“In the end,” the omniscient narrator of 1984 explains, “the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.”

So it goes when the unstoppable force of political ideology crashes into the immovable object of the god’s honest truth. It doesn’t matter if you know the former thing to be false; you have to believe it. And not only that, you want to, if only because you’ve seen what happens to people who don’t, and so you know what a profoundly cold comfort it would be to maintain your grip on reality when tribal belonging demands you let go. The people who guard the door to the clubhouse have declared that two plus two is five, that we have always been at war with Eastasia, and—to borrow from another cautionary tale about the dangers of conformism—that the emperor is not, I repeat, not parading around with his wiener out, but rather wearing a pair of pants so innovative they are beyond the ability of ordinary people to comprehend or even perceive.

This is what all right-thinking people believe—and now all the right-thinking people are looking at you, because you are one of us, aren’t you?

Aren’t you?

This article is part of The Zeitgeist. Sign up to get everything we publish on ideas, arts, entertainment, dating, faith and more.

Aren’t you?!!

For a certain amount of time, in certain political climates, this will be enough to produce the appearance of a consensus. But even the most successful campaign of forced conformity to falsehoods cannot last forever—which brings me to the curious case of Indiana Fever player Sophie Cunningham...