Disappointment and delusion

Robert Reich is getting on my last nerve.

I'll get back to that statement in a minute.

First, I'll digress to the ultimate story of the persistence of false beliefs. The story is the subject of the book When Prophecy Fails, by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter.

In 1954, a woman named Dorothy Martin (aka Marian Keech) led a cult that believed that the world would end on December 21, and that the faithful would be rescued by a flying saucer from the planet Clarion. When the prophecy failed to come true, instead of dashing the cult's faith, it actually made it stronger. Marian Keech, you see, soon received another message from Clarion: God had been so impressed with the steadfastness of the believers that He had intervened to save the Earth at the last moment.

I relate this story because it reminded me of the reaction to today's news that the FBI had concluded their investigation of Hillary Clinton's email practices and found nothing worth prosecuting. Far from calming Hillary's detractors, it only strengthened their conviction that she is evil incarnate.

Now, we know that the right wing has been after the Clintons for years, and that, when the House Committee on Benghazi had to finally give up on the idea that Hillary was responsible for the deaths of embassy personnel, they grasped at the straw of there being criminal activity in her handling of her emails. When the Committee finally gave up even on that, the right had only one hope left: that the FBI investigation would turn up something that they could use to prosecute Hillary.

Now, to anyone who paid attention, the facts never supported the indictment scenario, but hope springs eternal.

This brings me to Bernie Sanders's truest believers. Beginning with the assumption of Hillary's evil nature, their belief system included the following:

Hillary stole the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders, and

Hillary would surely be indicted (they shamelessly bought this from their own political enemies) and Bernie would miraculously get the nomination she had stolen from him.

But I suppose it was predictable that, when the miracle was not forthcoming, there would be a way to claim that that only made the case against Hillary stronger. Sure enough, the attacks against her intensified today, because the lack of an indictment merely reinforced the faithfuls' belief in Hillary's great powers: she is a criminal, her email server committed treason, and yet SHE GOT AWAY WITH IT! Yes, Hillary is so powerful, that even the FBI is afraid of her! In the cesspool that is politics, Hillary Clinton is no common criminal! She is MORIARTY!

So, finally, back to Robert Reich. He is perhaps the most public progressive proponent of the myth that Bernie Sanders still has a path to the Democratic presidential nomination. He has redoubled his attacks on Hillary Clinton in the wake of the FBI's failure to find any criminality in her email practices. I think Mr. Reich needs to take a deep breath, and perhaps count to ten, and ask himself what good can possibly come of continued attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Frankly, I think we should all thank the FBI for saving the Republic. It's a choice between putting the presidency in capable hands, and abandoning the country to the disaster that is Donald Trump.

But the true believers would rather look that gift horse in the mouth.