Madison, North Carolina, September 19, 2026
One of the services provided by deplorable opinion leaders is to deliver to the deplorables a demonology designed to deceive them, enrage them, flatter the traits that make them deplorable, and exploit them politically. The deplorables perceive that someone is eating their lunch — no great feat of cognition. But if the deplorables somehow became capable of perceiving who really is eating their lunch, instead of their scapegoats, then America would become Denmark, instantly, just like that, overnight, and democracy would flourish.
During the 2024 election, the demonology boiled down to this: Immigrants are invaders, poisoning the blood of America, stealing jobs, voting illegally, and living on welfare. Democrats, allied with a “woke” radical left, hate America, steal elections, trample on deplorable freedoms, and are intentionally destroying America with weapons such as DEI and even empathy. The “deep state” is persecuting conservatives and standing in the way of a white, Christian America. A globalist elite headed by the likes of George Soros is using its billions to pull all the strings. If these demons are defeated, then a Norman Rockwell America in which prices never go up will arise from the ruins of what the demons have wrought, and the demons will all go back to whatever hell they came from and stay there.
There is only one thing about which the deplorables cannot be deceived. That’s the price of gasoline. In 2024, Trump promised the deplorables that he’d get the price of gasoline below $2 a gallon. They believed it and were counting on it. (In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, Trump told Fox News that the price of gasoline will drop to below $2 a gallon after the midterm elections.)
With the average price of gasoline in the U.S. now above $4 a gallon, the deplorables, shocked and betrayed, have to figure whom they should demonize for that. The revisions to the demonology differ.
MAGA types are almost scholars on the price of gasoline. Something like 60 percent of MAGA types correctly blame Trump and the Iran war for gasoline prices. Still, that leaves about 40 percent of MAGA types who blame Biden, or OPEC, or Iran, or something.
MAGA types dismiss most of Trump’s lies. They just don’t care. But if you lie to them about the price of gasoline, then an extraordinary 60 percent of them will actually wake up and take notice.
This is terrifying and marvelous at the same time. It’s terrifying that they’re so thick. But it’s marvelous that there is at least one way to get through to some of them.