Lex Anteinternet: Rich Men North of Richmond, Part I. Resisting the "signs and wonders" and completely missing what's gong on.

Lex Anteinternet: Rich Men North of Richmond, Part I. Resisting the...: 

Rich Men North of Richmond, Part I. Resisting the "signs and wonders" and completely missing what's gong on.

Rich Men North of Richmond, which is independently produced, I think, had made a big Internet and music scene splash, and frankly, not because it's good.

It is, as of this writing, on Billboard's Hot 100.

The ballad is played by Oliver Anthony, a genuine blue collar Virginian, apparently.  All of his music videos seem to be filmed in a heavily wooded lot, which also appears to be genuine, although the rural South provides a certain cache in country music to such an extent that a Canadian band has even affected it, calling itself The Dead South.  All of Anthony's music is played on a Resonator Guitar, a type of guitar I normally call a Dobro.  I associate resonated guitars with the blues, not with country music, so this is a bit odd in and of itself.

How I imagine a guitar with a resonator properly being used.

Fans have gushed on the "return" of "real" or "authentic" country music, and this may indeed be the first genuine example of authentic country music to become a big hit in decades.  Even 1st Lt. Austin von Letkemann, the author (host? mc?) of the wickedly funny Army satire series Mandatory Fun Day mentioned it the other day, as a real fan, citing Colter Wall at the same time.  Wall is authentic, that's for sure, but in a different genre, genuine Western, i.e., cowboy, music.

But I don't think it's the music that boosted Anthony's song to the top of the C&W charts.  It's the content.  Consider the lyrics:

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

Rich Man North of Richmond, it might be noted, comes hard on the heels of In A Small Town, by Jason Aldean.  

Consider its lyrics:

Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk

Carjack an old lady at a red light

Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store

Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like

Cuss out a cop, spit in his face

Stomp on the flag and light it up

Yeah, ya think you're tough

Well, try that in a small town

See how far ya make it down the road

Around here, we take care of our own

You cross that line, it won't take long

For you to find out, I recommend you don't

Try that in a small town

Got a gun that my granddad gave me

They say one day they're gonna round up

Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck

Try that in a small town 

See how far ya make it down the road

Around here, we take care of our own

You cross that line, it won't take long

For you to find out, I recommend you don't

Try that in a small town

Full of good ol' boys, raised up right

If you're looking for a fight

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

See how far ya make it down the road

Around here, we take care of our own

You cross that line, it won't take long

For you to find out, I recommend you don't

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

Ooh-ooh

Try that in a small town

Aldean, I'd note, isn't from a small town.  He's' from Macon, Georgia, population 150,000 or so, so it's a mid-sized city.  And In A Small Town isn't real country, but rather country and enjoyed the same popularity.

Both of these songs immediately became populist anthems.  So much so that none other than liberal economist Robert Reich, whom this blog has an obvious love/hate relationship, just posted on the song, with frankly a typically disappointing analysis.

Rich Men North of Richmond

Republicans court cultural populism, while Democrats eschew economic populism. But economic populism is the key.

Reich offers his view, but he's wrong on what's going on here, at least in part, and certainly wrong on the fix.  Like other left wing economists in the United States, Reich is a corporate capitalist, which is also what all the right wing economists are. Reich correctly believes that the system has gone wonky to the detriment of the working class (whatever the current working class may be), but he fails to grasp, as nearly every economist in the United States and perhaps the Western World, or maybe even the planet, that the economy is supposed to serve average lives and average lives come first.  I.e., it's 1) my life and;  2) I need to work.  Not I'm a worker in a glorious worker's state and work will exalt me, or I'm a consumer in a glorious consumption state and consumption will exalt me, which are effectively the flip side of corporate capitalism.

So what's going on here?

Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't.  Neither right nor left economists get it.  For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.

Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all.  Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).

Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics.  Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist.  He can't be considered one, however.  He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.

1.  39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏

2.  As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony

3.  I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it. 

Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it

4.  As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛  the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥

5.  And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.

And there are a lot more.

Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

 Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:

1.  He has "an old soul".

2.  The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.

3.  He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.

4.  He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).

Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .

There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy.  Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now.  One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.

Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.

But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.

If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pudits claim, its definately not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.

The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion.  People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?

Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.

One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.

Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't.  Neither right nor left economists get it.  For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.

Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all.  Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).

Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics.  Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist.  He can't be considered one, however.  He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.

1.  39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏

2.  As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony

3.  I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it. 

Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it

4.  As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛  the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥

5.  And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.

And there are a lot more.

Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

 Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:

1.  He has "an old soul".

2.  The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.

3.  He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.

4.  He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).

Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .

There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy.  Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now.  One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.

Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.

But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.

If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pundits claim, it's definitely not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.

The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion.  People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?

Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.

One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.

A meme version of the economics of the 1950s. . . dealing with more than economics.  This depiction of the 50s drives commentators nuts, who decry it as a myth, but there's more than a little truth to it, both in what it states, and in what it otherwise depicts.  

Americans tend to look back to the 1950s as some sort of golden age, and have a really mythologized view of the era.  Be that as it may, in the 50s, most men could in fact support a family on their income alone, and not just from white collar jobs but from blue collar jobs.  Not only could most men do it, but most men did do it.  As late as the 1970s, a lot of husbands actually objected to their wives working, whereas now most married women not only do work, but must work.  Perhaps an error in here, however, is that in the 50s that a lot of people were going to college.  In reality, in 1950 only 7.3% of men had a college degree and only 5.2% of women did, which by 1960 was 10.3% and 6% respectively.  This means, however, that a university degree was like gold.  Of interest, both of my mother's parents had university degrees, which is phenomenal given that they obtained them in the early 20th Century.  Neither of my father's parents did.  Also of note, my mother had a college degree, an AS, but she obtained in the 1970s and was not a high school graduate due to the Great Depression, where has my father had a DDS and his brother and one of his sisters attended university in the 1940s/1950s.

The 50s through the early 1970s really reflect post World War Two conditions, however, and might not be the best era to look at.  The 40s can't be looked at either, due to World War Two, nor can the 30s, due to the Great Depression.  You really have to get back to the 10s and 20s for economies to compare to, with some comparison from later decades.  Any way you look at it, however, a lot more families were supported from a single, usually male, income, but it was also the case that a lot more women always worked than is recognized.

Myths have power, however, and they also reflect aspects of reality as a rule.  Beowulf may not have slain a dragon in Sweden, but a warrior named Bear (Bee Wolf) probably was an early Scandinavia warrior vassal of note.  There really was a big battle at Troy, and it probably did start off as a totally juvenile spat over a girl that somebody regarded as a babe, although it's likely there was more to it than that.  Arthur wasn't a chivalric knight, but somebody the legend was based on, probably was a British Roman who did take on the invading Teutons in defense of Roman Britain heroically before going down on a battlefield.  There was indeed an era, not long ago, when a high school education could bring a person a living wage for not only the graduate, but a spouse and kids, and provide a middle income life.

And there was also a time during which, as harsh as the reality is, that you weren't in grocery store lines behind people who are paying for food with assistance, but who had money for tattoos, and who have suspended any regard for their personal appearance.

This is all obvious to people who are barely eeking by, but who know that their grandparents, with no more education than they have, did relatively well.

To add to it, although only subtly grasped, people are also aware, even as they participate in it, that the country's become a moral sewer.  The problem, in a way, is not that Jeffrey Epstein is uncommon, but rather than he is common in a way.  Only the rich, of course, used him as a procurer for teenage prostitutes, but the entertainment industry is essentially a society wide procurer for cinematic prostitution that has become increasingly debased.

All that does involve wealth, but part of the underlying tone, and one that people like Reich can't seem to grasp, is that the American political left insists that it all conduct be accepted and each person's choices, no matter how self-destructive, anti-natural, debased, or weird, be celebrated.  People very well know that the entire movement to support surgical gender mutilation of children is wrong, for example, as well as deeply weird, but the left demands it be celebrated, just as it insists that what nearly amount to homosexual sex manuals be placed in public schools with public funds.  It is not that the standard bearers of the right are moral people.  Trump is a serial polygamist.  It's rather that there's a difference in promoting immorality and demanding that it be accepted and distancing policy from it, even if you engage in immorality yourself.  Double standards abound, but what the unhappy class is looking at doesn't seem to be grasped.  

