They’re Not Crazy: And That Should Concern You a Lot More Than If They Were

They’re Not Crazy: And That Should Concern You a Lot More Than If They Were

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #948: Saturday, June 27th, 2026.

Let me tell you something that took me a long time to be willing to say out loud.

It would be easier if they were crazy.

I mean that. It would be a relief.

Because “crazy” is a door you get to close. “Crazy” means there’s nothing to study, nothing to learn…nothing coming for you that you have to understand. You just shake your head…you say “bat-shit insane,” you feel a little superior...and you go make a sandwich.

I get the appeal. I really do.

But I’m here to take that comfort away from you. Because it’s false. And false comfort is the most expensive thing you can buy.

So here’s the deal.

Almost none of what you have watched these last several years is insane. Almost all of it makes perfect…cold…predictable sense…the moment you stop measuring it against “how a decent person behaves” and start measuring it against “how human beings have ALWAYS behaved when they want power and figure out how to get it.”

Stay with me. This is going to be uncomfortable. That’s how you know it’s worth your time.

First…why we reach for “crazy” in the first place

Look. Your brain is a lazy organ. I don’t mean that as an insult. I mean it loves you… and it’s trying to save you energy…and the cheapest explanation in the whole store is “that person is nuts.”

“Crazy” does three beautiful things for you…all at once.

ONE:

It requires no further thought. Case closed. No homework.

TWO:

It makes YOU the normal one. If they’re insane…then you…by contrast…are sane, and the world still makes the kind of sense you were raised to expect.

THREE:

And this is the big one…it promises the problem is temporary. Crazy burns itself out. Crazy can’t plan. Crazy trips over its own feet. So if it’s all just madness, you don’t actually have to DO anything. You just have to wait for the lunatic to fall down.

You see what just happened?

“Crazy” isn’t a diagnosis. It’s a permission slip. It’s permission to NOT pay attention.

And that, my friend…is the single most valuable gift you can hand to someone who is playing a long game.

Now, what’s actually going on

Here’s a rule I’d tattoo on the inside of your eyelids if you’d let me:

Behavior that keeps getting repeated is being rewarded.

That’s it. That’s the whole secret. Crazy people do NOT repeat the same behavior and keep winning.

Crazy gets you removed. Crazy gets you ignored. What you are watching is the opposite of that. You are watching behavior that keeps producing the result the person wanted.

That’s not madness.

That’s a strategy that works on you.

And not one bit of it is new.

The grievance…the constant insistence that we are the real victims…that everything was stolen…that the enemy is everywhere…that’s not a glitch.

Strongmen have run on grievance since before they could write it down. Grievance is rocket fuel. It bonds a crowd tighter than any promise of good times ever could. A starving man doesn’t need to be sold on bread. A humiliated crowd doesn’t need to be sold on revenge. You just point.

The loyalty tests…rewarding the people who’ll say the sky is green…and exiling the ones who’ll only say it’s blue…that’s not insanity either.

That’s the oldest personnel department in history. You don’t want the competent. You want the committed. A genius who might tell you “no” is worth less to you than a fool who never will. Every court of every king figured this out.

The endless flooding…the thing where there’s a new outrage before you’ve finished being outraged at the last one…that’s not chaos. That’s a tactic with a name. You exhaust people. You make keeping up feel impossible. And an exhausted citizen does the most useful thing in the world for you:

They look away.

The redefining of words…“integrity,” “fraud,” “patriot,” “enemy”…until they mean whatever’s useful this morning...that’s not a broken mind. That’s the conscious capture of language, and it’s in every authoritarian manual ever assembled…because whoever controls the words gets to control the argument before it even starts.

None of this is a man falling down the stairs.

This is a man who knows exactly which stair you’re standing on.

Here’s the part nobody wants to sit with

I told you this would be uncomfortable. Here it comes.

“It makes sense” is far more frightening than “it’s crazy.” And THAT is the real reason people won’t accept it.

Think it through.

