Wouldn’t you rather try Hopium? Many of us have them in our lives or in our families, people who over the Trump years slid from left to right. For some it was the terror and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. For others it began sooner than 2020. Most are unknowns, but they often follow better-knowns down the rabbit hole. Michelle Goldberg considers the phenomenon in light of an In These Times essay by Kathryn Joyce (“The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption“) and Jeff Sharlet (“The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War“) and with a little help from Naomi Klein’s “Doppelganger.” Goldberg writes: There have been plenty of high-profile defectors from the left in recent years, among them the comedian Russell Brand, the environmentalist-turned-conspiracy-theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the journalist Matt Taibbi, a onetime scourge of Wall Street, who was recently one of the winners of a $100,000 prize from the ultraconservative Young America’s Foundation. What gives this migration political significance, however, are the ordinary people following them, casting off what they view as a censorious liberalism for a movement that doesn’t ask anyone to “do the work” or “check your privilege.” Joyce and Sharlet write, “We, the authors of this article, each count such losses in our own lives, and maybe you do, too: friends you struggle to hold onto despite their growing allegiance to terrifying ideas, and friends you give up on, and friends who have given up on you and the hope you shared together.” What…