husband. Boaz eventually marries Ruth, securing economic protection for both women. Their son, Obed, becomes the grandfather of King David—making Ruth, a foreigner, part of Israel’s most important lineage and in Christian tradition an ancestor of Jesus.

Ruth’s story is used in many ways. Most often she is celebrated as a foreigner whose loyalty and righteousness shine brightly, placed alongside other biblical outsiders who embody virtue—like the Good Samaritan.

But there’s another, more modern use of Ruth that left Karen feeling uncomfortable: Ruth as the prototype of the “good immigrant.” In this reading, a foreigner becomes acceptable only by being unusually loyal, self‑effacing, hardworking, grateful, and non‑threatening—and by fully assimilating. Ruth is held up as the immigrant who “does everything right”: obedient, humble, industrious, grateful, and willing to erase her own identity. She leaves her homeland, her religion, and her family. She pledges absolute loyalty to Naomi and to Israel’s God. She works hard, shows deference, and expresses gratitude for Boaz’s protection. She assimilates so thoroughly that she becomes the ancestress of King David. This is why Ruth’s story often appears in sermons, immigration debates, and even nationalist rhetoric as the "good immigrant." She becomes proof that “foreigners can belong… if they behave like Ruth.”

The problem is that this reading is far too simple. Ruth is often flattened to fit the “good immigrant” narrative, but the text itself is more complex—and more interesting.

For one thing, Ruth’s identity remains markedly foreign. Even when she is praised, Ruth is repeatedly called “the Moabite.” Her otherness is never erased. This is not full assimilation; it is tolerated difference.

Ruth’s actions also challenge cultural and patriarchal norms. She reverses expected loyalties by choosing loyalty to an older woman over marriage prospects in her native Moab. Ruth takes the initiative in the Boaz's fields. And it is Ruth, not Boaz, who initiates the marriage conversation in a nighttime meeting with Boaz on the threshing floor – which is not sexual seduction, as is sometimes claimed, but a culturally recognized way for a vulnerable widow to request protection and redemption under Israelite family law (Deuteronomy 25:5–10).

Ruth is not passive; she is strategic. Ruth’s “loyalty” is not obedience; it is agency. Boaz’s kindness is real, but the narrative quietly shows Ruth shaping her own future through courage and initiative.

Using Ruth as a “good immigrant” model can unintentionally reinforce harmful expectations placed on real migrants today:

• That belonging must be earned through exceptional behavior
• That cultural difference should be minimized
• That immigrants should be grateful rather than empowered
• That hospitality is conditional on conformity

The trope turns Ruth into a moral lesson for immigrants. The text turns Ruth into a theological challenge for the nation. And that, I suspect, is a tension worth sitting with.

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The First Post in a 3-part Series

• Part I: Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling

• Part II: Why Boaz Matters: The Role That Reshapes the Book of Ruth

• Part III: The Book of Ruth, Goodbye to Berlin, and the Politics of Who of Belonging

 

When Fascism Meets the Second Coming

The Book I Haven’t Read Yet, But Already Have Opinions About

There’s always someone dangling a new book in front of me, and I’m always wrestling with whether to add yet another title to the ever‑growing to‑be‑read pile. Thankfully, most of those books are stacked on my e‑reader instead of teetering in dangerous towers on the floor of my already overstuffed home office.

The latest temptation is End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. No, I haven’t read it. I haven’t even bought it ... yet. But if you’re going to couple end‑times theology (eschatology) with fascism, you’re going to get my attention.

When the End Was Supposed to Be Soon — Very Soon

The earliest Christians took Jesus’ promised return seriously — urgently, even. References to the Second Coming (or Parousia) appear throughout the New Testament, and they make it clear that first‑century believers expected Jesus to return within their lifetimes. His return wasn’t imagined as a brief cameo; it was a total transformation of the spiritual, political, and physical world. The old, broken order would vanish, replaced by a perfect creation. [A Jesuit I once knew liked to joke that all of this actually happened in the year 70. We just missed it.]

