Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World”
By: Naomi Klein
Narrated By: Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein (Author, who won the Women’s Prize for “Doppelganger” and has achieved best seller listing for several of her books in the New York Times.)
“Doppelganger” is a troubling story about democracy with a capital “D”. Naomi Klien’s reputation is conflated with Naomi Wolf’s career. Both are published journalists and writers. Wolf is a Yale-educated graduate who has published in “The Nation”, “The New Republic”, “The Guardian” and other publications. However, Wolf fell or jumped into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories while falsely claiming “Covid 19 vaccinated mothers experienced a baby die-off”. Further, Wolf misled the public by suggesting “86 stillbirths” were caused by Covid vaccinations.
Wolf reported on U. K network television that America’s Covid vaccination program was a “mass murder” effort, similar to what “doctors ordered in pre-Nazi Germany” for Jews. History reveals the absurdity of her claim.
The conflation of the journalist/authors first names and professions embarrass and frustrate Naomi Klein enough for her to write “Doppelganger”. Klein’s story is even more impactful because both authors are Jewish, near the same age, and have been reported to be liberals. But Klein’s book is about more than unhappiness of her association with a “Doppelganger”. Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author who studied English and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. (She withdrew before graduating to pursue her career as a writer.) Klein, in part, chooses to write “Doppelganger” to express her frustration with the public’s association of her with Naomi Wolf. However, her story is a broader examination of society.
The perspectives of these two authors on Covid vaccination are totally different.
Presumably, a rational person would ask oneself how a Yale graduate could believe what Wolf wrote and said about Covid vaccinations when millions were dying from its spread. Many families expressed regret for not being vaccinated. Some belatedly acknowledged they became deathly ill or lost loved ones because they failed to be vaccinated. Of course, that is only a singular point in Klein’s reason for writing her story. The broader import is that every person is becoming a mirrored image, a “Doppelganger”, of themselves.
Use of the internet by the public is ubiquitous.
Like the writing of this blog, using a cell phone to buy something on the internet, texting a friend, people are creating a profile (a “Doppelganger”) of who they are, who they know, where they live, and what they believe. In capitalist countries all of this information is being collected by private and publicly held companies with the goal of making money. In some forms of government, the goal may not be money but overt control of one’s thoughts and actions. Human doppelgangers are multiplying at a rate that will eventually duplicate every person on the planet.
Naomi Klein’s solution is to have government regulate the internet or nationalize its use.
Klein infers the internet is a public utility that can only be reasonably and fairly managed by a democratic form of government. That is a tough sell in a capitalist democracy that prides itself in “freedom of choice”. A case in point is America’s gun culture. Despite the murder of school children, the 2017 mass murder in Las Vegas Nevada, and numerous deaths in the 21st century from gun violence, the Congress of the United States refuses to regulate firearms. Some argue there is a constitutional right to bear arms despite the fact that this alleged “right” is related to “a well-regulated Militia”, not to Tom, Dick, and Naomi Wolf, or any other conspiracy’ fruitcake.
Klein seems right in suggesting a “Doppelganger” is being created for every person in today’s world.
A.I. makes that even more true and threatening in this modern era. Ironically, A.I. may be a solution that can regulate the internet in a way that preserves truth and fairness while allowing capitalist use of its ubiquitous presence. Of course, there remains the threat of A.I. choosing to preserve itself at the expense of humanity. Naomi Klein is clearly not Naomi Wolf. As an author, Klein has succeeded in making that clear, but it seems unlikely that either doppelgangers or guns will disappear from the world. The world seems split between right and left political beliefs.
The extreme of Klein’s views presents the potential for a “nanny state” where government makes all decisions for the welfare of its citizens. Wolf’s views present the potential of a similar state but more along the lines of control of its citizens. Neither recognize the reality of human nature.
No government is capable of understanding the desires, ambitions, motivations of the individual in a way that can be either provided for or given.
Covid19 was a wake-up event, from which the world is trying to recover. The homelessness epidemic in America is a consequence of humans feeling life is out of their control. Until belief in ourselves is restored, neither left-thinking public services nor right-thinking orders will make a difference in Klein’s “Doppelganger” world.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 