One of the most common complaints I get about my writing is from people who say they can’t understand how I can be so bang-on right on the money at some times, and so very, very wrong at other times. As though it’s normal to agree with one person’s opinions 100 percent of the time.

They often say it with a sense of betrayal, too. Like, “I can’t believe I trusted you enough to let you into my tribe, and yet here you are, expressing an opinion I disagree with!”

“Bipolar” is a word that comes up with surprising frequency. I’m actually pretty boring psychologically, but I guess when you’re used to cliquing up with a tribe of politically like-minded people who take great pains not to stray outside the groupthink, someone who speaks independently looks like they’re darting all over the map. Sometimes I’ll be saying things that are approved by your clique’s approved doctrine, sometimes I’ll be speaking an outrageous heresy, so that appears “bipolar”. It’s a weird dynamic to have to interact with on a daily basis.

I think this is the same sort of echo chamber-enforced herd dynamic, though, that has Clintonites still saying that the 2016 Democratic primary wasn’t rigged in spite of the mountain of evidence and open admissions that it was.

Of course, this is perfectly ridiculous.

The facts are in, they are undeniable, and yet Clintonites are still insisting that they don’t need to look at them. My theory is that these people have never at any time been interested in facts, but solely in their emotional attachment to their prefered political clique. Their entire ideology is not based on facts or evidence, but on how uncomfortable it makes them feel to consider the possibility that they might have been wrong about something and how comfortable it makes them feel to believe that they are right.

As comedian Jimmy Dore is fond of saying, “They don’t want to be right. They just want to feel right.”

This is how they have been able to look past Hillary Clinton’s unforgivable war hawk past and her horrifying plan to install a no-fly zone in a nation where Russian military planes are conducting operations, and how they’re able to maintain their Russia hysteria in the face of a total absence of evidence. It’s never been about gathering information, doing some rigorous thinking and coming to an informed worldview for any of these people, it’s about how good their feelings feel when they’re telling each other they’re right about everything.

So now you’ve got Democratic party loyalists denying the primary was rigged, accusing Donna Brazile of being a Kremlin puppet, and organizing against Elizabeth Warren with blatantly racist rhetoric because she expressed an opinion that was outside of their tribe’s official doctrine.

Anyone who’s debated a Clinton loyalist knows exactly what I’m talking about. Nearly all of them seem to base their worldviews upon cursory glances at Washington Post headlines and then imbue those perspectives with a tremendous amount of belief, and no amount of in-depth debunking of their bumper sticker talking points is enough to pull them out of their position. That’s how addictive these groupthink mental habits are, which punish and reward with comfort and discomfort just like any other addiction. You are seldom speaking to their actual ideas; you’re generally speaking to their addiction.

If you’ve ever lost someone to a cult, or helped someone break out of one, you see the same patterns in Clintonism. The neurochemical hit of belonging and being accepted is so addictive to our primate brains that you can get people believing they’re going to be taken to heaven on a UFO comet if you give them enough of it. They can also get you so indoctrinated that you believe the only possible explanation for your worldview’s consistent failure to succeed in practice is a global conspiracy by the Kremlin.

This is why cult leaders set up their operations in remote locations and isolate people from their loved ones; they need to create a solid echo chamber of their clique’s doctrine and implant it until it’s held in place with the carrot of belonging and the stick of cognitive dissonance. This is also why the Democrats were seen speaking with billionaires in WikiLeaks documents about the importance of developing a solid echo chamber.

RationalWiki defines an echo chamber as “a group situation where information, ideas, and beliefs are uncritically bounced from insider to insider and amplified, while dissenting views are censored and/or ignored.” The term was originally popularized in reference to a Republican phenomenon which became glaringly evident sometime during the Iraq war, describing the bizarre way in which Karl Rove could rubber stamp a party line in a think tank on Monday morning, have all the pundits repeating the same line on conservative media outlets by Monday afternoon, and have rank-and-file Republicans regurgitating the exact same line at the water cooler Tuesday morning as though they’d been saying it their whole lives without giving it a second thought.

Click ‘Attachments’ and then ‘2008 Combined Fundraising, Message and Mobilization Plan’ on Podesta email #59125 if you’re curious about this one.

On November 2, 2007, John Podesta wrote an email to billionaires George Soros, Peter Lewis, Herb and Marion Sandler, John Sperling, and high-level millionaire Steve Bing with a detailed and structured overview of material the group had covered during a meeting they’d had in September. And if seeing the names John Podesta and George Soros in an article about a conspiracy of elites makes you roll your eyes a little, hang in there, because this one is legit.

On page two of the attachment:

“Control the political discourse. So much effort over the past few years has been focused on better coordinating, strengthening, and developing progressive institutions and leaders. Now that this enhanced infrastructure is in place — grassroots organizing; multi-issue advocacy groups; think tanks; youth outreach; faith communities; micro-targeting outfits; the netroots and blogosphere — we need to better utilize these networks to drive the content of politics through a strong “echo chamber” and message delivery system”

And on page four:

“Create a robust echo chamber with progressive messaging that spans from the opposition campaigns to outside groups, academic experts, and bloggers.”

So to recap, an elite insider of the Democratic party met with a group of powerful plutocrats to discuss how they would use their footholds in the media, the internet, academia, faith-based groups and think tanks to create “a group situation where information, ideas, and beliefs are uncritically bounced from insider to insider and amplified, while dissenting views are censored and/or ignored,” exactly like the idiocy-generating manipulation machine that conservative think tanks were inflicting upon Americans of the political right.

This is why the denial is happening. This is why the Russia hysteria is continuing. By using wedge politics and fear to separate the cultists from other perspectives, using approval and belonging to keep them addicted, shaming tactics to keep them from straying, and controlling the discourse on their end of the political spectrum, Democrats have created America’s largest cult.

Groupthink is a factor across the political spectrum, which is partly why I find myself in hot water with people from all factions left right and center on a daily basis. But the Democratic party is particularly pernicious because it has been deliberately engineered by the elites who own it to hijack America’s progressive inclinations and reroute them into the propulsion system of a machine that only cares about warfare and money. This is also why it’s so very hard to argue with; you can only argue with someone’s ideology, and this isn’t so much an ideology as a mind virus concocted and enforced by cultural engineers and plutocrat-funded think tanks.

Perhaps, though, by pointing out really obvious plot holes in the mind virus’ operations like what we’re seeing in the fingers-in-ears denialism of the primary rigging, we can create enough dissonance to get people questioning the integrity of their cult leaders. And from there, maybe our species will have a fighting chance.

— — —

Hey you, thanks for reading! My work is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, and maybe throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal.