These essays were originally written and published at different times, for different reasons, but what they have in common is what Lilla calls reactionary politics and I'll call nostalgia politics. If action or revolution in politics means taking a step forward where society hasn't gone before, then reaction means denying that this step was a good one and trying to ctrl+z things back to the way they were before. Apocalyptic predictions, just-so stories, mytho-histories, and explanations that point back to a root cause are favorite tools of reactionary politics.

"Reactionaries are not conservatives. They are just as radical as revolutionaries and just as firmly in the grip of historical imaginings. Millennial expectations of a redemptive new social order and rejuvenated human beings inspire the revolutionary; apocalyptic fears of entering a new dark age haunt the reactionary..... And the reactionaries of our time have discovered that nostalgia can be a powerful motivator, perhaps even more powerful than hope. Hopes can be disappointed. Nostalgia is irrefutable." I guess we can say that conservatives don't want anything to change, they fight for political stasis, while reactionaries want dramatic change in order to turn back the clocks of history.

I was hoping that ML would go into American politics and how contemporary pop culture feeds this nostalgia, but that isn't the case. I wasn't familiar with the thinkers and authors who are the subject of his essays, so it was interesting to learn something new at least.

will post notes on essays later.