Last week, The New Yorker published what appears to be a 2017 National Security Council memo that describes me as the leader of a “network” of Obama officials working in concert to “undermine President Trump’s foreign policy.” Sure, all the former Obama officials — including me — have criticized President Trump’s foreign policy, and would like to see Democrats win elections. But the memo is deeply strange. Written in the same language that a normal National Security Council would use to describe Al Qaeda or ISIS, it refers to a “War Room,” “allied journalists,” and an “ops chief.” Never before, it seems, have a few guys with podcasts, academic postings and Twitter accounts constituted such a powerful evil empire.

What’s clear in reading the document, though, is that whoever wrote this conspiracy theory either believes it, or has chosen to believe it. Why does this conspiracy theory mind-set matter? And what does it tell us about the state of our politics today?