Orwell captured the infernal, twisted logic of the politics of collective delusion. If you believe something that differs from the social consensus, then no matter how illogical that consensus is, you are the one who is insane. Those who have the sense to state the obvious become the dangerous freaks in need of social quarantine. That’s precisely what we’re seeing at the moment.

And there’s plenty more crazy where that comes from. It’s astonishing to see how smoothly the logic of the transgender movement can be borrowed for a new movement of the “transabled”: people who feel like cripples trapped in a fully intact body, and who therefore demand the right to amputate unwanted limbs. If the body must be cut to fit one’s self-image, no matter how delusional, what’s to stop them except for the fact that they don’t yet serve anyone’s political agenda? Then there’s the newest front in identity politics, the claim that multiple personalities are not a disorder but merely a different way of organizing the mind. You have to admit, it’s the ultimate campaign for “diversity.”

Those of us who insist on maintaining that reality is external and the mind ought to conform to it, not the other way around, can expect to be written off as bigoted reactionaries, as the real crazies and wingnuts.

Because in an era when the insane are normal, the normal are insane.