James's Reviews > The Psychology of Totalitarianism

A dyspeptic, muddled sludge of idiosyncratic pet peeves, contrarianism, libertarian ideology, and sloppy thinking - deeply disappointing. This is riddled with unsupported opinions presented as facts, exaggerations and distortions of regulations and statements he doesn't like, and sweeping gneralizations.
The author seems obsessed with finding the most negative possible take on the medical field's response to the COVID pandemic, to the point of approaching anti-vaxxism; he presents opinions as facts and cherry-picked problems as generalities. For example, he says that screening for diseases causes more harm than benefit because of anxiety, diagnostic errors resulting in unneeded surgeries, and side effects of treatments like chemotherapy. That one hit a nerve with me - cancer runs in my family; if some of the screening techniques and treatments now available had been around in the past, cancer would probably not have killed my grandfather and both my parents - and it's because those screening techniques and treatments are available now that my wife is a cancer survivor. Yes, chemotherapy was brutal. It also saved her life.
It's also a tell that he rails against "woke culture", the Me Too movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and "environmental ideology." For some reason, he finds it offensive that intersections have more clearly marked crosswalks than decades ago and there are more regulations on where people can smoke.
The author also presents himself as an authority on more scientific subjects than any one person can probably be - or if he is not doing so, he is an accomplished psychologist, psychiatrist, sociologist, historian, anthropologist, public health expert, economist, engineer, zoologist, and ecologist.
One of the greatest ironies of this book may be that a lot of the societal critiques the author flings at anything he has found frustrating or annoying are most commonly found in connection with pro-totalitarian philosophy and movements.
Deeply disappointing.