Perot Predecessors and Successors

In my day, the lying, racist, xenophobic, white billionaire 'for the common man" was H. Ross Perot.  He had charts which meant he was truthy. He hated the elites and had phrases like 'not too smart' and 'giant sucking sound' of jobs leaving the country which were easy enough for a squirrel to remember. He leveled with the people, and by people I mean poor whites who loved him b/c he had a Texas accent, which meant he was salt of the earth, aka racist, Evangelical, homophobic, and not about that feminist shit of women getting healthcare. Therefore he was an honest man who surely knew about the American economy, even though he actually told stories about fighting Latin drug cartels, North Vietnamese, and the Black Panthers who were trying to stop his daughter's wedding. His rich white man paranoia fetishized any minority group into these ninjas who were out to get 'good ol' Perot.' He would tell stories about dangerous, wild bands of darkies trying to kill him.  Seriously. And this guy was LOVED...b/c he had his bullshit pie charts, accent, overt racist, notorious liar. And he was on his way to winning the presidency...in 1992. Perot's achilles heel was his own paranoia (he dropped out in the middle of his campaign b/c he thought the GOP and drug cartels were out to get him), his lack of party infrastructure by running as an independent, and not having social media to send his zombie-conservative msg out directly to his ppl in bite-sized doses of crazy.

In my dad's day this crazy ass white rich guy con man was John Birch. And there's a long live of rich white con men that go all the way back to the signing of the Constitution, and then further back to serial liars and genocidal murderers like Christopher Columbus. Trump's unhinged paranoia and lying is baked into the system.