Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, Dan Quayle, Bob Dole, Jack Kemp, George W Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

It’s hard to tar all these people with a single brush. There are some real dumb asses in that list, people who couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag, but who compensate with real mouth. There are a few smarter people on there. There are one or two pretty smart and accomplished folks on there, even. But there is one overriding characteristic that marks them all.

Each is/was completely, unutterably, tragically out of touch with reality. Many of them were just too plain stupid to know better: Reagan, Quayle, McCain and Palin spring to mind. The most talented in this crowd, however, bent and twisted logic and facts to make reality conform to theoretical ideologies designed not to improve conditions for all Americans, but rather to play into existing prejudices and pathologies, in order to game an election system rife with opportunities for hacking and hackery, for the furtherment of the plantation economy.

Until the Industrial Revolution, the plantation economy was the economic engine of the United States, even though slavery was limited mainly to the Southern states and some new territories. Even at the start of mass manufacturing, the cotton of the South fed the jennies of Lowell, Mass. American politics, American diplomacy, American growth, American power all revolved around maintaining a favorable trade status for American cash crops. All of that depended on a permanent underclass of cheap labor – in this case, for the price of a few mouthfuls a day, and a few sets of clothes, as well as a few roofs over a few beds. What some might call a “living” wage.

Although supplanted by the factories of the North and shattered by the Civil War, the basic economic model of the United States never changed: cheap labor, mass production of salable commodities and favorable trade conditions. Only this time, the profit margins had to be boosted in order to account for actually paying a “living” wage, but the new masters of the universe, the robber-barons, found many ways around that, didn’t they? (“I owe my soul to the company store.”) And the most marginalized members of society – Catholic immigrants, Mexicans, Chinese and of course the former slaves – seemed to always be the ones being exploited.

The ascendance of the labor movement, since the start of the 20th century, has not-accidentally coincided with the growth of electoral reform, including landmarks like women’s suffrage, the Voting Rights act, and the franchise for 18-year-olds.

In contrast, the growth of the conservative movement has been based on protectionist trade and a laissez-faire capitalism against anything that stands in the way of cheap resources, especially labor, on the ridiculous economic theory that the profit of a few are actually the profit of all, because the business of America is Business. As well as protectionist voting rules, and laissez-faire campaign finance laws.

Against this backdrop, Nominee Trump is just another member of the club. He might not be the candidate they wanted, but he’s both a plutocratic plantation master and a reality-denying dumb ass, so in retrospect he seems somehow inevitable, now, doesn’t he?