For well over a year now, I have been talking about the Trump Effect™ and how it may be the single most important part of this election. Don’t get me wrong, Clinton winning is most certainly the end of America as an on-going concern. She will invite in 50 million foreigners, confiscate guns, auction off everything that is not nailed down in exchange for cash to her slush fund. She will weaponize the court by packing it with coreligionists. America will have become a banana republic and there is no peaceful way of returning from it.

That may be the end result, even if Trump wins the election, but what comes next will include a whole lot of people who are now fully aware of the reality of the political class. There are exponentially more people “fully woke” now than a year ago. Official Conservatism™ is circling the bowl, largely because the grassroots have looked around and decided guys like Jonah Goldberg are just low-tax liberals who hold them in contempt.

For a long time, the Cloud People have told the Dirt People that the great divide in America is between Liberals, who want to expand government and create a socialist utopia, and Conservatives that wish to restore limited government and a constitutional republic. The Bush administration put the lie to the latter and the mobilization of Wall Street behind someone’s wife in order to block Trump puts the lie to the former. Old school Progressive like Bernie Sanders are now outsiders on the Left.

In fact, among the Cloud People there is no divide. They unanimously agree that class solidarity comes before everything else. That’s made clear in this editorial from the Arizona Republic endorsing someone’s wife.

The 2016 Republican candidate is not conservative and he is not qualified.

That’s why, for the first time in our history, The Arizona Republic will support a Democrat for president.

This is the new team chant of Official Conservatism™. The logic here is akin to saying “They don’t have my favorite ice cream so I’m going to have rat poison instead.”

Trump responds to criticism with the petulance of verbal spit wads.

That’s beneath our national dignity.

By “our dignity” they are not speaking for you. You are not “our” and you better get that through your thick head.

Trump’s long history of objectifying women and his demeaning comments about women during the campaign are not just good-old-boy gaffes.

They are evidence of deep character flaws. They are part of a pattern.

These are not the words of serious people thinking seriously about the country. These are the words of teenage girls gossiping about one another in the bathroom. That’s what is dawning on many Dirt People. These feckless airheads allegedly carrying the people’s banner in the media are more concerned with their status among the beautiful people than anything else. There is no divide among the Cloud People. They think the Dirt People are revolting.

And increasingly the Dirt People are revolting. Even people like Ace of Spades are moving toward a break with Official Conservatism™ and the GOP.

The party — not just the party;the writers who are supposed to have telling the truth as their first mission, but instead of become nonstop liars all the time decrying Trump as a liar himself — has declared war on all of the Lessers beneath their station, those not in The Media and who should, therefore, not have quite as much of a say in things as they themselves have.

They’ve made themselves into exactly what they pretend to oppose — and exactly what I do in fact oppose.

Guys like Jim Geraghty, and other NR-types, used to quote Ace all the time, but now they don’t know his name. The reason is class loyalty. Ace has his ideas and loyalty to the managerial class is simply not a concern. Given the choice between Trump and Clinton, he rationally picks Trump. For the National Review types, this is treason. Class loyalty trumps everything or else, so Ace is now dead to them.

The sadness and frustration you see in that Ace post turns up all over as people begin to see the reality of their condition. More than a few look back at their support for Bush, for example, and wonder how all those big shots in conservative media were so wrong. They wonder why they never talk about it, much less admit it. The conclusion many are making is that it was just a scam, a con, a way to turn the virtue of conservative voters into a vice in support of the Progressive project.

Eric Hoffer wrote “What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.” That’s what happened with the conservative movement. By the 1980’s they had their charismatics, Reagan and Buckley. Next came the money making opportunities in talk radio and book selling. By the time Bush came along it was a racket, a bust out, where the only real concern was how much money these people could stuff into their pockets before the game was up.

The game is up now and the Dirt People are waking up to it.