Indeed, as the left repeatedly fails to grasp in regards to the that unhappy class, is that the class itself may not really apply the standards it mourns all that deeply, in regard to at least some of them.  Critics from the left, like Robert Reich, keep branding the movement "Christian Nationalist", as do some critics from the right, such as Susan Stubson.  They're both in correct.  Christian Nationalist take the practice of Christianity really seriously.  Southern Cultural Christian Populist, however, have a world roughly framed out by the Southern Baptist Convention, the pre-1970 Episcopal and Methodist Church's, or the African Methodist Church loosely in mind, but as a framework, not as a fortress.  Put another way, Christian Nationalist look to the Apostolic age and know what that meant, and aren't really comfortable completely with people who sit around watching NASCAR on Sundays.  Southern Cultural Christians are perfectly comfortable with watching NASCAR on Sundays and attend church for weddings, funerals, Easter and Christmas. They aren't the same thing.

But what both are uncomfortable with, but in different ways, is a liberalism that insists that genders can be changed, and there's nothing wrong with books in public schools that explore sodomy.  That exceeds the boundaries of the loosely defined structure for Southern Cultural Christians and is definitely gravely immoral to Christian Nationalists, as well as frankly gravely immoral to any Christians of any stripe who are serious about what their faiths hold.

In 2008, I stopped at the liquor store on my way home from work to buy a six-pack of beer.  It was late summer.

In the liquor store there were two young women, in their very early 20s, with a young man of the same age.  One of the young women was holding a baby.

The girl, and that's really what she was, holding the baby was pretty, but in a trashy sort of way, and in the way that you know won't last.  The other girl was not.  Both young women were wearing t-shirts that were too small for them, and too tight to be decent.  They were both wearing Daisy Dukes.  The young man was shaking and incredibly disheveled.  It was pretty clear that he was the father of the baby, equally clear that he and the young woman weren't married, and just as clear that he was a tweaker.

The pretty girl holding the baby had eyeliner and a proud visage, sort of like the pretty but trashy girls did back when I was in high school. They'd retained the eyeliner sort of make up that girls in junior high wore, back when I was in junior high, after girls of that age first started taking up makeup.  Most girls abandoned that by high school, but the ones that were of a certain type didn't.  That girl, the pretty one, was wearing an Obama for President t-shirt.  I knew at that moment, well before the election, who would win.

The image that was on the girl's t-shirt.  It wasn't "Hope" that they had a vested interest in.

Now, this isn't a comment on President Obama at all, but rather on something else, and that something else gets back to Rich Men North of Richmond.

The young man in that group is likely dead by now.  Tweaking in his early 20s, it's unlikely he survived another fifteen years.  The girl who the mother likely is, and if she was 21 then, she's 36 now.  She's also likely in the 300 lbs category the song referenced, the signs of that already being there.  And indeed, what she was supporting, and likely at least her female cohort, wasn't "hope", as Obama was espousing, it was government assistance.  The child, now 15, has probably spent his or her entire life on it.

And that, in some vague sort of way, is what Oliver Anthony is lamenting.  

All of these people likely descended from people who had held blue collar jobs.  But a modern society reconstructed in a liberal image had turned them into wards of the government in some ways, and they weren't ashamed of it.  Their attachment to any sort of conventional morality had lapsed, perhaps beyond repair, and they were reproducing without structure and raising a generation behind them, perhaps as they'd been raised, that recalls Philippians,  "Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things."  They didn't go on to be Megan Rapinoe, who would be just about their age, almost undoubtedly, but probably heavily tattooed, and living on the funds generated by others.

A large number of abandoned rust belt and other blue collar Americans are well aware of this, even if they aren't necessarily beyond some of the call of that themselves.

That's what liberal pundits are missing, and that's what populist, some sincere and some not, have picked up on.

El Paso Sheriff : What's it mean? What's it leadin' to? You know, if you'd have told me 20 years ago, that I'd see children walking the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses, I just flat-out wouldn't have believed you.

Ed Tom Bell : Signs and wonders. But I think once you quit hearing "sir" and "ma'am," the rest is soon to foller.

El Paso Sheriff : Oh, it's the tide. It's the dismal tide.

No Country For Old Men. 

And that's why their message is failing.