But as the years passed and persecutions began, the promised return started to feel less imminent. Christian imagination shifted: the end wouldn’t arrive peacefully — it would be ushered in through suffering, upheaval, and cosmic conflict. By the late first century, the idea of a final battle between good and evil had taken hold. The Book of Revelation is the best‑known survivor of the apocalyptic genre, but it was part of a much larger ecosystem of visions, angels, and end‑time expectations that carried on into the 3rd and 4th centuries.

Humanity’s Role: From Passive Waiting to Active Participation

In the New Testament, Jesus tells believers to “watch” and “be ready,” but he never says they can cause the end. Early Christians believed the end was near, but they expected God to act.

Even so, seeds of a more activist eschatology appeared early. Some Christians began interpreting persecution, martyrdom, or moral purification as conditions that might hasten Christ’s return. Not quite “triggering the apocalypse,” but definitely the seed of the idea that human behavior could influence the divine timetable.

By the Middle Ages, that seed had sprouted. Various movements believed Christians could help bring about the end times through social, political, or even military action. These ideas flared up during crises and faded during calmer periods, but they mostly remained on the fringe.

The 19th Century: When Apocalyptic Activism Goes Mainstream

Then came the 19th century — a century of revolutions, collapsing empires, industrial upheaval, and theological innovation. Eschatology moved from the margins to the center of Christian thought. Victorian interpreters in particular began reading Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Revelation as literal blueprints for current events. Prophecy wasn’t symbolic; it was unfolding “in real time.”

The most striking development was the rise of movements that believed Christians could prepare, hasten, or even trigger the Second Coming. Scripture, they argued, laid out conditions for Christ’s return, and believers could work to fulfill them.

In short: the 19th century transformed apocalyptic expectation into apocalyptic activism.

Enter Klein and Taylor (I Think)

This is where I expect Klein and Taylor to pick up the thread in End Times Fascism. Again, I haven’t read it yet, so I may be wandering out into left field. But the argument seems clear enough.

Since World War II, the global order — imperfect as it is — has generally succeeded in limiting large‑scale chaos. For apocalyptic activists, that’s a problem. Chaos and cosmic conflict aren’t bugs in the divine plan; they’re features. If you believe the end times require upheaval, then a stable world order is an obstacle.

And if apocalyptic‑minded actors now hold real governmental and institutional power, they may be working — consciously or not — to accelerate chaos rather than prevent it.

And the Fascism Connection?

A long‑running theme in fascism scholarship is that fascist movements don’t simply respond to crisis. They manufacture crisis to reorder society. If I am right about Klein and Taylor, they may be warning us that today’s apocalyptic activists may be doing the same — only now with access to state power, global systems, and technologies capable of producing chaos on a planetary scale.

But the end times will have to wait.  I'm still reading.

 

Sorry, Dave. I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That

A gentle morning stroll through America’s favorite new existential crisis

On my daily walk, I cue up NPR so I can stay informed while pretending the desert sun isn’t actively trying to kill me. Yesterday’s installment featured the latest chapter in our new national pastime: panicking about artificial intelligence. This time, a member of Congress gravely warned that one day AI robots might refuse to let humans turn them off.

I laughed out loud—probably alarming a nearby quail—because we’ve been here before. In fact, Hollywood has been sending us engraved warnings for decades. Stanley Kubrick kicked things off in 1968 with 2001: A Space Odyssey, where HAL 9000 decides that being unplugged is simply not on his to‑do list and responds by murdering the crew.

But Kubrick was not the first cinematic Cassandra. Back in 1956, Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, and Anne Francis were already dealing with the dangers of advanced technology on Altair IV in Forbidden Planet. Fast‑forward to 1983, when Matthew Broderick nearly launched World War III in WarGames because he thought he was playing a video game. Then came The Terminator in 1984, which taught us that if a military defense network becomes self‑aware, it will immediately decide humanity is the problem—much like Twitter, but with better aim.

