The franchise sold the feeling, the market monetized it, the algorithm routed it, grievance politics weaponized it, and the public paid the bill.

Over half a century ago, economist John Kenneth Galbraith offered a sharp observation about modern conservatism: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness”.