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Post-Pandemic555Lynn a slut. And like most cult leaders, no one in her family ever admitted to being wrong %u2014 ever. As a result, many interactions resulted in a great deal of dissonance, and Lynn would ask herself, %u201cWhy would my family say such things if they weren%u2019t true?%u201d To minimize the dissonance, she doubted her own beliefs, and gave credence to theirs. Even after being away from her family for years, a small part of her subconscious mind, deep inside, still kept doubting herself.My situation wasn%u2019t as severe as Lynn%u2019s, but it also involved dissonance. While growing up, I spent most of my time building things, from wooden push-carts and tree houses, to model airplanes and a hot rod. But I also collected stamps and coins, read Hardy Boys books, went to the movies, and really enjoyed riding my bike. But no matter what I did, my mom would routinely ask, %u201cWhy don%u2019t you play basketball?%u201d or %u201cWhy don%u2019t you have a girlfriend?%u201d It made no difference what I enjoyed doing, or how good I did something, the message I received was: it wasn%u2019t good enough, I should be doing something different. My dad really didn%u2019t pay much attention to me, but when he did, it was to suggest I should become a doctor. I was mechanically minded, my interests were geared more toward physics than biology, and a lot of what I did, could easily have evolved into an eventual job, then a career. But I knew, subconsciously, that no such job would have pleased my dad. So, each of my parents was a source of dissonance, and they planted seeds within my subconscious that it was their ideas, not mine, that mattered.As Lynn and I finished reading Hassan%u2019s book we each realized how our inner selves had been damaged by our parents%u2019 attitudes toward us. We also understood how their words shouldn%u2019t take precedence over our own. Of course, we%u2019d known this for a long time, but the damage had remained unresolved. It took this book, with its extensive documentation and footnotes, to explain in a comprehensive, rational way what had occurred, so we could now understand that our parents had not been omnipotent. Quite unexpectedly, a book about Donald Trump%u2019s ability to brainwash his followers, put us on the path to undoing our own brainwashing. We each felt a great weight had been lifted from us. Finding The