A Kinder, Sillier, Reactionary Vision
Reaction is not just for grumpy monarchists
"Reactionary" is perhaps not the most upbeat branding. It conjures up images of grumpy old men cursing most things modern -- which is accurate because I am a recipient of AARP junk mail who is mad as hell at drag queen story hours, Modern Monetary Theory, wokeness, over-computerized automobiles, "smart" phones, and an out of control Deep State.
But I am also an aging grump with a predilection for tie dye shirts, a grump who complained about the Incarceration State decades before Black lives started mattering. I was an anarchist myself back when I was young and knew everything, but I was a libertarian anarchist of the book throwing variety, not a clueless criminal anarchist of the bomb throwing variety.
While I am angry as all get out, the policies I am pushing are cuddly compromises compared to my old self. In terms of underlying values there is much intersection between populism and old school liberalism. Like the Old Left, I am game to more evenly spread wealth and income. (But unlike most forms of leftist, I want to spread power and responsibility as well.)
I've been letting my anger power my writing. It's therapeutic and gives my words some zing. For reaching those who share my anger, it's a win-win. But what about reaching the normies? Rules for Reactionaries is an inreach publication, but at some point we will need to do some outreach.
John Carter of Mars recently wrote an interesting piece about the power of going positive. Those who campaigned successfully to make Augusto Pinochet step down as dictator did so by admitting Pinochet's accomplishments. Instead of complaining bitterly about his human rights violations, they pushed the idea that such things were no longer necessary.
I'm not personally convinced that going positive is a generally successful strategy. I recall being taught somewhere that whichever faction is quickest to complain about a problem gets first dibs on deciding how to fix the problem. The Chilean situation may have been a special case. Chilean opponents of Pinochet needed to distance themselves from the communists that led to Pinochet's takeover in the first place.
On the other hand an upbeat message with humor certainly worked for Reagan. On the gripping hand Trump won while going full-on negative with childish name-calling thrown in. Trump's inauguration speech was the most negative speech since Carter's famous Malaise speech.
Then again, both Carter and Trump were one term presidents...
Whether we need to go lite and upbeat is unknown to me. But if we do, I have some wonderful news: the propaganda has already been produced, and by world class professionals at that.
The Vision Thing
The term Reactionary is admittedly ambiguous. It denotes reviving ideas from the past, but it doesn't specify which past. 50 years ago? 100 years ago? 1000 years? Many who fly the Reactionary banner want to go back to monarchy or even a full on feudal system. I am not one of them. I just want to go back a bit more than half a century and not exactly back. I want to go to where we were supposed to be heading.
I used to be a utopian visionary. These days I'm just fighting for the America I was promised as a child. Sure, I'd like to sprinkle in bits of libertarian and other creative goodness, but right now I'll just settle for the mainstream vision that was sold to me by popular culture: by teachers and television. Most of the propaganda I need for that once mainstream vision has already been produced. Just take about any television show produced before 1970! Once upon a time, Hollywood celebrated The American Way: sitcom dads were wise, daring spies defended liberty against communism, police played by the rules, doctors still made house calls, and a working class man could afford to support a family.
For a positive Reactionary vision, break out DVDs of The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Munsters, Family Affair, Gilligan's Island, The Flintstones, The Brady Bunch, Batman, and all sorts of family based sitcoms going back to the 1950s.
Here is the fuzzy, cuddly version of my Reactionary vision. I want a high trust America where:
Herman Munster can legally take a walk in the park at midnight
Where Otis can check himself in jail when gets too drunk and out when he sobers up
Where Barney Fife gets only one bullet
Where Thurston Howell III can travel with suitcases of thousand dollar bills and not be arrested for money laundering
Where Bruce Wayne can buy parts for his underground lair without being flagged as a terrorist
Where hillbillies can brandish shotguns at busy bodies -- and in Beverly Hills at that
Where the trials of growing up don't involve sex change surgery
Where being a rebellious teenager means growing long hair and listening to groovy music
Where 6 year old Jody from Family Affair can safely walk around Manhattan by himself and quiz construction workers
OK, OK, America was never as idyllic as the vision portrayed on lite TV. But this vision was once within the Overton Window. This was a mainstream vision, not some far out ism!
We lost that vision in the 1970s. Some combination of Watergate, race riots, inflation, price controls, free "love", excessive recreational drugs, and even more excessive drug war, petrodollars, merger mania, mass immigration, heavy-handed social engineering, stifling regulations, subsidized outsourcing, and Norman Lear sitcoms have turned America into a much more stratified and lower trust society. Neighbors are strangers. Social clubs are fading. Patriots distrust our government and vice versa.
Maybe, just maybe, we should break out this old all-American propaganda and then follow it up with solutions on how to get back there. (I have some forthcoming Rules on how. Stay tuned.)
I'd actually argue that the 2016 Trump campaign was powered by an overwhelmingly positive energy. There was a joyous, humorous creativity to the meme culture - Pepe wasn't angry, he was mostly laughing; the atmosphere at his rallies was like a festival; the focus, MAGA, was certainly experienced by every supporter as a very positive message; and while his opponents perceived his treatment of them as angry attacks, his supporters found a great deal of cathartic release at his relentless irreverence to the norms expected within the professional political class
So much of the culture today is totally lacking in aspiration. As you point out, the old sitcoms, we are told, were ‘lies’, but they represented something. More consequentially, the constant and corrosive refrain is to point to ‘reality’ as a way to wholly discredit anything like vision, idealism and principle. Thus America’s founding documents have to be dismantled, all men are created equal dismissed, because of the ‘reality’ that Jefferson owned slaves. This line of attack, using unpleasant truths to actively undermine a citizenry’s sense of itself, is ultimately nihilistic and purely destructive. And it is attack we’re seeing from the woke elite, not simply legitimate criticism. We always knew Jefferson owned slaves, but now he has to be ‘cancelled’. It’s a deliberate campaign of demoralization. I wish you the best fighting it.