And for traditional conservatives, as, well as liberals, there may now be, by this time, something even scarier at work. . . 

Lex Anteinternet: Pride and Unintended Consequences.

Lex Anteinternet: Pride and Unintended Consequences.: 

Pride and Unintended Consequences.

Yesterday, I ran this item, which noted the following:

Lex Anteinternet: On Pride Month, the nature of Pride, and compellin...: 

All of this fuels part of the counter reaction which is raging in our time.  People wonder how a late septuagenarian serial polygamist with weird bad hair can openly demand to be crowned Emperor and stand a good chance of having it happen, or how a thirty-something single Californian who has never held a real job but who spouts conspiracy theories and cloaks himself in the mantle of true conservatism can win office and be prayed over by college Republicans, or how individuals can be voted onto school boards with the intent to remove books.  Well, an administration that demands you accept the unnatural, a political party that requires you accept the new eugenics, and the stocking of books in school libraries that are openly sexually perverse are a big part of the reason why.

In other words, going from the widely accepted "look, we don't tell you what to do in your bedrooms, so just leave the same sex attracted alone, and they won't bother you", to "you must accept children being taught sodomy" and "you must let gender mutilation of minors occur" is a big part of that.  People on the left might claim that's the manifestation of Christian Nationalism (which it really isn't), but a lot of the reaction is just a species knowing what is biologically correct and reacting to being attacked. 

It wasn't the first time I noted this.

It's sometimes claimed, although I haven't researched it, that the moral descent of Berlin in the 1920s lead in part to people voting for the Nazis in the early 30s.  I.e., their revulsion over what they were seeing lead them to an extreme reaction, it's claimed.  At least one writer has noted:

It seems grotesque in retrospect, but Hitler posed as a moral crusader gallantly battling the forces of iniquity, corruption, and even deceit. Many Germans, horrified by the loosening of moral standards in Germany after World War I, were duped by his promises of moral rejuvenation. Hitler’s project resonated with many who were disgusted by the rampant hedonism and carnality of Weimar high culture and popular culture. Whether one views Hitler and Nazism as a Utopian and technocratic expression of the modernist project, or as an atavistic reaction against modernity, or as some blend of the two (“reactionary modernism” or “conservative revolution”), or as something completely unique, it is clear that Nazism promised a resurrection or awakening of the German people that involved a revival of morality that was in the process of decay and degeneration.

Hitler as Moral Crusader and Liar, Richard Weikart, abstract.

Extreme wealth in upper Russian society certainly contributed to the rise of the Communists in late imperial Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution.

The point of this is this.  While the Southern Populist ethics that have spread into the American middle class country wide (more on this soon) are full of hypocrisies, people do have a limit. Most people don't think night and day about politics, which opens the void to people like Rep. Ward of Casper, whose reaction to a Pride event in Casper lead to this headline:

Wyoming Lawmaker Calls For Boycott Of Businesses That Sponsored Casper Pride Fest

Ward's rise as a legislature in a state that she has almost no connections with stunned me.  She's of the extreme right and has a Weltanschauung that she's imported from the Rust Belt, where she previously lived and politics. She's associated herself in politics with Christianity, but in a way that suggest she doesn't understand her claimed faith very well.  In Illinois, she showed up associated with some outrage over a school teacher who claimed that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, which in fact they do.  In Wyoming's last legislative session, she made the claim that Christians are not their brother's keeper, and that the story of Cain and Able in the Old Testament really only meant that you just weren't supposed to kill your brother, but otherwise could let him suffer.

Middle Class Germans of the 1920s were heir to a long Christian tradition.  Upper class Germans were as well, and frankly lower class Germans were too, that latter class being the one most vulnerable to Nazi and Communist agitation.  Russia had a long history of Christianity, leading into 1917.  

Wealthy societies produce largess.  Largess produces self-indulgence, and a lot of the self-indulgence will, seemingly almost inevitably, turn into sexual narcissism and individual domination.  Disgust inevitably results by those who don't chose that path, which is, at the end of the day, most people.  But when a society becomes focused on it, those willing to stand most in the opposing spotlight, no matter how extreme they are, will take up most of the opposing light.  

