GroupThink
The American Virus
Summary:
This essay explores the corrosive power of groupthink in American culture, exposing how both political tribes—Republicans and Democrats—suppress dissent in favor of tribal conformity. Through vivid examples ranging from Trump rallies to academic cancel culture, it argues that obedience, not ideology, drives mass behavior. Drawing on psychological studies and historical events, the piece shows how consensus becomes a drug, punishing independent thought. It challenges readers to resist the dopamine of belonging, break from the herd, and reclaim honest thinking—even at personal cost. The real threat to democracy isn’t disagreement—it’s silence, enforced by the crowd and mistaken for truth.
The pastor's been fucking the organist for three years. Everyone knows. The wife knows. The elders know. The organist's husband probably knows. This Sunday, that pastor will preach about the sanctity of marriage, and everyone will nod. That's groupthink. And it's killing us.
Republicans wear the same red hat to rallies where they chant in unison about freedom. They don't see the irony. Democrats hold six-hour meetings to craft land acknowledgments nobody listens to, then wonder why they lose elections. Neither side realizes they're the same disease with different symptoms.
We've perfected this. Made it our chief export after bombs and debt.
Watch a trump rally. Really watch it. Thousands of people moving in sync, chanting the same three words, wearing the same Chinese-made hat. It's North Korea with worse production values. "Lock her up." "Stop the steal." "Build the wall." The words don't matter. The synchronization does.
They expelled Liz Cheney. Not for being wrong—she was right about January 6th. They expelled her for saying it out loud. For breaking formation. That's the first rule of groupthink: the crime isn't the lie. The crime is naming it.
They won't talk to anyone outside their bubble. Can't. Won't. For ten years I've tried to engage trumpers in actual conversation. In the rare cases they don't just walk away, they recite identical talking points. Verbatim. Like they're reading from the same script. When I've spoken to one trumper, I've spoken to them all. Same phrases. Same deflections. Same rage when you puncture the bubble. It's self-reinforcing—they only talk to each other, which confirms they're right, which makes them talk only to each other. The circle tightens until reality itself becomes negotiable.
Democrats are no better, just quieter. They practice faculty-lounge groupthink. Pronoun circles before discussing budget cuts. Diversity statements that everyone copies from the same template. They cannibalize their own for sins that didn't exist five years ago. Al Franken made a tit joke in 1987? Gone. Someone questions whether biological males in women's sports might be complicated? Canceled. The group doesn't think. It performs thinking while enforcing conclusions it reached by Twitter consensus.
The tech companies weaponized all of it. Facebook's own research—their own fucking research—proved they amplify anger because anger drives engagement. Engagement drives ad revenue. Ad revenue drives stock prices. They know grandma shares more QAnon posts when she's pissed. They optimize for it. Your uncle wasn't always crazy. Algorithm made him that way.
During COVID, Republicans literally died rather than admit they were wrong. Herman Cain tweeted COVID was fake. COVID killed him. His account kept tweeting anyway—the propaganda machine doesn't stop for death. Republicans kept dying. They chose group loyalty over lung function. That's not politics. That's a death cult with tax breaks.
Democrats had their own COVID religion. "Follow the science," they said, except when science said schools could reopen. Except when it said cloth masks were theater. Except when it questioned whether locking kids inside for two years might fuck them up. The group had decided. Confirming science was real. Complicating science was heresy.
My neighbor flew a "Trust Science" flag while refusing to read any study published after his team decided what science meant. That's not trust. That's faith. And faith in politicians is always misplaced.
QAnon believes Democrats drink baby blood. Educated people. People with jobs. People who raised children. They believe there's a cabal of pedophile cannibals running the world, and Donald trump—a man who raw-dogged a porn star while his wife was nursing—is god's chosen warrior against them.
The left believes words are violence but actual violence is justified if it's for the right cause. They put trigger warnings on Shakespeare but celebrate when someone punches a Nazi, not realizing they've defined Nazi as "anyone who disagrees with me."
This is how democracies die. Not through coups. Through consensus. Everyone knows something's wrong. Nobody wants to be first to say it.
We've always been this weak.
Solomon Asch proved it in 1951. Put people in a room. Show them lines of obviously different lengths. Have actors say the wrong answer. Seventy-five percent caved at least once. They denied their own eyes rather than disagree with the group. That was just lines on cards.
Stanley Milgram went darker. Yale, 1961. He told volunteers to electrocute strangers. Two-thirds went all the way to what they thought was lethal. They weren't evil. They were obedient. Someone in a lab coat said continue, so they continued. The screaming didn't stop them. Authority did.
The neuroscience is brutal: when we agree with our group, our brains release dopamine—same chemical as cocaine. When we disagree, the anterior cingulate cortex fires—same region that processes physical pain. We're literally addicted to consensus. Allergic to independent thought.
History's worst disasters began in rooms where everyone knew better. McCarthy's witch hunts. Enron. Iraq.
The 2008 collapse—every banker knew those mortgages were dogshit. Loans to people with no income, no assets, no chance of paying. They bundled this garbage, called it "collateralized debt obligations"—because groupthink includes agreeing to use words that hide the crime. They sold these CDOs to pension funds. To your retirement account. Meanwhile, they bet against them.
The ratings agencies rated them triple-A. The regulators regulated nothing. Everyone in those rooms knew the bubble would pop. Nobody wanted to stop dancing before the music did. When thirty million people lost their homes, when retirement accounts vaporized, when the economy collapsed, they acted surprised. Got bailouts. Kept their bonuses. The groupthink was so strong they convinced themselves they were victims too.
Churches perfected this centuries before Wall Street. The pew is the original social network. You sit with people who decide if you belong. The sermon draws boundaries. Doubt is fine if it ends in renewed faith. Keep doubting, you're out.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann called it the spiral of silence. You think you're alone in your opinion, so you shut up. Your silence makes others think they're alone, so they shut up. The spiral tightens until the majority thinks it's the minority. The minority rules by volume.
Smart people watch crowds nod along to madness. They know it's madness. They say nothing. They tell themselves they're waiting for the right moment. The moment never comes. The crowd doesn't calm—it consumes. Intelligence without courage is just cowardice with vocabulary.
The antidote isn't moderation. Moderates have their own groupthink—the desperate need to seem reasonable while the house burns. "Both sides have a point," they say, as one side denies climate change and the other claims math is racist.
The antidote is admitting you're infected. Your thoughts aren't yours. They came pre-packaged, algorithm-delivered, tribe-approved.
Test yourself: Name one belief you hold that would get you uninvited from Thanksgiving. Can't? You're not thinking. You're cosplaying intelligence while marching in formation.
The fix is honesty brutal enough to cost you friends. The courage to say "that line is longer" when everyone swears it's shorter. To admit the pastor's fucking the organist. To say trump lost. To say Biden's senile. To think in public where it hurts.
Smart people can't save the herd. The herd doesn't want saving. But you can refuse to join it. Speak. Write. Think out loud. Make them uncomfortable. That discomfort is intelligence trying to resurrect itself.
Orwell was an optimist. He thought we'd need to be forced. We volunteered. We downloaded the app. We pay for premium surveillance.
The hardest part about groupthink? It feels like thinking. The dopamine hit of agreement. The comfort of consensus. The warmth of belonging. Only when you step outside do you realize you weren't thinking at all.
You were drowning in company.
The crowd always wins. Until someone refuses to play.
