You think you know Bernie Sanders.

The democratic socialist. The finger-wagging senator from Vermont. The man who honeymooned in the Soviet Union and almost won the Democratic nomination twice.

You don’t know the half of it.

A new book reveals that young Bernie Sanders built a homemade device designed to harness sexual energy and produce explosive orgasms. He slept on a five-foot copper-wire prayer mat to channel a mystical force called “orgone.” And his intellectual heroes included a psychoanalyst who died in federal prison for selling fake orgasm machines.

This man received 13 million votes in 2016 and nearly 10 million in 2020.

America dodged a bullet. Possibly a spiked copper one.

The Orgone Accumulator Disciple

Dan Chiasson’s new book, “Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician,” details Sanders’ devotion to Dr. Wilhelm Reich.

Reich was an Austrian psychoanalyst and sexologist who believed he’d discovered a universal energy called “orgone” — a cosmic force heavily rooted in sexuality that supposedly permeated the atmosphere.

Reich built shed-like devices called “Orgone Accumulators” — essentially boxes you’d sit in to absorb this invisible sexual energy. He claimed they could cure cancer, improve health, and produce what he called “cosmos-shattering orgasms.”

The FDA disagreed. They obtained an injunction barring Reich from selling his orgasm boxes across state lines. Reich violated the injunction. He died in federal prison in 1957, serving a two-year sentence.

That’s Bernie Sanders’ intellectual hero. A man who went to prison for selling fake orgasm machines.

Bernie Built His Own Version

According to Chiasson’s book, Sanders didn’t just read Reich. He built equipment.

In his early twenties, Sanders constructed a five-foot-long prayer mat made of spiked copper wires. He would sleep on it to channel “orgone energy.”

A grown man. Sleeping on spiked copper wires. To harness sexual cosmic energy.

This is the person who lectured America about income inequality and the moral failings of capitalism. The man who wagged his finger at billionaires and demanded revolution.

He was sleeping on a homemade orgasm mat.

Fascism Is Caused by Bad Orgasms, Apparently

Reich didn’t limit his theories to health.

He believed there was a direct correlation between sexual repression and fascism. He “connected political liberation with the cultivation of cosmos-shattering orgasms.”

The theory, roughly translated: if people had better orgasms, they wouldn’t become fascists.

Sanders absorbed this worldview at the University of Chicago, where he read Reich alongside Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. He wasn’t just studying political theory. He was constructing an ideology where sexual liberation and socialist revolution were the same project.

Capitalism represses your orgasms. Socialism liberates them. That’s the intellectual foundation of the man who almost ran the American economy.

The Rape Fantasy Essay That Never Went Away

Sanders’ relationship with sexuality and politics didn’t end with copper wire mats.

During his presidential campaigns, an essay he wrote resurfaced containing statements that would end any other politician’s career.

“A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.”

He also wrote: “Do you know why the newspapers with the articles like ‘Girl 12 raped by 14 men’ sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?”

Sanders’ defenders called it “satire” about gender roles. His critics called it exactly what it reads like — a deeply disturbing window into how a young socialist thought about women and sexuality.

Combined with the orgone obsession, the Reich devotion, and the copper wire mat, a pattern emerges: Bernie Sanders spent his formative years consumed by fringe sexual theories wrapped in revolutionary politics.

The “Forced Chastity” Crusade

At the University of Chicago, Sanders wrote an article in the student newspaper arguing against the college’s housing policy that barred women from living off campus and prohibited male visitors in women’s housing.

He called it an “oppressive code of morality” that amounted to “forced chastity.”

A university enforcing dormitory rules was, in Sanders’ mind, sexual oppression comparable to the forces that produce fascism.

This is the ideological lens through which Sanders viewed the world. Every rule was oppression. Every boundary was repression. Every institution that maintained standards was complicit in the cosmic suppression of orgone energy.

And 13 million Americans voted to make him president.

The Intellectual Pedigree Tells the Story

Freud. Marx. Reich.

Those were Sanders’ formative influences. Not Adam Smith. Not the Federalist Papers. Not the Constitution.

A psychoanalyst who believed all human behavior stems from repressed sexuality. A philosopher whose economic theories produced the deadliest regimes in human history. And a quack who went to prison for selling fake orgasm boxes.

That’s the intellectual foundation of democratic socialism in America. That’s what was on offer when Sanders packed arenas and nearly toppled Hillary Clinton.

Not a serious economic philosophy. A fever dream of sexual liberation, class warfare, and copper wire mats.

Vermont Elected This Man for Decades

Sanders has represented Vermont in Congress since 1991. Over three decades.

Vermont voters have known about the Soviet honeymoon. They’ve known about the rape fantasy essay. They’ve known about the socialist ideology.

Now they know about the orgone mat.

And they’ll probably reelect him anyway. Because Vermont is Vermont, and Bernie is Bernie, and apparently sleeping on spiked copper wires to channel sexual cosmic energy is not disqualifying in the Green Mountain State.

The Man Who Almost Controlled the Economy

Here’s what matters beyond the absurdity.

Bernie Sanders nearly won the Democratic nomination in 2016. He pushed Hillary Clinton to the brink. He reshaped the party’s platform.

In 2020, he was the frontrunner until the party consolidated behind Biden on a single weekend.

Either time, a few breaks in his direction, and the man who built orgasm mats would have been in charge of the American economy.

His policy proposals included nationalizing healthcare, breaking up banks, imposing wealth taxes, and restructuring the energy sector. Trillions in new spending. Fundamental transformation of the American economic system.

Designed by a man whose intellectual framework was built on Marxism and cosmic orgasm theory.

His Office Didn’t Respond

The Daily Caller asked Sanders’ office for comment.

They didn’t respond.

What would they say? “The Senator’s views on orgone energy have evolved”? “The copper wire mat was a youthful experiment that doesn’t reflect his current policy positions”?

Some things are beyond spin. A homemade orgasm device is one of them.

A Reminder of What Was Almost President

America has a remarkable ability to forget how close it comes to disaster.

Bernie Sanders — orgone enthusiast, rape fantasy essayist, Soviet honeymooner, devotee of a man who died in prison for selling fake orgasm machines — came within a handful of primary victories of controlling the most powerful office on Earth.

Twice.

The new book isn’t just entertaining. It’s a reminder that the American political system sometimes elevates people whose private beliefs would disqualify them from managing a small business, let alone a superpower.

Bernie Sanders slept on spiked copper wires to harness sexual cosmic energy.

And 13 million people voted to give him the nuclear codes.

Sleep well, America. You dodged that one.