Well put. Here, here. Self-reliance.

Classifying and quantifying plots is a subjective business. As Tobias admits, “you can package plot any number of ways, and the way you package it decides what number you’ll end up with.” The point is that certain themes crop up again and again, independently of one another, in stories told around the world and throughout recorded history. These ideas don’t just shape the stories we make up—as we’ll see, they reflect the way we fundamentally understand and explain the world around us.

it is one of Christopher Booker’s basic plots that’s of most interest to us. He called it overcoming the monster. Every overcoming-the-monster story, Booker explains, unfolds essentially as follows. The story begins with a peaceful community learning of some menacing threat. A hero is called upon to battle the forces of evil. As the hero comes face to face with the evil, it seems that the evil is much more powerful than the hero. The hero may fall into the monster’s clutches. But the monster has one fatal weakness. Just when it seems that all hope is lost, the hero is able to exploit that weakness and vanquish the monster. The shadow is lifted, and peace returns to the community. We’ve already seen this pattern played out in Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Jaws, and Bond. And we saw it at the very beginning of the chapter, in David Icke’s conspiracy theory of reality.

Icke’s grand conspiracy theory is a classic overcoming-the-monster story; it traces every twist and turn, from the peaceful golden age of humanity and the looming shadow of evil, to the climactic final confrontation and the promise of a return to peace. It’s a dramatic, ongoing saga, and it casts us all in the starring role. And Icke is not unique. All conspiracy thinking plays on archetypes of good overcoming evil. We’ll delve into the psychology of monsters shortly, but first let’s see what makes for a good hero.

The best conspiracy theories have all the trappings of a classic underdog story. The enemy is formidable. From the Elders of Zion to the New World Order, from the weapons-industrial complex to Big Pharma, the names given to the conspirators often play up their allegedly overwhelming power and influence. Like every villain, however, the conspiracy has one fatal weakness; if only their schemes can be exposed to the light, the enemy becomes powerless. And the motive for the fight is noble. Christopher Booker notes that archetypal heroes act not to further their own interests, but on behalf of others. “David challenges Goliath because the giant is threatening his country, Israel; James Bond’s villains are threatening England, the West, all mankind; Darth Vader, in Star Wars, is threatening to impose his tyranny over the entire universe.” And according to conspiracy theories, the conspiracy is a threat to the freedom, liberty, and well-being of all mankind.

At first blush, it seems odd that someone would embrace a position of disadvantage. But as we’ve seen, there are upsides to being an underdog. Without conspiracy theories, people like Wakefield, Duesberg, Jones, and Garrison are just wrong. If there is an ongoing campaign to smear their reputations and discredit their findings, however, they become courageous heroes pushing the frontiers of science by selflessly battling a powerful, sinister foe on behalf of the unsuspecting public. Even more than making heroes out of a few renegades, though, conspiracy theories offer to make heroic underdogs of us all. A conspiracy theory is an invitation to join an enlightened but embattled minority—an elect few who bravely, selflessly speak truth to power. As Joseph Vandello notes, our understanding of underdogs is “shaped by inspirational archetypal stories of odds overcome.” In the real world, underdogs are, by definition, unlikely to prevail. In the stories we tell, however, the underdog always wins; good always triumphs over evil.

A small aside on the nature of "real monsters" subtitled "the Banality of Evil". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

What happens when I commodify myself?

GD thank you for adding that phrase to my lexicon. I now have a precise and cutting reason for the inevitable "why aren't you on social media?" question.

It feels like we have come full circle. Prostitution is the oldest profession as a feller used to say...

Belief works both ways. Without a strong nationalistic belief among the population of a nation, that nation dies. The war on Christianity has fatally weakened the belief system of Americans, and this has allowed, and even encouraged, the rise of atheism, Satanism, and Islam to take Christianity's place. When you create a faith vacuum by constantly bashing Christianity, you need to be prepared for the other faiths that will flood in, such as the cult of man-made global warming, and the cult of the Holocaust.