This post functions more as a midrash or a gloss upon the second edition of Corey Robin’s book The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump. As such, this probably won’t work for you if you are looking for a critical analysis or a review ( my much shorter review of the book can be read here. This article, by contrast, will attempt to restate in some detail Robin’s understanding of how we got to Trump from Burke, of what has changed over time in conservative thought, and what has stayed the same.

Part of what has changed is that the conservatives have largely won: throughout the industrialized west/north there is no longer any viable left to oppose them. This, as……