Amerika

When the scholarly class notices Reactionaries, they tend to react as if they’ve just noticed an asp at their feet.

These faux elites react with a prophylactic, psuedo-erudite epistemic closure argument designed to write reactionary sentiment out of any debate. Wise and Venerable scholar of the Cathedral Mark Lilla deploys pity, with all the condescending dislike and disgust that that particular hostile emotion entails below.

The reactionary is anything but a conservative. He is as radical and modern a figure as the revolutionary, someone shipwrecked in the rapidly changing present, and suffering from nostalgia for an idealized past and an apocalyptic fear that history is rushing toward catastrophe. And like the revolutionary his political engagements are motivated by highly developed ideas.

David Brooks, NYT House Conservative (i.e. Quasi-White Step ‘n Fetchit of the Cathedral) capes for the ongoing infliction of “progress” on its defenseless victims below. First he stokes the mordant, pearl-clutching fears of the cuck hivemind.

Reactionaries, whether angry white Trumpians, European nationalists, radical Islamists or left-wing anti-globalists, are loud, self-confident and on the march.

David Brooks, unlike those Conservatives, is no gibbering barbarian. He believes that ratiocination and the honey-sweet tone of reconciliation can still win the day. He must patiently lecture all three Conservatives who still read the New York Times out of that Basket of Deplorables.™ So what could steer such a vast Fifth Column of Philistines to the beckoning banners of Pepe Le Hate Frog Demonique? He offers us up a self-serving explanation below.

Reactionaries come in different stripes but share a similar mentality: There was once a golden age, when people knew their place and lived in harmony. But then that golden age was betrayed by the elites. “The betrayal of elites is the linchpin of every reactionary story,” Lilla writes.

Soon, they believe, a false and decadent consciousness descended upon the land. “Only those who have preserved memories of the old ways see what is happening,” Lilla notes. Only the reactionaries have the wisdom to turn things back to the way they used to be, to “Make America Great Again.”

Perhaps the key to understanding the propaganda at work here is to patiently explain its untruths. It’s not the elites that do us in unless we fault them for sleeping on the job and letting degenrates catamite about on the hallowed grounds of the Haute Culture Country Club. Calling people like Hillary Clinton, who willingly hired, trusted and associated with a woman who voluntarily wed Anthony Weiner elite is not acceptable. Such an affront to the English language requires the presence of pink HTML sarcasm tags.

So the problem an intelligent Reactionary identifes is not the elite. The problem is the people who allow Anthony Weiner to pretend that he is elite. The problem is the mob. Crowdism is the vehicle by which the cathedral of apostates empowers a mob of morons to elect and elevate a trolladytic shlub like Anthony Weiner in return for an unending stream of gimmedats. I personally have no problem with a genuine (“natural”) elite. That sort of a group would reclaim the term as a compliment rather than an insult.

Lilla gets two things correct.

1. Reactionaries react against Modernism.

2. Reactionaries are not Conservative.

He gets things correct for the wrong reasons. Reactionaries act against Modernism. We are consequentialist, as opposed to nostalgia-laden. Many Reactionaries miss the extent to which religious faith was treated with respect and local culture was revered in respected in the 1860s. Not many American Southern Reactionaries are out there asking if we can bring back Civil War field medicine. We’d prefer, as a logical choice, that the local surgeon at Huntsville Hospital not have a rusty, old hacksaw and a bottle of Ancient Age in the his medical bag. Even if that was how things got done back in The Golden Age.

We see history as a living and viable discipline that should be dedicated to identifying and understanding what worked in prior human generations. Reactionaries react selectively; not reflexively. We take data from the world around us and examine it. We, not the “Progressives,” are the ones that just flippin’ love science. So based on consequentialist evaluation of what works and what doesn’t, we specifically critique the vast extent to which Modernism and democracy have obviously and completely failed to maintain the clear and indisputible standards of what “Makes America Great.”

As a consequence, Mark Lilla gets another one right as well. His Amerika.org kewpie doll should arrive in the email today. We are not Conservatives. We prefer virtue, with the postive and affirmative manhood that this entails, to Modern Conservatism. Conservatives stand athwart history asking nicely if it would slow down and not swamp their mutual funds or lustily deflower their daughters.

They lack the real guts to fight Leftism because they believe in a weaker form thereof. They secretly wish they could be the Left too. They are the nerds who melt in gratitude from a friendly hug from Michelle Obama. Liberals get this and therefore understand they can work them for anything they want. No Real Conservative would ever rock the boat by actually trying to repeal Obamacare. People (meaning the Leftists) would be scared and upset. Michelle wouldn’t feel like hugging them ever again. Oh No!

So David Brooks is dutifully doing his duty to calm down all of those people. It wouldn’t be dainty if all his liberal friends got worried. Like the trusty black overseer on an antebellum pine tar plantation, David Brooks gets busy stopping all the hootin’ and a hollerin.’ He needs to do that before Massa gets all upset. He fits into an outmoded role from a dark and evil period. It’s as if he came from the malignant heart of darkness found in that America. Is David Brooks the real stereotype of The Blind Reactionary? “The horror!” Said Mr. Kurtz. “The horror!”

And that, in essence, is what we get from the Cuck Faux Elite. We particularly get that from the ones who tell us they are “Conservative” and here to look out for our interests. They look out for us by telling us to tone it down. Just be patient and take your medicine. Don’t be a “Reactionary.” That would be unseemly. Being unseemly is far worse to the Cuck Faux Elite than being dead wrong. The tattermedalion reactionaries don’t like being dead wrong. Particularly the part about being dead. This is why David Brooks is blessedly losing. May his downfall become complete.

Tags: conservatism, david brooks, reaction, the cathedral