Louis Menand's The Free World, a history of public thought in the cold war era, recently taught me about the relationship of the masses and totalitarianism.

The relationship appears to be : destroy classes & traditional relationships -> produce masses & the mob -> totalitarianism arises out of the masses' anxiety and the mob's despotic idiocy.

Something like how too many chickens in a big barn can't form hierarchies and so live in a perpetual panic, except along comes a Big Chicken who makes everyone feel better because they finally know their place again.

I hope something different and less awful happens. But the early results are worrying.

Can we just pull the plug on this experiment, please?