Epic voter fraud. Financial firms making bad investment decisions because they are too “woke.” Plots to replace white people with immigrants. QAnon. Only the tip of the iceberg.

I won’t bore you with a laundry list of kooky conservative ideas; just read the newspaper on any given idea and you get the idea. The point is, from the grassroots to the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court, many important right-wing activists are out of touch with basic aspects of reality. And they are not embarrassed to show it in public, doubling and tripling down on one demonstrably false claim after another, even when it’s not obvious how it helps them with voters.

Despite its penchant for the ridiculous, the Right remains far more effective at altering reality than liberals or leftists are. This paradox of American politics has been around for some time. The most consequential recent example is the country’s disastrous war of choice against Iraq, based entirely on lies, cynical manipulation, and smarmy optimism.