Immoderation leads, inevitably, to immodesty, which leads, almost inevitably, to opposing immoderation.  When toleration becomes a demand for absolutely acceptance, in categories of extremes, those masses simply trying to get through their days will listen to the loudest voices.

Southern Populism gave us what the Southern Strategy took into the GOP.  Losing the moorings on genuine civil rights, amongst other things, gave us a warped left wing view that individualistic self definition is a right, no matter how destructive or delusional.  That latter left wing view is pushing the other, far right populist view, to success, at least temporarily.

Lex Anteinternet: Can real conservatism exist without authoritarianism?

Lex Anteinternet: Can real conservatism exist without authoritarianism?: 

Can real conservatism exist without authoritarianism?

By SanchoPanzaXXI - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3415994.  Francoist Span's coat of arms.   The motto means "One, great, and free".

Look at Wyoming GOP right now, and you would have to assume that the answer to this question must be "no".¹

And frankly, buying off on election theft myths and mutually reinforcing propaganda aside, there's some reason to think that.  That's basically what Patrick Deneen of Harvard has warned of.  He's the author of Why Liberalism Failed, a major work criticized heavily by the mainstream press, as we've previously noted, and adopted by current conservatives.  Yale's snippet on the book states, as we also previously noted:

Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded?

"Why Liberalism Failed offers cogent insights into the loss of meaning and community that many in the West feel, issues that liberal democracies ignore at their own peril."—President Barack Obama

"Deneen's book is valuable because it focuses on today's central issue. The important debates now are not about policy. They are about the basic values and structures of our social order."—David Brooks, New York Times

Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

Now, Deneen did not state that we needed to elect an orange haired Duce  whom we "must work towards" in order to impose the proper order upon society.²  At least, I don't think he did, having not read his book.  And the essence of what Deneen apparently states here, as summarized by the Yale review, is correct.  Political liberalism "trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality"  It also "discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history."

All that is true.

Perhaps more disturbing is that liberalism/progressivism has unmoored itself from any sort of external greater force.  Depending upon how you view it, it either takes the position, basically, that man can vote on his own private wishes, and God must endorse them, or that individual desires are paramount and nature must bend to and accommodate them.  There's no possibility of unity in any of that, and it's deeply anti-nature. There's not even the possibility of a society functioning that way, on a long term basis.

So, given that, is it the case that conservatism must assert itself, by force?

That seems to be the conclusion that Orbán and a host of Eastern European leaders have concluded.  They're willing to tolerate democracy, but only if certain things are universally agreed on first.  And that sort of top-down directive nature of government, as long as it seems conservative, is the reason so many Americans of the MAGA persuasion, like Tucker Carlson, have been Putin cheerleaders.  It's also the reason that CPAC has swooned over Orban and has come very close to adopting his Illiberal Democracy point of view.  And it's the sort of point of view, sort of, that lead the Edmund Burke Foundation to adopt a "National Conservatism" manifesto this past June.

But it's also deeply illogical.

The basic core of real conservatism, indeed any political philosophy, is that it's right.  And conservatives believe they're right on two things, social issues and economic ones. . . well conservatives who have completely bought the package believe that, there are plenty of people who believe in one of the two tenants of conservatism and not the other.

But ironically, in believe that they are right, real conservatives, have always believed that man is flawed, and it's best to rely on tradition and what we know of science to guide us.  Old time conservatives, quite frankly, in the Buckleyite era, tended to be elitist, and proudly so. They were well-educated, at least at the upper levels, and didn't take their beliefs from the masses.  Indeed, often they assumed they were a permanent minority that could influence heavily, but was unlikely to rule.

We should note here that populist, at least right now, are fellow travelers of conservatives, but their views aren't really the same at all.  Populist tend to believe that the mass of people have some native instinct that's right because they have it.  It's thin on education and tends not to trust elites of any kid, because they ain't elite.

Basically, five guys in a corner drinking Budweiser, and lots of it, are presumed to know more about just about anything, to current populists, than five theologians or conservative philosophers.

And of course, in various circumstances, populists can be extreme rightist or leftists.  Early Soviet Reds were basically a  type of populist.

Note the irony of the illiberal democracy point of view.  Conservatives believe they're right, but they also believe, if they are illiberal democrats, that the attractions of progressivism are so strong that they'll overwhelm those truths unless they're enforced by force.

