America's decline from Cold War victor to “a house divided against itself” is not the result of external threats, but of irrational beliefs that spread like contagions, sickening “We the People” while enriching special interests that profit from fear and division.

Mind Viruses: America's Irrational Obsessions shows in meticulous detail how the COVID-19 “crisis” and every other “crisis” that has afflicted the US and the West since 2001 have all followed the same script. We are told that some terrifying new threat is coming to get us, and that we must trust and obey central authority to protect us. We are then presented with a “solution” that will save us. “Salvation” requires accepting the suspension of our constitutional rights and the transfer of trillions of dollars in public money to the interests that supply the countermeasures.

Gripped by fear, the populace becomes easy to manipulate and receptive to irrational ideas that supplant common sense, established facts, and logic. Drawing on writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Carl Jung, and René Girard, Leake illuminates how and why these destructive notions spread like a viral contagion.

Those who retain their reason and question the veracity of the “threat,” or the vaunted “solution” are branded dangerous spreaders of misinformation, scapegoated, and viciously punished.

During the pandemic, the COVID-19 vaccine was idolized as the liberator and savior of mankind, despite its failure to prevent infection. Similar “faith communities” have coalesced around the issues of racism, transgender medicine, Ukrainian nationalism, and climate change. Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions examines the people, events, and interests that have produced these mental contagions that imperil our constitutional republic, and how we can immunize our minds against the next mind virus that is released on us.