How do you get tens of millions of Americans, maybe even hundreds of millions, to believe ideas that at first glance seem to be nothing less than crazy?

When I speak of “crazy ideas,” I have in mind things like the following.

• The idea that a male can become a female by feeling that he is a female, and vice versa.
• The idea that there is nothing morally objectionable about killing an unborn baby at any point, even the last minute, during a nine-month pregnancy.
• The idea that almost all white Americans, except for those who are political liberals, are anti-black racists.
• The idea that compassionate people should feel especially compassionate toward career criminals, provided these criminals belong to a minority group.
• The idea that the USA, a democratic republic since the moment of its birth in 1776, is on the verge of becoming a fascist dictatorship; it all depends on how the presidential election turns out in 2024.

Well, you “sell” these ideas to the American public, or at least to a substantial fraction of the American public, the same way you sell any other items of mass consumption — e.g., breakfast cereal or weight-loss pills.You plan in terms of four factors.

1. Manufacturing.

2. Wholesale marketing.

3. Retail marketing.

4. The ultimate consumers.

Let us look at the way much of America has been persuaded to embrace, or at least to tolerate, our crazy-but-fashionable ideas — not just the crazy ideas I’ve itemized above, but further crazy ideas.New weird ideas pop up almost every day.

1.The ideas are manufactured by left-wing intellectuals (which is to say, ideologues) at two places: think-tanks and some of our nation’s “best” universities.Occasionally, a crazy idea is created by a solo thinker, but he (or she) is soon co-opted by a think-tank or university.

2. Wholesale distribution of these ideas is the responsibility of publishers, cable news channels (especially CNN and MSNBC), journalists (both print and electronic), the entertainment industry (Hollywood, TV, popular music), and liberal pulpits.

3. Retail distribution of these crazy ideas is the task of (a) teachers in college classrooms, (b) college students talking to fellow college students, (c) schoolteachers of K–12 children, and — perhaps most important — (d) Democrat politicians and their support staffs.

4. The ultimate consumer is the voter, above all the Democrat voter.

These voters, though they support a crazy ideology, are usually not ideologues themselves.But they consider themselves good Democrats, and so, even though they may not themselves be committed to these crazy ideas, they trust their party, and they support it and its leftist ideology.“My party, right or wrong” is their motto.

But why, if they are not persuaded by this leftist ideology, do they support a party that is strongly committed to this ideology?Any of a number of reasons.(a) Voting Democrat may be a family tradition; to vote otherwise seems like a betrayal of their parents and grandparents.(b) Voting Democrat may be a longstanding characteristic of their demographic group — e.g., Jews or blacks.(c) Voting Democrat may be in their economic interest — e.g., government workers.Voting Democrat may be the result of a longstanding animosity toward Republicans.(d) Voting Democrat, especially for many elderly voters, may be the result of their imagining that the Democrat party of Joe Biden is still the Democrat party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and John Kennedy — that is, the party back in the days when it still had a firm grip on sanity.

Capturing (or should I say hijacking?) the Democrat party was a crucial move on the part of leftist ideologues. It made all the difference. But before this hijacking could be successful, the ideologues first had to capture the mass media (wholesale distributors).Once this happened, the Democrat party fell in line.An alliance was forged.The bargain was, “You tell the public to vote for us, and in exchange we’ll go along with your crazy ideas.”

A 19th-century French philosopher famously said, “Ideas govern the world.”This principle applies to good ideas, bad ideas, and downright crazy ideas.

David Carlin is a former Democrat majority leader of the Rhode Island Senate.His latest book is Atheistic Humanism, the Democratic Party, and the Catholic Church (Lectio Publishing, 2023).

Image: ElisaRiva via Pixabay, Pixabay License.