Conservatism, wrote the political philosopher Russell Kirk, held that “there exists an enduring moral order.” The prevailing Trumpism, conversely, has no concern for morality, writes LBJ School of Public Affairs scholar Kettl; it is “focused squarely on acquiring, keeping, and using political power” and has no use for the niceties of checks and balances. Moreover, its enemy is not just the “woke left,” but also includes traditional Republicans and their moral sensibilities. The “idea factory” of Kettl’s title weds tech-bro libertarianism with right-wing activism and grassroots zealotry, all with a transactional approach “to build power, without necessarily creating sustained relationships among any of the players” and discarding fellow travelers once they cease being useful. (Witness Marjorie Taylor Greene.) Kettl traces much of the current dynamic, with outrage replacing principle, to the Covid-19 pandemic and populist resistance to government public health mandates; onetime outlier issues became central as this resistance extended to demands for parental control of curricula, book bans (with Florida, Iowa, and Texas leading the way), revoking guarantees of anti-LGTBQ+ rights, rejection of experts and academics, old-fashioned racism, and a profound mistrust of government. As all this was going on, the right-wing political elite was arrogating power unto itself, especially by pushing the notion of a “unitary executive” who controlled every aspect of government. “The concentration of power was one of the things that the country’s founders worried most about,” Kettl notes, but that has proved no deterrent as the Trumpist movement takes a slash-and-burn approach to upending the existing order. If successful, Kettl warns, “this would seriously, perhaps even fatally, wound America’s grand experiment in democracy.”