If it’s crazy…it’s rare. It’s a fluke. It can’t be copied…and it’ll pass.

But if it makes sense… if it’s just human nature running its oldest play with new tools…then it is none of those comforting things.

It is common. It is repeatable. It is teachable. It has worked in dozens of countries across thousands of years…and it can work again…anywhere…including the one you’re standing in.

That’s the truth your lazy…loving brain…is trying to protect you from.

Not “these specific people are uniquely evil.”

Something worse: this specific pattern is uniquely ordinary.

The Romans watched it. The Weimar Germans watched it…fourteen emergency decrees in a single year…until the emergency stopped feeling like an emergency…and started feeling like a Tuesday.

People in country after country have watched the exact same machine…assemble itself out of the exact same defensible-looking parts...

...and most of them…right up until the end…told themselves the same thing you’ve been tempted to tell yourself:

“This is too absurd to be real. It’ll collapse under its own weight. They’re just crazy.”

It didn’t collapse. They weren’t crazy.

They were understood too late.

So…why am I telling you this…and what do you do with it?

Because here’s the flip side, and it’s the only part that matters.

A thing that “makes sense” can be UNDERSTOOD.

And a thing you understand can be predicted. And a thing you can predict…you can prepare for. And a thing you can prepare for, you can beat.

You cannot fight a fog. “They’re insane” is a fog. It gives you nothing to grab.

But “they are running a known play, for known reasons, with known moves”…friend, that’s not a fog. That’s a map. And the people running the play are praying….I mean f*cking PRAYING…that you keep choosing the fog.

Because the fog asks nothing of you. The map asks everything.

So here is what I want from you today. Just this.

The next time you feel that little wave of relief wash over you…that warm, easy, “ahh, they’re just bat-shit crazy” feeling…

I want you to recognize it for exactly what it is.

It’s not an insight.

It’s an off-ramp. And it leads exactly where they want you to go.

Stay on the road. Look at the whole thing. Name it for what it is.

It makes sense. That’s the bad news. That’s also the only reason we have a chance.

Now…I told you something big just now, and I did it fast.

I told you it all makes sense. That it’s not madness…it’s a playbook. That the followers aren’t a mystery and the slow-motion nothing-burger you keep waiting to “blow over” is actually the plan working exactly as designed.

And maybe a part of you is nodding...while another part is whispering, “okay Jack… prove it.”

Good. You SHOULD make me prove it.

So I did.

I wrote the long version. The one with the receipts.

It’s called “Why It All Makes Sense,” and it’s for paid subscribers…because it took real work…and because the people who pay for this are the people building the map with me.

Here’s a taste of what’s waiting behind that door:

👉The Yale research showing the smartest people are often the best at fooling themselves... and why your better argument makes it WORSE, not better.

👉The eight specific psychological levers that let good, decent people switch off their own conscience…without ever noticing they did it. You will recognize every single one from this year’s headlines.

👉Why repeating a lie makes it feel true even to people who already KNOW it’s a lie… and the newer finding that’s somehow worse than that.

👉Why this will never arrive as a coup... and why a boring little POSTAL RULE is more dangerous than a tank.

👉And the one sentence I find more frightening than anything else I’ve written: why “it makes sense” terrifies people more than “they’re crazy”…and why your gut keeps sprinting away from it.

Every claim sourced. Every link live. I even left IN the places where the science is still being argued over…because I’m not here to sell you a tidy story. I’m here to hand you a map you can actually trust.

Look…the people running this play are PRAYING you stay comfortable. That you shake your head, mutter “bat-shit crazy,” and scroll on.

That comfort is the cheapest gift you can give them.

So don’t.

Come the rest of the way. Subscribe, read the whole thing…and walk away never seeing a news cycle the same way again. The paid article drops later today. You’ll never see things the same way again.

#HoldFast… all the way this time.

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. If you're the type who needs the receipts before you'll believe a word of it: that's the whole reason the paid companion exists. Names, studies, live links, and the disputes left in. I didn't ask you to trust me up there. I built the thing that lets you check.