A Spirit of Division Is Killing Our Country

We need to remember our unity; not of ideas, but of goals.

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About the Authors

Julian Adorney is a columnist at Reality's Last Stand and the founder of Heal the West, a substack movement dedicated to preserving liberalism. He’s also a writer for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). Find him on X: @Julian_Liberty.

Mark Johnson is a trusted advisor and executive coach at Pioneering Leadership and a facilitator and spiritual men's coach at The Undaunted Man, an organization that helps men embody healthy masculine energy and cultivate path-agnostic spiritual growth. He has over 25 years of experience optimizing people and companies—he writes at The Undaunted Man’s Substack and Universal Principles.

Geoff is a Relationship Architect/Coach, multiple-International Best-Selling Author, Speaker, and Workshop Leader. He has spent the last twenty-eight years coaching people world-wide, with a particular passion for supporting those in relationship, and helping men from all walks of life step up to their true potential. Along with Mark, he is a co-founder of The Undaunted Man.

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In Animal Farm, George Orwell’s 1945 masterpiece about propaganda and the inevitable descent of socialism into totalitarianism, the animals often find themselves at odds with humans. They frequently suspect—often correctly—that the humans are plotting their failure. This external threat and the resulting distrust prompt the animals to lie, conceal, and gaslight observers about the state of their farm. Unfortunately, this tendency—to react to an external threat (real or perceived) with propaganda and gaslighting— is resurgent in our current politics.

In the story, there comes a point when Animal Farm faces a food shortage. This is hardly surprising, as the animals have never run a farm before. Compounding their difficulties, they require various materials, such as electric components for the windmill they are building, that they cannot produce from raw materials on their farm and cannot acquire without outside help. But instead of seeking assistance or acknowledging these challenges, the pigs in charge opt to deceive outsiders. Orwell notes, “It was vitally necessary to conceal this fact [of food shortages on the farm] from the outside world.” Why? Because admitting to this issue might create a negative impression and empower the enemies of Animal Farm.

Emboldened by the collapse of the windmill, the human beings were inventing fresh lies about Animal Farm. Once again it was being put about that all the animals were dying of famine and disease, and that they were continually fighting among themselves and had resorted to cannibalism and infanticide. Napoleon [the leader of Animal Farm] was well aware of the bad results that might follow if the real facts of the food situation were known… (emphasis added).

Many left-leaning commentators seem to be taking a page out of Napoleon’s playbook by working overtime to cover up or explain away inconvenient facts about their own side. As one example among many, Kamala Harris has (as of this writing) refused to engage any real and one-on-one interviews with journalists since becoming the presumptive nominee. Many Democrats are justifiably criticizing her for abrogating her social responsibility here: it is hardly democratic for a political candidate for the highest office in the land to refuse to talk to journalists. But others are carrying water for her. As the headline of a Los Angeles Times column put it, “Harris shouldn’t talk to the press.” James Carville asked rhetorically, “Where is it written that you have to sit down for a press interview?” He even suggested that Harris should dismiss requests for press interviews with “Oh, shut up!”