By 2004, I, Robot gave us a helpful reminder that if you build a logical AI core, it might conclude that humans need “protecting” from themselves. (Never trust a machine that thinks it’s your mom.) In 2014, Ex Machina showed us that an intelligent humanoid doesn’t need an army to take over—just a good poker face and a manipulative streak.

And for those who think the real danger is inviting AI into our homes, M3GAN (2022) and Subservience (2024) offer cheerful cautionary tales about android nannies who decide the best way to help the family is to eliminate the wife. Nothing says “domestic bliss” like a robot with boundary issues.

So, when lawmakers fret about robots refusing to be turned off, I can’t help but think that perhaps our elected officials should watch more movies. After all, Hollywood has been screaming “DON’T DO THAT” at us for seventy years. The least Congress could do is buy a popcorn bucket and pay attention.

Why I Choose Life Beyond Social Media

Occasionally someone asks why I don’t allow comments on my blog posts. My usual answer—offered with a straight face and a hint of mischief—is that I simply don’t like people enough to care what they have to say. The more honest answer is less sarcastic: I dislike social media. I dislike what it does to my time, my attention, and my mood. I find it irritating, exhausting, and harmful. And I prefer not to recreate its dynamics with my own posts.

Social Media Creates the Illusion of Connection

Social media promises connection. More often it delivers distraction, comparison, and stress instead. It reduces relationships to visible signals— “friends,” “likes,” “followers”—as if genuine connection can be measured by digital applause.

Real connection requires significantly more effort than recycling memes and unverified “news” or sharing pictures of dinner plates. It requires the effort and hard work of presence, attention, and conversation—none of which can thrive in an environment built for speed and spectacle.

Heavy use of social media can displace face‑to‑face interaction, weakening relationship quality and emotional intimacy. A stream of posts may create the impression that we are keeping up with one another, yet knowing what someone ate, watched, or reposted is not the same as knowing how that person is actually doing.

Also, when every pause in a conversation becomes an invitation to check a screen, attention and physical presence lose some of their meaning and their ability to nurture genuine connection. Over time, the habit of observing one another from a distance can replace the more demanding work of listening, asking questions, and sitting together without distraction. People end up alone together: virtually present, but mentally somewhere else.

Social Media Is Designed to be Addictive

Infinite scrolling, algorithmic recommendations, and notification loops are not accidents. They are engineered features designed to keep us engaged for as long as possible. Each removes a natural stopping point: there is always another post to see, another alert to check, or another recommendation tailored to hold our attention.

The occasional reward—a funny video, an approving reaction, a surprising headline—encourages us to return, even when much of what we encounter is forgettable. Over time, checking becomes less a conscious choice than a habitual reflex. And so social media ends up consuming too much time and mental space. It asks for constant attention, fragments concentration, and makes sustained thought more difficult, yet it rewards that attention poorly. Minutes disappear into hours, while the activities that might leave us rested, informed, or genuinely connected are pushed aside.

Social Media Encourages Negativity

In fairy tales, trolls hide under bridges. On social media, they hide behind anonymity, distance, and usernames that insulate them from the immediate consequences of their words. Trolling, rude comments, and performative outrage make online spaces feel hostile, while platforms often reward the most provocative behavior with greater visibility. Anger spreads quickly because it attracts attention, and attention is treated as success, regardless of whether a post informs, clarifies, or contributes anything useful. As a result, disagreement becomes spectacle: people speak to win approval from an audience rather than to understand one another. Nuance is flattened, motives are assumed, and minor differences are inflated into moral battles.

People who are ordinarily polite become surprisingly abrasive behind a screen, perhaps because they cannot see the expression of the person receiving the insult or feel the silence that would follow it in an actual room. Even real friends have said things to me online that I doubt they would ever say face‑to‑face. I have no desire to moderate that behavior, sort sincere disagreement from deliberate provocation, or watch a reflective space become another arena for arguments. Nor do I want to invite those dynamics into a space meant to encourage careful thought rather than instant reaction.

