For a long time they masterfully triangulated racial and class resentments to enrich the upper classes while the Democrats gave up trying to offer alternatives. Within a couple of decades, the New Deal was dying, and “conservatism” was back, with an ideology, a coalition, presidents in office, and a vast customer base—er, voter base—of angry, aging white cranks. Only problem was, by opening the doors to the CHUDs and the riffraff, the Republicans let in a bunch of wackjobs who actually believed the intellectuals’ Noble Lie, or at least pretended to in order to out-crazy an increasingly batshit
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