The current right, basically, believes that if offered dessert over dinner, kids will east dessert first every time.  Put another way, the current American right believes that given a choice, everyone is going to opt to be transgendered and there's no argument against it.  None at all. So people have to be forced to comport with what 99% of humanity already does naturally.

Progressives have believed something similar for decades, which is why they sought to enforce their beliefs through the courts. The basic concept was to enforce their beliefs through liberal courts and either plan on that enforcement indefinitely, or hope that people would get used to the enforced change over time and accept it.  Conservatives took the opposite view, at least up until recently.

This is what the recent battle of being "woke" is about.  Truth be known, hardly anyone anywhere, as a large demographic, has been in favor of things that may be defined as "woke".  But the courts enforced wokism, or at least opened the doors and windows for it. So, for example, you have Obergefel redefining what love means and the ancient concept of marriage, and soon thereafter "accepting" transgenderism is a major societal push.

Illiberal democrats argue that we should simply close the door on these arguments via fiat.

The problem with that is twofold.  No bad idea ever goes away in darkness. That's why the goofball economic theory of Communism rose up in autocratic states.  Bad ideas, like viruses, die in the sun.

Secondly, it presumes that your own arguments, while right, just can't compete.  Arguments that can't compete, however, can't compete ever.

Now, the way that Illiberal Democrats would probably put it is that the truth has been established but corruption, unleashed by evil, is always there to take things down.  In some ways, this view is an elitist one, even though populist that have adopted that are anti elites and don't know that (which is part of the reason that currently conservatism and populism may ride on the same bus, but they aren't the same thing).  Basically, this view at some level, openly or simply instinctively, takes the position that regular people are like children.³

Enforcing conservative via fiat has never worked.

Ask Marshal Petain.

The French political right has never recovered from Vichy, and it basically lost its ability to really influence anything.  

The Trumpist wing of the GOP is taking the Republican Party in that exact same directly.  If it keeps going this way, you can guaranty that Gender Queer is coming to a school library near you, pretty freaking soon.

There's a much better way to go about this.

And what that is, is this.

Conservatives should make their argument, and in making it, take a page from their Buckleyite past.  When accused of being elitist, embrace it.  Football players in the NFL are elites.  The Green Berets are elites.  Accused of being an "elite", lucky you.  Say you are, and as an elite, you know better.

Adopt Western Society, but its great thinkers and lights.  Donald Trump isn't one of them.

Don't try to be populists, populists can come to you.

Don't eschew science. Science is science and it aims at the truth.  If you reject it, your chances are better than not that you are favoring myth over reality, and dangerously so.

Realize that cultural conservatism doesn't equate with capitalism.  Capitalist are after the money.  You are after the culture.  Confusing the two sews the seeds of destruction.  Things that are deeply conservative, in real terms, are often anti-capitalist.

Embrace democracy.  You aren't always going to win, but you can always argue your point.  Arguing your point is trying to convince.  Forcing your point via fiat is a concession that you can't win through persuasion, as your argument is weak.

For a few minutes there, before Trump' narcissism spawned his coup, and the Supreme Court returned to the rule of law, you really had something.

You're blowing it.

Footnotes

1.  Based upon the most recent proclamations of the Central Committee, you also have to be deeply anti-scientific and an adherent to wacky conspiracy theories.  If you ever wondered how a rational German could have believed that the Jews were responsible for all of Germany's ills of the 20s and 30s, well just look at how the Central Committee thinks that Bill Gates and George Soros are messing with the state's energy sector.

2.  "Working toward the Führer" was a primary ethos of Nazi Germany.  Hitler didn't come up with all the bizarre beliefs and policies of the Third Reich on his own, his acolytes developed many just trying to figure out what Hitler would do if he was working on the topic. The Trumpist wing of the GOP has pretty much picked up on that sort of thing and worked towards Trump, who in turn has worked back towards them.

3.  The irony of this is that quite a few members of these movements have already eaten the desert.  If their underlying foundation is really meant, and they have, for example, adopted any aspect of the Sexual Revolution, which frankly most Americans have, they're hypocritical.

Related Threads.

Illiberal Democracy. A Manifesto?