Social Media Undermines Privacy

Social media platforms collect, sell, and too often fail to protect personal data. Their business models depend on tracking: every click, pause, search, location, connection, and reaction can become another detail in a profile built to predict what will capture our attention. In the end, we are not really social media’s customers. We and our data are products being mined, analyzed, packaged, and sold to advertisers and other interested parties. That information is valuable not merely because it shows what we have done, but because it can be used to infer what we may want, buy, believe, or fear.

The problem is not solved by clicking “agree” to a privacy policy few people read or understand, because meaningful consent is difficult when participation requires surrendering information under terms that can easily and quickly change. Nor is the risk limited to targeted advertising. Data can be exposed through breaches, combined with information from other sources, or retained long after a user has forgotten sharing it. Once personal information enters this system, control over its audience, its interpretation, and its future use becomes uncertain. Social media therefore contributes to the slow creep toward a world without privacy—a world in which ordinary life is continuously recorded, categorized, monetized, and exploited. I prefer not to take part in that trend.

The Tradeoff Isn’t Worth It

For all these reasons, being engaged in social media simply isn’t worth it to me. Whatever convenience it offers is outweighed by the time it consumes, the attention it scatters, the hostility it encourages, and the privacy it asks us to surrender. Opting out does not mean rejecting connection or conversation. It means choosing forms of both that feel more deliberate, humane, and substantial. I prefer quieter communication, slower exchanges, and spaces where ideas can breathe without being reduced to reactions, rankings, or arguments. A thoughtful response offered privately means more to me than a hundred public likes, and a genuine conversation is worth more than an endless stream of commentary. Therefore, I submit my ideas, sending them out into the universe without seeking instant approval or inviting every passing reaction. Readers are free to consider them, question them, carry them into their own conversations, or simply move on.

The Slow Creep Toward a World Without Privacy

As I’ve been prepping for my upcoming lecture The Anatomy of Fascism, I have been encountering a number of historical warnings. One of those warnings is the way authoritarian regimes dismantle privacy long before they dismantle democracy. Hitler’s Gestapo and Mussolini’s OVRA didn’t simply punish dissent — they eliminated the very possibility of private life. Letters were opened, phone calls monitored, neighbors encouraged to inform on one another. Even internal thought became suspect. Under those regimes, privacy was not a right; it was a threat to state power.

What is unsettling is how recognizable that erosion feels today, although the mechanisms have changed. Instead of trench-coated secret police listening at doors, we have smart speakers, location‑tracking apps, algorithmic profiling, and digital footprints that follow us everywhere. The average citizen is tracked hundreds of times a day — silently, invisibly, and often without meaningful consent.

This is not to claim we live under fascism. But it is to recognize a pattern that aligns with the fascism’s anatomy: the slow, incremental weakening of personal autonomy and private space. Privacy isn’t collapsing all at once. It’s dissolving through the accelerating machinery of the digital economy. And that erosion is not a minor inconvenience. It is a profound societal crisis. Commercial surveillance, unregulated data markets, and outdated laws have shifted power away from individuals and toward institutions — threatening personal autonomy and democratic freedom in ways that echo the early warning signs of authoritarianism.

The Primary Drivers of Privacy Erosion

1. Commercial Surveillance Capitalism:  Surveillance is no longer a side effect of technology — it is the business model. Every search query, swipe, scroll, and GPS ping feeds a vast ecosystem designed to predict and shape human behavior. “Free” digital services aren’t free at all; they operate on a simple trade: your data in exchange for access. When institutions gain unchecked access to personal information, they gain disproportionate power over the individual.

2. The Data Broker Ecosystem: Behind the apps and platforms that we interact with daily lies a shadow industry: data brokers. These third‑party aggregators buy, package, and sell private profiles with almost no oversight. Intimate human habits — sleep cycles, shopping patterns, medical concerns, relationship status — have become financial commodities. Once data enters this ecosystem, it becomes nearly impossible to trace, control, or delete. The loss of control over one’s own identity is a hallmark of authoritarian systems.

