I, on the other hand, remain a philistine and a hayseed.

As a result, the gullible hayseeds of Zaks’s River City just have to sort of fall in line behind him.

“At a certain point you’re going to ask yourself, ‘Why are you in favor of lower taxes and less regulations so they can call us bigots and hayseeds and deplorables and tell lies about us?’”

He chose his favored venue of the Aspen Ideas festival, where his transfixing hayseed act has been a perennial marquee attraction.

The Nonconformist was firmly in the populists’ corner, but 150 miles to the north, Kansas’s leading Republican newspaper derided the reformers as a gang of disgruntled hayseeds.