deregulation, turn business loose, get government out of the way. it s been the dominant political idea of my adult life. it had a run in the 80s, the 90s, but did not create widespread prosperity. in fact, i think it helped create a lot of inequality that we live with today. smart america is the america of the professional class, the educated, the americrats, and that class, which starts with the belief that we all have a unique task has become a kind of aristocracy, where children are born into the meritocracy and their ticket is already punched before they ve even been tested. real america is trump s america, the right-wing populist america of the heartland that was a kind of rebellion against free america, when the promises of the older version of conservatism failed a lot of the country, what we got was a