Sublime

The New Right is not only opposed to civil discourse; it’s opposed to pretty much any discourse with those it considers the enemy. It’s a working strategy. Peter Thiel secretly funded a legal battle between Hulk Hogan, a man he didn’t even know, and the gossip website Gawker, one of the mainstays of sneering media progressivism. The result was the

Rayburn would say, “I’m not for sale”—and then he would walk away without a backward glance, as he had walked away from a President. His integrity was certified by his bankbook. At his death, at the age of seventy-nine, after decades as one of the most powerful men in the United States, a man courted by railroad companies and oil companies, his

Out on the campaign trail, Mann realized that the shift was continuing—and accelerating. He knew—and Austin knew—that Johnson was going to win. THEN, HOWEVER, a twenty-ninth candidate, Governor O’Daniel, entered the race—and any resemblance to Johnson’s first, victorious, campaign ended on the spot.

At every stage of Johnson’s political career, he had stretched the rules of the game to their breaking point, and then had broken them, pushing deeper into the ethical and legal no-man’s-land beyond them than others were willing to go. In this 1948 campaign—in this “all or nothing” campaign, his last chance—the pattern became even clearer. He stole