Almost exactly seven years ago, I made the first of what would ultimately be three or four pilgrimages to the flagship annual gathering of Canadian conservatism. To say that it didn’t disappoint would be something of an understatement. The first panel alone, in fact, proved to be such an interesting case study in conservatism that if I’d decided to leave the conference center and get back on the train then and there, the trip would still have been worth the trouble.

The panel in question featured one Adam Guillette of something called the “Moving Picture Institute”: a Koch-affiliated outfit which “promotes freedom through film” in the form of right-wing cinema enjoyed by God-knows-who. In the span of only a few minutes, Guillette delivered a spiel that has lingered in my memory ever since as the ultimate distillation of conservative victimhood and cultural grievance. For what it’s worth, the basic thrust of the speech was sound enough from a messaging point of view: effective political storytelling, as Guillette argued, is all about emotion, and good populist agitprop generally employs a David vs. Goliath framing.

In this particular room, of course, what this actually implied sounded like a discarded segment from a 2010 episode of The Colbert Report: Guillette waxing with absolutely zero irony about the need for stories featuring underdog billionaires and salt-of-the-earth petroleum executives put upon by the dark forces of Big Ozone. “The Left,” which in his mind seemed to include everyone and everything even one iota à gauche of right-wing conservatism, was — as I was surprised to learn — hegemonic almost everywhere in the culture: extending from schools and universities to Hollywood and popular children’s literature, the latter being especially complicit in spreading anti-capitalist ideology to the masses.