Ironically, some Republican apparatchiks have developed an acute sensitivity to the entropy of late-stage capitalism. Tucker Carlson, for example, sparked a fiery debate amongst conservative thinkfluencers with a January monologue, claiming, “Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.” Oftentimes, right-wingers will co-opt leftist critiques of capitalism while advocating for the same economic system that perpetuates all the societal ills they rail against: opioid epidemics, hollowed-out Main Streets, soy milk, Pride Month sponsored by Bank of America. After all, market demand produces all the corporate diversity initiatives they despise.

Conservative psychology is notoriously averse to ambiguity. The very nature of global, interconnected, complex modern life challenges their natural love of judgment and punishment and a puritan insistence of cramming every complicated human reality into a simple-minded Sunday-school story of sin and redemption. Over time, they bunkered inside their ideological safe spaces: Fox “News,” 4chan, r/theDonald, AM talk radio, Breitbart. They comprise a fever swamp of leftover nacho cheese, sexless freaks, a lingering paranoia of possessing an identity under constant siege, and a resentment toward perceived enemies of their identity. Many conservatives in America derive a sense of self from a pastiche of 1950s and 1980s WASP culture, Western Civilization, hyper-militaristic white nationalism, and “Judeo-Christian” values. Cultural Marxists, coastal elites, liberal Hollywood, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, third-wave feminists, Muslims, and Hispanic Visigoths all are seen enemies plotting an Anschluss into flyover America. Their conception of elitism is interpreted solely through cultural signifiers: A pink-haired, gender studies major working as a Starbucks barista is more of an elitist than the CEO of an oil company.

Strangely enough, despite all the battle cries from IDW chuds like Jordan Peterson and Rave Dubin, conservatism has morphed into a form of postmodernism — a philosophy that superficially rejects leftist identity politics while assessing its arguments about how the world is and how it should be ordered according to whatever stabilizes the conservative identity and its affiliated values. Corey Robin writes in The Reactionary Mind: “They are aggrieved and entitled, the victim and victor, and already convinced of the righteousness of their cause and the inevitability of its triumph.”

When members of the right-wing punditry held the inaugural National Conservatism Conference in July, it wasn’t just an attempt to slip a tweed jacket onto a xenophobic pig; it was a bid to create an inclusive “national conservatism” on their terms — which means cultural hegemony. This, of course, is an oxymoron. The conservative sacralization of Western culture and Christian heritage has historically resulted in the denigration and excommunication of those who do not share it. If they cared about fostering tight-knight communities, they would increase immigration and make better efforts to integrate them instead of supporting a self-identified nationalist president tweet-raging at four American congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries, or dismissing white supremacy as a “hoax” after a white nationalist targeted Latinos in a mass shooting at an El Paso Wal-Mart.

Postmodern conservatives disdain liberal arts or science as if they were a pair of rainbow-colored Nikes drenched in AIDS. They dismiss historical accounts of racism and genocide in the United States. They ignore social context. Most of all, they are paranoid of any criticisms that might smudge their postcard-perfect image of a Leave It to Beaver America, even as torch-bearing Nazis storm onto the scene.

Stylized as Ben Shapiro-esque “rationalists,” they assert that if they are arguing something, then it must be true, and it’s true because they believe it, and if they believe it, then it must be right. Despite their FACTS and LOGIC schtick, this kind of circular reasoning inevitably devolves into what YouTuber Innuendo Studios calls Stanislavski opinions: “a belief that one entertains so completely, that they functionally believe it while they express it, no matter the possibility that they will express, and believe, an opposite opinion later.” They claim political correctness destroys their ability to deal in Tough Love and Hard Truths, but will whip themselves into an indignant frenzy when a congresswoman calls ICE detention centers “concentration camps.” Schrodinger’s immigrant is simultaneously stealing jobs and is too lazy to work. If a bakery refuses to bake wedding cakes for LGBTQ-folk, that’s because businesses should do as they please, but they’ll complain when YouTube demonetizes Stephen Crowder for violating their Terms of Service by calling a gay Vox journalist a “lispy queer” and proceeding to harass him over several videos (weird how they don’t extend that same sympathy to Colin Kaepernick).

Every dispute, even over matters of fact, is a contest of power. The goal is to make every issue debatable because no change will happen as long as we entertain the notion that “both sides” are equally valid. Many conservative figures mocked Greta Thunberg for her Asperger’s after she addressed the UN climate summit, asserting that we should listen to the experts about climate change, even though Republicans have spent decades treating climate scientists in a way that resembles the Dudleys banishing Harry Potter to the cupboard under the stairs.

The postmodern conservative push for an authoritarian, or at least a post-truth politics, stems from a disgust for the way America is currently composed, a contempt for literally anyone who is not in their increasingly shrinking minority voting bloc. One of the primary tensions fuelling conservative politics is their simultaneous loathing and desire to be a part of mainstream culture, which they fear has permanently fallen out of their grasp. This struggle for cultural dominance is often connoted in existential terms; the reactionary impresario of YouTube disinformation Dennis Prager once framed it as the sense that America is careening dizzily towards a second Civil War. This motivates Republicans to seize control of the state and the political agenda in order to use its substantial powers to refashion the world in their image.

The GOP’s threadbare efforts to conceal their cheesy venality and fascistic tendencies have all but completely frayed. Last year, outgoing Republican legislatures in Wisconsin and Michigan used their lame-duck sessions to strip power from incoming Democratic governors, and Brian Kemp improperly purged more than 340,000 voters from Georgia’s registration leading up to its governor’s election — that he was running in. Republicans are institutionally hostile to democracy, embarking on a decades-long electoral crusade defined by gutting voting rights and aggressive racialized gerrymandering. The party of “states’ rights” revoked California’s attempt to set emission rules stricter than the federal government’s. Anyone who thinks this can be countered with civility policing or snark is the type of person who shares John Oliver videos on Facebook and wonders why they haven’t changed their Breitbart-brained uncle’s opinions on anything.

Conservatism is often defined by measured steps, evolution, an antidote to radicalism. But it will often radicalize to defend its most dearly beloved norms and launch themselves down the anus of history at light speed through reactionary politics, often overhauling the very regimes they’re defending. “If we want things to stay as they are,” in Lampedusa’s classic formulation, “things will have to change.” Our walking civil war of a president barreled into the Oval Office carrying the buzz saw of a Throw the Bums Out movement and a promise to burn it to the ground, which, incidentally, he’s doing.

The result: policy nihilism that turns politics into a game of Calvinball. Republicans bequeathed a $1.5 trillion deficit-inducing tax cut to the mega-rich after spending the Obama years preaching the gospel of fiscal responsibility. The “Law and Order” party did everything in their power to undermine and interfere with the Muller investigation, and is now twiddling their thumbs as Trump’s foreign-policy-by-extortion is obfuscated by William Barr, a legal fixer who is a mix of crypto-fascist Dwight Schrute and a half-sedated tax accountant for the Church of Scientology. They blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court for the entirety of an election year, but when Mitch McConnell was asked how he would handle an opening if a justice were to die in 2020, he said with a smug grin, “Oh, we’d fill it.” The list goes on.

And the most rabid quarters of their base aren’t supposed to notice or care. Anything could happen at any moment, all of it powered by a paradox.