The thing is, while corruption by big money does happen — it’s the main force keeping zombie ideas alive — it doesn’t lie behind every policy dispute. Sometimes serious analysts just disagree. And it’s worrying that some of the Sanders people can’t tell the difference.

But the right is where the paranoid style goes hand in hand with real power, and can do real damage. Indeed, it can be deadly.

This is obvious when it comes to climate change, where conspiracy-theory-fueled denial plays a big role in blocking action, and hence poses an existential threat to civilization.

At first, it wasn’t clear whether right-wing paranoia was also hampering the response to Covid-19. But recent reporting makes it clear that one major reason the U.S. has lagged far behind other countries in testing for the coronavirus — an essential step in containing its spread — was that Trump didn’t want to believe that there was a crisis. After all, recognizing that we face a serious problem might hurt his beloved stock market.

This desire to minimize the danger to the market distorted the whole government response to the outbreak. Some have drawn parallels to the run-up to the Iraq war, when the Bush administration’s evident desire to be given a rationale for war skewed intelligence toward seeing nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

In today’s case, analysis was skewed toward not seeing a threat — and the skew was enabled, in part, by claims that all the evidence that there was, indeed, a threat was a hoax perpetrated by the liberal news media.

And there is little evidence, even now, that the Trump administration is taking the reality of Covid-19 seriously. While the administration is finally asking for additional funds to fight the disease, the sums it has suggested seem grotesquely inadequate.