To defeat the left we must first understand the left. It is not a topic for polite conversation, but everybody knows many democrats are insane: just ask some of them about Trump's accomplishments in office and you'll get a full frontal demonstration. But how can this be? Talk to them about any other subject and they're obviously fine people, just like Hitler's German's, Stalin's Russians, or Mao's Han Chinese: they're genuinely decent people in every context but politics. Challenge those beliefs, however, and the response is so over the top, and so unreasoning, that it makes you question everything you know about them, about yourself, and about reality.
The behavior is frightening, beyond ridicule and exaggeration; but a lot of these people are our friends, neighbors, spouses - so how do we save them? With the compassion that comes from understanding what's happened to them - and understanding the delusion, that's what this book is about - and understanding the book is what this chapter is about.
An aside:This book is about the socialist delusion; it is not about the people who exploit the delusion to gain power for themselves. At the leadership level the world's political conflicts are not between free marketers and socialists, they're between those who believe individuals responsible for their own choices (Libertarians and Christians including the American founders) and those who see themselves at the top in a feudal world of Lords and serfs (Islamists, Progressives, Democrats, NAZIs). From the latter's perspective popular panics, whether about pandemics or climate change, can be combined with the socialist delusion to sell the concentration of power in government hands at the expense of the middle classes, thereby widening the gap between themselves as rulers and everyone else as the ruled.