“It is received doctrine among con artists,” Kevin Williamson has observed, “that every mark participates in the con — those who have been, and remain, blind to that are willfully blind.” This is the key to the success of Bannon’s marks’-ist-Leninism.

And that’s the thing I just cannot understand. I suppose I can get my head around it in the sense that I know a lot of people want to be marks. That desire is at the heart of vast swaths of human history. What I can’t do is get my heart around it. I just hate being taken for a fool by liars so much, I can’t muster the emotional imagination to viscerally comprehend why Trump’s fans aren’t furious at him. Nor can I muster much sympathy for them, because at this point, to still believe that Trump isn’t the most glaringly obvious, self-serving, and oafish liar to dominate American life since at least the advent of mass communication is beyond me. I can only assume they want to be lied to.

I totally get why conservatives get angry about Biden’s lies—real or alleged. But I don’t understand how anyone—TV hosts and TV watchers alike—can shriek about the evils of lying in general, and about Biden’s presidential deceptions in particular, while yawning at, or defending, Trump’s. All my life, conservatives, including me, have inveighed against the left’s double standards. The Trumpy and Trump-enabling factions of the right today aren’t merely shot through with what should be mortifying hypocrisy, they’ve made a double standard for a con artist their central organizing principle.