Defunct but not debunked

I think it was in the preface to the General Theory that Keynes put his famous maxim on “some defunct economist” whose ideas often hold in bondage the minds of “practical people”.

Does anybody think JMK — or, rather, the retroactively reconstructed Keynes of the Keynesianisms — is exactly that very economist? I don’t know how practical most Western politicians are, but they are most definitely — even if subconsciously — held captive by his ideas (in the most primitive, catechistic interpretation). They may praise supply-side and all that, but their policies are instinctively Keynesian. The current US president is no exception: this budget deficit and the war and all that…