All this comes with political implications, too, because grassroots politics—the world of meetings, rallies, protests, and get-out-the-vote operations—are among the most important coordinated activities that a desynchronized population finds it difficult to get around to doing. The result is a vacuum of collective action, which gets filled by autocratic leaders, who thrive on the mass support of people who are otherwise disconnected—alienated from one another, stuck at home on the couch, a captive audience for televised propaganda. “Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized,
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