I think it is true that the propagandas of the First and Second World Wars, and probably the Civil War too, created a type in America of the Blind Patriot, the “my country, right or wrong”, but that type is really foreign to our history and ideals.
Our history is that of obstreperousness, of rebellion, of asking questions, of demanding reasons, and of allowing and encouraging radical difference, as seen for example in the Amish and Mormons. Much of our radical difference historically was religiously oriented, I think.
But I think I may keep the equation between Reaction, Leftism, and Retrogressivism.
I read Rose Magowan has now called the Democrats a cult. This seems reasonable. I’ve accused them of the same many times, and in many ways.
Ultimately, all evil and all sustained stupidity (which is to say an inability to see the world and the self as they are, which cause actions unsuited to the results supposedly sought; actually I could also say persistent actions working towards one rhetorical goal in theory, and a covert and nearly fully unconscious different and largely opposite goal in reality, which describes Leftist history) results from an inability to process the past. Being unable to process the past means you are never present IN the present. If you are not in the present, you are disconnected from the future. This means that you are never able to develop the ability to form truly appropriate and rational plans for truly appropriate, good, and rational goals.
What traumatized people do is react, and they react in unpredictable ways. What a cult provides is a template for action that does not require emotional presence.
True progress involves encouraging the individual to be able to USE freedom productively for spiritual and emotional growth (which I would more or less consider the same thing), and to value freedom for the same reason they value the ability to expand in wisdom, flexibility, knowledge, kindness and love.
Regression, or Reaction, is a call to return to the slavery of really most civilizations of human history, where conformity was demanded, and you were simply handed a place at birth you were expected to occupy forever. If you tried to get out of that place, you could expect violence. Even the Indian caste system was like this. In its details, it is quite horrible if you study it. Even now there are many millions of Indians who have less rights, and less expectation for legal or social justice than did blacks in the Jim Crow South, or so I understand. If things are improving, it is only recently, and only under the influence of European Liberal political ideals.
So look at California. Look at a Governor threatening to punish the peasants for defying his (likely unlawful) orders. It’s an irrational policy. The threat is gone. Georgia hospital admissions are going DOWN. Turns out not being locked in your home is GOOD for you. Some of us have been saying this for some time.
And I as I keep saying: I really think this thing is gone. I think it either has a lifespan, like that Israeli scientists claimed, or that it is gone for the same reasons flu is about now every year.
No vaccine is needed to deal with this, and I don’t even think Herd Immunity is.
But the blind obedience to an idiotic and highly destructive government response is really indefensible. Personally, I think all the Nazi memes are appropriate and regrettably accurate.
It doesn’t take great evil to support an evil regime: merely pettiness, obedience, and an exaggerated sense of moral grandeur sufficient to allow you to sit in judgement of your neighbors.