That was my starting point. I thought that the Teapublicans were all circus because they don’t have any substance to offer the working class. It might be true. In this essay I tried to imagine that they do have something of substance to offer people, but middle class voters just can’t or won’t see it. I tried to imagine that their story resonates with white working people but is not exclusive to them. Once I went looking for the underlying substance, it was right in front of my face in the form of meritocracy. I hadn’t seen it before because I had dropped the idea that the USA is meritocratic long ago. This doesn’t mean that the oligarchs who run the Teapublican party actually believe in the meritocracy. Just that it is the story that they peddle and it sits underneath why they win with the working class. So yes, circus is big, but I think there is something else.