Delusion: a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact

In the Age of Trump, every few weeks Americans are literally saturated, courtesy of the news media, with the latest version of the D.C. establishment's Trump "narrative."

A narrative is simply a story. But what if the story is not just false, but insane? What then?

Let's find out.

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First, let's review the official establishment narrative since Donald J. Trump was elected president last November: Trump is a fascist and white supremacist whose political rise is ominously reminiscent of Hitler's. He stole the presidency from Hillary Clinton by secretly colluding with Russia to hack America's democracy. His fellow Republicans are selfish, mean-spirited people who care only about themselves and their super-rich friends and want to deny health care to poor children. Republicans are also racist and anti-immigrant – after all, Trump once claimed all Mexicans are rapists – and, therefore, are always trying to prevent minorities from voting. Republicans likewise have contempt for the environment and are content to pollute or overheat it until it's uninhabitable by the human race and we all die. Most recently, armies of white supremacists and neo-Nazis have been turning up everywhere. And Trump is mentally ill and unfit for office.

Democrats, on the other hand, are forward-thinking, tolerant, peace-loving and morally superior folk, champions of the common man, especially the many minority groups cruelly oppressed by Republicans. Abortion, a cherished constitutional right that simply involves the removal of unwanted tissue from a woman's body, is constantly under attack by intolerant anti-choice religious fanatics. The same oppressive bigots also target LGBTQ Americans, even though everyone knows homosexuality and same-sex marriage are perfectly wholesome and moral. Likewise, transgenderism is absolutely normal, with gender identity now understood by science to be fluid, encompassing many possible gender choices far beyond Western society's oppressive binary male-female paradigm. Islam, a beautiful religion of peace, has nothing to do with terrorism; in fact, studies prove most terror attacks are actually perpetrated by white supremacists and neo-Nazis. This great divide in America – between ignorant, racist, theocratic right-wingers and moral, compassionate, enlightened progressives – has been playing out for generations. In fact, Adolf Hitler was a far-right Christian fascist Nazi whose ultraconservative racist views led to the Holocaust. Which brings us back to Donald Trump.

Such is the fabric of today's wildly delusional left-wing mindscape, the "story line" so many Democrats embrace – their "narrative."

Yet these views and similar ones, which comprise the very warp and weft of the narrative espoused daily by college students, Democrat politicians, progressives and "mainstream" journalists, are reflective not of reality, but of a bizarrely dark Alice-in-Wonderland fantasy realm in which the left increasingly dwells.

Let's peer down the rabbit hole and see if we can let some light in.

Get David Kupelian's culture-war blockbuster "The Marketing of Evil," its sequel "How Evil Works," and his latest "The Snapping of the American Mind," all at the WND Superstore. Autographed, e-book, and audiobook versions also available.

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Faulty premise

It's been said that one definition of insanity is starting with a disastrously flawed premise and then arguing and acting perfectly from it. For example, ISIS members are totally dedicated to a medieval Islamic worldview. Convinced they're restoring world civilization to a divinely mandated seventh-century legal system by following a literalist interpretation of the Quran, they believe they're ushering in their much-anticipated last-days Apocalypse. With this as their premise, everything ISIS does – every propaganda video, every battle, every hideous atrocity – makes perfect sense to them.

Even a garden-variety jihadist's acts are quite understandable in light of his catastrophically faulty underlying premise: He has been indoctrinated ("radicalized") to believe the creator of the universe is so angry with him that upon death he'll spend eternity in a fiery, shameful, loathsome Islamic hell. However – and here's his one and only escape route – if he just blows himself up in jihad – say, while killing, maiming and mutilating as many innocent little teenage girls as possible at a rock concert – the creator of the universe will benevolently smile on him and forgive not only his own sins, but also those of his entire family who otherwise were probably heading for hell, too. Moreover, the moment the first drop of his blood is shed in jihad martyrdom, he will feel no pain but be instantly transported to paradise, where he will recline on soft green cushions and be fed the choicest meats and fruits forever while 72 beautiful "black-eyed virgins" endlessly satisfy his sexual lusts.

It's almost impossible to conjure up a more wildly evil and criminally insane delusion, but there it is – and a lot of people believe it.

