“We sit squarely in the middle of an absurdist drama,” says Walter Kirn. In this episode of American Thought Leaders, host Jan Jekielek and author and journalist Walter Kirn discuss lockdowns, mandates, and the frightening possibility of a union between Orwellian tyranny and the soft totalitarianism of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Jan Jekielek: People keep sending me your new essay, “The Power and the Silence.”   Walter Kirn: That essay came from an anecdote told to me by a former president of a major U.S. bank. He was in a tournament at Warren Buffet’s golf course on the morning of 9-11-2001. Warren had a rule that cellphones were not allowed to disturb the golf tournament. When the news of 9/11 caused those phones to ring, the CEOs and celebrities snuck away to learn that the Towers had fallen in New York. But so cowed were they by Warren’s ban on cellphones, …