Here's what happening.

A Collective Delusion/Mass Psychosis/Psychological Warfare works on your brain. Quite literally. You can read about this in the books of Norman Doidge on Neuroplasticity.
To put it plainly, your critical thinking skills/cognitive processing within certain parameters are turned-off through tactics of mind-control/thought reform.
This is colloquially known as the MIND-SNAP or a "kidnapped mind", or mind-capture.
Dr. Pavlov was the first to apply the scientific method to this. But then, the Soviets usurped his work in order to create the "New Soviet Man", which would essentially have been a race of automatons.
God help us all.