The point is, if you embrace an insane premise, you will probably act in an insane manner.

Now let's bring the discussion closer to home.

Consider abortion: If a "fetus" (remember, that's what we call a baby human prior to emerging from his or her mother) is simply unwanted tissue like a tumor, as Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics have counseled millions of desperate young women for decades, then not only is abortion perfectly fine, but anyone opposing it is a dangerous lunatic. After all, can you imagine people marching, picketing and praying outside a hospital to protest the removal of tumors?

Thus there is only one overriding issue here: If the "fetus" is just a tumor-like mass of tissue, you can get rid of it any time and any way you want; if it's a baby, you're killing a precious human being.

Again, it's crucial that our underlying premises be reality based.

If homosexual sex really and truly is normal, healthy and moral, then the Bible is flat-out wrong and both Christianity and Judaism are false religions (and Islam, too). Likewise, if the core LGBT premise – that homosexuality is an immutable, inborn genetic trait like race – is true, then having a "religious" or "moral" objection to it is essentially the same as being a racist. Which is exactly what the left believes today.

Speaking of racism, the left's foremost narrative plot line is that America is a deeply racist country. Inherent in that grand story line are many sub-plots: President Trump and most Republicans are racist, America's police and criminal justice system are racist, Confederate flags and statues are symbols of racism, America's founders including Washington, Jefferson and Madison were slave-holding white racists so statues of them should also be torn down and buildings named after them renamed. Today, all white people – even those who have never spoken or thought a single racist word in their lives – are guilty, if not of overt racism, then of benefiting from racism due to their "white privilege." Repeat: To today's left, you are literally guilty simply for being white!

But how does "America is racist" stand up as a core premise?

In reality, the United States of America is the least racist nation on earth. Remember, while only 13 percent of America's population is black, voters – and that means tens of millions of white voters – twice elected a black man as their president! There is neither evidence nor rational argument to support the claim that America is a "racist nation." America fought its bloodiest war ever to end slavery, and racial segregation ended when, during the '60s Civil Rights Movement, the great American middle class literally changed its views on segregation in a single generation, embracing Martin Luther King's noble "dream" of a color-blind America where people would be judged by the "content of their character," not the color of their skin.

Why, then, does the left still wield accusations of "racism!" as its weapon of choice – and why do so many Americans embrace the rest of the left's equally delusional narrative?

'Pro-lifers cause global warming'

One highly visible part of the leftist coalition is the millions of college students who last year idolized a cranky old socialist (or "aging hippie communist" as Rush Limbaugh put it) named Bernie Sanders. These young people enthusiastically agreed that free college, free health care and free everything else sounded really great.

Of course it sounds great! The problem is, most of these young people are immature, inexperienced and don't know much of anything, including how a healthy economy works – and what little they do know is mostly wrong, because of what they've been taught. We send our kids to wildly left-wing colleges and then when they actually believe what they've been taught, we're surprised! They're taught America is a malevolent, imperial, racist superpower and that biblical morality is an ignorant, oppressive, superstitious relic of past centuries. They are not taught about why America is exceptional, or about free-market economics and capitalism, or about the Constitution and America's brilliant and uniquely enlightened system of government, or why Christianity has so successfully served as the moral foundation of America and Western Civilization for centuries.

Then there's the left's leader class, those who actually know that much of what they espouse daily in the political arena – particularly their constant demonization of well-meaning Christians and conservatives – is nothing more than weaponized rhetoric. It may be untrue, cruel and defamatory, but that doesn't matter. All that matters is that it's effective in battle.

At the pinnacle of this group (at least politically) are top Democrat leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, who by the way look and sound mentally ill. Then you have highly ambitious politicians like Chuck Schumer who are so ravenously hungry to return to power that they'll literally say and do anything, espouse any beliefs, defend any lies and attack any Republicans, all to regain the power they so desperately covet.

There's no lower limit to the embarrassing craziness of the left's delusional narrative: Not only are all whites guilty of the crime of being white, but California legislators want to put you in jail for a year for failing to use the correct pronoun for transgendered people, and feminist icon Gloria Steinem now claims it's pro-lifers who are causing global warming. ("Listen, what causes climate deprivation is population," the 83-year-old Steinem recently told a reporter. "If we had not been systematically forcing women to have children they don't want or can't care for over the 500 years of patriarchy, we wouldn't have the climate problems that we have.")

