Traditionally in America, we consider politics split long a dichotomy right vs. left, Republicans vs. Democrats, and liberal vs. conservative. The first two remain as true today as they were since the founding of the Republican Party but recent events have changed the third point. Today's divide is not between liberals and conservatives but between liberals and reactionaries.

Now outside of a political science seminar, the word reactionary seldom comes up in polite conversation though it is a useful word to know. For many of those who do use the term it is applied simply as a more extreme form of conservatism, however, I believe that it is something more than that. To understand what a reactionary is it's important first to understand how reactionaries are similar to conservatives and how they differ.

The political project of conservatism is essential to conserve society the way it is currently. They seek to cry stop to the march of time and maintain the status quo against all challenges or upsets either because they are satisfied with the present arrangements or they are skeptical of any project of improvement. Generally, it’s some combination of the two along with a certain narrow focus on what is immediate and intimate to their life. Conservatives look toward history fondly but they are conscious that the past is not perfect and is in many respects deeply flawed.

Reactionaries are different. They are not satisfied merely with stopping time, oh no they wish to reverse it and go back. Reactionaries are obsessed with the past, but not the past as you would conventionally recognize it. History for them is divided into two; heroic golden ages where everything is pure and good and virtuous and all the world is set right, contrasted to eras of depravity and evil that destroy these bright lights and cast the world into chaos and darkness none more so than our present era.

American reactionaries have created three of these golden eras in American history and by different metrics see the present as a fall from grace from all of them. The first of these eras concerns the founding and sees the founders as pious men who wrote the constitution a divinely inspired document guaranteeing broad sovereignty to individuals and impervious to any future meddling.

The second is the civil war where virtuous southern gentleman fought for the rights of their states against a tyrannical federal government seeking to upend the natural order of the world both socially and racially. The third is the 1950’s where men served as stoic breadwinners supporting their families in factory jobs as women worked in the home while minorities knew their place in the social order and everyone was happy and optimistic about the future.

This version of history is an admittedly beautiful thing to look at until you realize that it is entirely based on the most pernicious of lies. The most sickening thing, however, is just how easy it is to disprove those lies the founder’s deist beliefs and desire to restrain individual liberties are well known, the importance of slavery to the southern cause has countless lines of ink devoted to it by the very men fighting for it, and the overwhelming sense of alienation and resentment practically drips off every piece of culture produced in the 50’s from Goofy cartoons to The Catcher In the Rye.

Despite how easy any of their beliefs are to disprove they still cling to them with all the fervor of a fanatic and it’s tearing our country apart. Their inflexibility to adapt the constitution to the modern world has left our courts enslaved to the phony doctrine of original intent and leaves our legal system unable to provide guidance to a rapidly changing world. Their embrace of the lost cause mythos leaves our educational system polluted by lies and renders millions of our citizens condemned to poverty and suffering because we cannot address the wrongs we’ve done them.

And lastly, their blind embrace of an economy they do not fully understand has to lead to a gutting of our government and growing cruelty of our economy as people are fed into the machine in a vain attempt to bring back prosperity. But perhaps the worst part of these lies is the blood they cost the hundreds of children sacrificed for one amendment, the thousands of lives ground to dust by the carceral system because their skin is the wrong color, and the millions decayed by an economy that values cold hard cash over warm soft bodies.

If there is one political party that seems to fit this image more than the other it’s because the reactionary disease has only consumed one. The Republicans used to be a grand and noble institution contributing many important achievements to American politics but the desire for power and fears of the world around them won out and lead them to invite the reactionaries in, now the inmates are running the asylum.

Trump is now the most visible symbol of this transition and his every word and deed oozes with reactionary malice and spite. What could “make America Great Again” be but a call to arms for reactionaries across the country and call them it did along with their Russian comrades.

The only way to defeat these reactionaries and to ensure they do not destroy all of us in their vain attempt to relive history is for liberals and traditional conservatives to come together for this brief moment against a common foe. The first step in accomplishing this lies in recognizing this problem and calling it what it is. Only by identifying reactionaries and labeling them as such can we being the work of defeating them.