reviled

A Peruvian priest who founded liberation theology, a movement advocating an active role for the Roman Catholic Church in fighting poverty and injustice but reviled by some as Marxist, has died.

In her book Ringmaster, Ms Riesman argues that to understand the 78-year-old's rise, fall and comeback in American politics is to see it through the lens of professional wrestling - its art of blending fiction and reality, its psychology of elevating emotion through hyperbole, and its ability to transform the reviled into the righteous.

"He and his base live in a binary psychological world, in which all that is dirty and clean, bad and good, reviled and revered, criminal and virtuous, feminine and masculine, and non-white and white must be kept apart lest the former in these binaries contaminate the latter."

He and his base live in a binary psychological world, in which all that is dirty and clean, bad and good, reviled and revered, criminal and virtuous, feminine and masculine, and non-white and white must be kept apart lest the former in these binaries contaminate the latter.

This would seemingly make for a very obvious debate strategy: point out all the things that make Vance so reviled at every possible opportunity, hammer Vance for his unpopular policies, and be merciless with his less-than-winning personality.