Get David Kupelian's culture-war blockbuster "The Marketing of Evil," its sequel "How Evil Works," and his latest "The Snapping of the American Mind," all at the WND Superstore. Autographed, e-book, and audiobook versions also available.

'Connected to a different hard drive'

There are many factors contributing both to leftists' general irrationality and to their current hysteria in the Age of Trump: their near-religious infatuation with socialism and hatred of capitalism; their warped assessment (or total ignorance) of human nature; their conspicuous lack of introspection and resulting penchant for projection (blaming others for the problems they cause); their addiction to the corrosive practice of identity politics; their rejection of Judeo-Christian values with regard to sex, marriage and family; their denial of their own policies' obvious failures; and so on. But let's focus right now on just one factor, since it's arguably the most foundational, and certainly the most toxic of all: hate.

There's undeniably a lot of hate on the left, a fact few even try to deny. Left-wing hate, along with its ugly older brother, violence, has morphed into a full-blown political movement, its participants wielding it as a badge of honor, a ritual of avenging victimhood, a banner of revolutionary righteousness reaching almost the level of religious exaltation.

One little problem, though.

As I explain in "How Evil Works" in the chapter titled "The Mysterious Power of Hate":

What we need to understand is that becoming angry and resentful is literally like stepping into an alternate dimension. You think differently, you feel differently. When you're mad, your mind doesn't work the same as it normally does. It's almost as though you're connected to a different hard drive and a different operating system with different logic. Different because, in a very real sense, the angry, resentful you is cut off from God, meaning disconnected from your usual calm, sensible mind that is overshadowed by conscience and intuition. Instead, you're a conduit for something else – something not of God – that doesn't have your best interest at heart. After all, how many people are locked up in prison because they acted under the spell of anger, did something terrible, and later came to regret it for the rest of their lives?

Hate – rage, resentment, extreme bitterness – quite literally opens up your mind to delusion and whatever dark spirit serves up that delusion. There's a reason the word "mad" means both angry and insane. If you're very angry, your mind will attract thoughts and feelings from an exceedingly dark realm.

Hate, all by itself, is a form of madness.

Why do you suppose the Arab-Muslim Middle East is drowning in deranged conspiracy theories about Jews (Jews were behind the 9/11 terror attacks, Jews kidnap and murder Christian children to use their blood in Passover matzos, and so on)? Because Islam's suffocatingly repressive cultural system relies on hate, fear and intimidation. From early on, one's sense of righteousness and honor is directly tied to nursing fantasy grievances against infidels, blasphemers, occupiers, oppressors and crusaders.

In the broadest sense, hatred itself is a grand delusion of life: What we experience while fired up with intense hatred is – quite literally – distorted, twisted, unbalanced, deformed, deranged – an excursion into a bizarre, mental-emotional maze of mirrors. In a word, delusion. It's a really bad place to be, a forbidden, dark dimension in which God can neither guide nor protect us.

After all, the very essence of a decent and meaningful life is loving God and one's neighbor. Forgiveness and repentance are simply paramount; they are healing, life-giving and sanity-producing. But these require sincere self-reflection, something in short supply on the left, which is perpetually focused outwardly on changing society (other people) rather than inwardly on changing oneself. Ever outraged, proclaiming themselves either victims or the protectors of victims, hardcore lefties are (ironically) forever angrily condemning and shaming "haters" – that is, anyone who disagrees with them. But in the end, they are trading their happiness, contentment and sanity for an illusion of righteousness, fueled by the toxic energy of rage.

This is not my opinion. Decades of research show those on the left are far less happy than those on the right, and they are much more prone to mental illness.

Yet they think you and I are "deplorable" and want to rule over us in every area of our lives.

I think not.

If you agree with me, support your president with everything you've got. He single-handedly saved you from having to endure the sheer horror of a Hillary Clinton presidency, and right now, whatever his flaws, he's just about the only thing standing between you and the delusional, power-mad, leftist establishment.

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