Marjorie Taylor Greene told Republicans at the RNC this week that Donald Trump “will make us wealthy.” What’s she really saying? And who is “us”? The reality is that the MAGA wing of the GOP (now fully in control of the party), and the right-wing billionaires who fund the think tanks and networks that keep it alive, do have a very specific idea about how America should be governed.

And there’s nothing new or modern about it.

It’s the second-most-ancient form of governance humanity knows (behind democracy), described in detail in works both modern and ancient, dating all the way back to ancient Sumeria, China, Mesoamerica, and Europe; some countries incorporate it into their official name to this day.

It’s called “kingdom.” Most people, when they think of a kingdom, think of a king: a ruler with absolute power over his subjects. Absolute immunity for all official acts. A monarch accountable to nobody except his own whims.

And, of course, six Republicans on the Supreme Court just this month granted that very sort of power to the American presidency, an abomination completely at odds with the form of government our Founders and Framers created and generations of Americans fought and died to preserve for us, our children, and our grandchildren.

But kingdoms are also economic systems. In many regards, in fact, the economics of a kingdom are more essential to understanding how power is acquired, wielded, and held over time by the sovereign and their class—in defiance of the majority of the people—than any other single factor.

In a kingdom, as in a democratic republic, there are essentially three economic classes: the........

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