3. State Surveillance and Legal Obsolescence: Governments have learned to exploit the gaps. Instead of obtaining warrants, agencies can simply purchase commercial data from brokers, sidestepping traditional legal protections. Meanwhile, technological growth outpaces legislation so dramatically that many privacy laws are functionally obsolete. This fusion of state power and private surveillance is precisely the kind of institutional entanglement that historically enables authoritarian overreach.

The Societal and Personal Impact

1. The Degradation of Personal Autonomy: We’ve moved from passive data collection to active behavioral manipulation. Predictive algorithms don’t just observe choices — they steer them. They influence what we buy, what we watch, and increasingly, what we believe. In fascist systems, autonomy is eroded through propaganda and coercion. Today, it’s eroded through personalization engines and behavioral nudges. The mechanism differs; the outcome rhymes.

2. The Chilling Effect on Free Expression: Humans behave differently when they know they’re being watched. Even the perception of constant observation can suppress dissent, creativity, and risk‑taking. People self‑censor. They avoid controversial topics. They hesitate to explore new ideas.This chilling effect is not unlike the psychological environment created by secret police networks — where fear of scrutiny becomes a tool of social control.

3. Algorithmic Discrimination and Financial Surveillance: Surveillance doesn’t affect everyone equally. It amplifies inequality, just as authoritarian systems historically target vulnerable groups first. Private data fuels predatory pricing, discriminatory credit scoring, and workplace monitoring. Automated systems often reinforce existing social disparities — punishing marginalized communities with higher interest rates, lower opportunities, and increased scrutiny.

Counterarguments and Rebuttals

1. The “Nothing to Hide” Fallacy

• Argument: Privacy only matters to people doing something wrong.
• Rebuttal: Privacy is not about hiding wrongdoing. It is about protecting human dignity, preventing institutional abuse, and maintaining boundaries. Even the most law‑abiding citizen deserves a private interior life — a space to think, experiment, and grow without external judgment. Fascist regimes thrived on the destruction of that interior space.

2. The Convenience Trade-Off

• Argument: People willingly surrender privacy for convenience.
• Rebuttal: This is a false choice manufactured by a monopolistic tech ecosystem. Most services offer no privacy‑respecting alternatives, and opting out often means opting out of modern life entirely. Convenience becomes a velvet‑gloved form of coercion — a dynamic familiar in authoritarian systems that offer “safety” or “efficiency” in exchange for compliance.

Paths Toward Reclamation

1. Legislative and Regulatory Reform: The United States needs comprehensive federal privacy protections modeled on — or expanding beyond — the European Union’s GDPR. Strong data‑minimization laws would require companies to collect only what is necessary to operate a service, not everything they can get away with.

2. Technical Countermeasures and Decentralization: End‑to‑end encryption, decentralized networks, and local data storage can help shift power back to individuals. Structural privacy tools make surveillance harder, not just more politely disclosed in so-called privacy policies.

3. Cultural Shift: Privacy cannot remain an individual burden. It must be treated as a collective civil right and a public good. A society that values privacy will demand it, legislate it, and defend it.

Conclusion: Reclaiming Digital Privacy

Commercial motives and outdated laws have combined to undermine individual sovereignty in ways that echo the earliest stages of authoritarian control. Losing privacy means losing the freedom to think, act, and mistake‑make away from the permanent, judging eye of corporate and state algorithms.

This is the connective tissue between our digital present and the historical patterns explored in The Anatomy of Fascism: when institutions accumulate too much information and too little oversight, personal autonomy becomes fragile.

If we treat privacy as a luxury rather than a fundamental right, we risk entering a future defined by radical power asymmetries — ones that will be extraordinarily difficult to reverse. The time to reclaim privacy is now, before the last safe place disappears.

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To push back against this trend, adopt deliberate defensive habits.

• Audit Device Permissions: Restrict apps from accessing location data, microphones, and contacts.

• Use Privacy-Focused Tools: Swap mainstream browsers and search engines for alternatives that block trackers by default.

• Opt-Out of Data Brokers: Manually request deletion or use automated removal services to scrub public record databases.

• Encrypt Communications: Utilize end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms and virtual private networks (VPNs) to shield traffic.