If you actually look at the ideas, the reactionary thesis is that most people do not desire to participate in politics and that the job of a respectable aristocracy is to fulfill this demand. Mass politics is a leftist import that only really features in syncretic forms of reaction like fascism.
This seems to have been the thesis statement of South Park republicanism until the showrunners began pouring most of their time into depicting Donald Trump being raped or otherwise humiliated. This may or may not have evolved into the modern day “radical centrism” popular with rdrama, where the only real terminal value seems to be not taking politics too seriously. See also people who are “grill pilled” and the like.
While I don’t blame Trump for this, his election has led to the politicization of damn near everything in society, presumably because he symbolizes a threat to the left that their capture of institutions is not as inevitable as they may have thought. We live in a world where Marvel comics have been written and drawn portraying Donald Trump as the villain MODOK, without a trace of irony. At least Genesis was self aware enough to use a Ronald Reagan puppet in their Land of Confusion music video.
It's a common criticism levied at reactionaries that they imagine themselves as aristocrats instead of the masses, but I don't think it connects because it's just not accurate.
I strongly agree, and the similar criticism that libertarians are “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” has long grated me as leftist projection. To the more extreme leftists, everything seems to be about power, often at the expense of principles. “No bad methods, only bad targets” and the like. It never once occurred to me, in my idealistic youth, that I should be voting “in my interest,” except in the esoteric sense that I supported constitutional republicanism and limited government involvement in people’s lives.
I certainly didn’t think of myself as a future millionaire. I mostly thought of myself as someone who wants to be left alone, by the government, by institutional powers, by everyone, and for others to have that same freedom. An old, forgotten soldier of the white capitalist patriarchy in a time when children my age were holding school assemblies to celebrate Barack Obama’s inauguration.
So to a certain kind of person, I suppose they can’t imagine why anyone who isn’t rich would support the freedom of rich people. They must be boot lickers or aspire to be rich themselves.
p
This seems to have been the thesis statement of South Park republicanism until the showrunners began pouring most of their time into depicting Donald Trump being raped or otherwise humiliated. This may or may not have evolved into the modern day “radical centrism” popular with rdrama, where the only real terminal value seems to be not taking politics too seriously. See also people who are “grill pilled” and the like.
While I don’t blame Trump for this, his election has led to the politicization of damn near everything in society, presumably because he symbolizes a threat to the left that their capture of institutions is not as inevitable as they may have thought. We live in a world where Marvel comics have been written and drawn portraying Donald Trump as the villain MODOK, without a trace of irony. At least Genesis was self aware enough to use a Ronald Reagan puppet in their Land of Confusion music video.
I strongly agree, and the similar criticism that libertarians are “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” has long grated me as leftist projection. To the more extreme leftists, everything seems to be about power, often at the expense of principles. “No bad methods, only bad targets” and the like. It never once occurred to me, in my idealistic youth, that I should be voting “in my interest,” except in the esoteric sense that I supported constitutional republicanism and limited government involvement in people’s lives.
I certainly didn’t think of myself as a future millionaire. I mostly thought of myself as someone who wants to be left alone, by the government, by institutional powers, by everyone, and for others to have that same freedom. An old, forgotten soldier of the white capitalist patriarchy in a time when children my age were holding school assemblies to celebrate Barack Obama’s inauguration.
So to a certain kind of person, I suppose they can’t imagine why anyone who isn’t rich would support the freedom of rich people. They must be boot lickers or aspire to be rich themselves.
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