ANS -- a captured comment on the desperate situation of conservatives.

Here is a comment from FaceBook that I thought was really good.  Do you know what a "stranded asset" is?  

David Clow

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. -- 1984

The trouble with their thinking is obvious, and it's not moral. It's that empirical evidence is an indispensable asset in self-interested capitalism. The solution that works is the solution that wins in the end, and that's the better mousetrap that sells. Trump and the GOP haven't just surrendered their claim to being the party of business; they've burned it down to become the party of socialized stasis and forced resistance to evolutionary capitalism because like the slaveholders who are their economic predecessors, they're sitting on assets that are on the verge of being stranded forever. Trump wants to open every square foot of America to fracking and mining at a moment when fossil fuels are being rendered almost (no, not entirely) unnecessary in maintaining the American standard of living. He wants women pregnant and barefoot at a moment when they're dominating in business, politics, academia, medicine and the military. The patriarchy is becoming a stranded asset under the leadership of an idiot misogynist throwback to the days when Hefner dated 20-year-olds. They know they have lost. They can feel it. Their pride compels them to reject anything their enemies tell them.