MixedLos Angeles Review of BooksA reminder that outlandish conspiracism has a long history on the right ... Miller invites the reader to compare Robert Welch with Donald Trump, which makes sense on a surface level: both were bankrupted businessmen who lacked paternal warmth in their childhoods and had a penchant for conspiracism. But Welch had intellectual pretensions, was a faithful husband to his wife, and was a true believer who poured every dollar he earned into the John Birch Society. None of these qualities are present in Trump ... Edward H. Miller ends A Conspiratorial Life by warning that parts of the United States — filled with a cacophony of cable news pundits, talk radio hosts, and social media blowhards — have \'become Welchland.\' Indeed, Welch could only have dreamed of having the president’s ear, let alone of creating a conspiracy theory that would propel a mob through the doors and windows of the Capitol itself. The conspiratorial flank of the right is back and stronger than ever, albeit under the auspices of the My Pillow Guy instead of the inventor of the Sugar Daddy caramel pop.
