Want To Lose? Become "Trad"
If the right wants to win, they have to adapt
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Want To Lose? Become "Trad"
There is a fantasy plaguing the right wing that is just as dangerous as the progressive left’s Marxist social theories.
In short, it’s the delusion that a strict return to tradition, and an enforcement of those traditions, is what is needed to move the needle of society forward.
As a disgruntled and politically motivated “right-wing” person myself, I want nothing more than to win. I don’t like my California tax dollars going to fund free healthcare for illegal immigrants, I don’t want billions of dollars sent overseas, I don’t want mentally ill children to be put on puberty-blocking hormones because they are uncomfortable in their teenage bodies.
Winning requires a vision of the future. And since the mid-20th century, the right has lacked that positive vision. They became the party of corporate tax cuts, foreign wars, and globalist expansion. In part, this fear of saying; “this is what we want, this is how we’re going to get it”, was influenced by the right-wing European regimes of Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini. The right is terrified of having their policies called “Fascist”, and because the left knows this, they beat them over the head with this word like they’re a disobedient stepchild.
Because of this, a movement of right-wing “trads” (those who express a desire to return to a religious or social tradition that has passed) have become a loud right-wing contingency.
Trads, in general, want women to be housekeepers. They want an ethnically and religiously homogenous society (white and Christian) and they want to recreate a utopian vision of post-war America.
On paper, there are many things the trads and I agree with. But to enact real and lasting policy change, you need to understand reality.
The trad vision is more of an internet LARP (live-action role play) than a tangible set of policy proposals. Fundamentally, it is no different than communists imagining an idyllic commune. But it is gaining steam.
Changing human nature — regressing for the sake of ideological purity — has always been a losing political and social strategy. And regression would be the result of the trad political agenda.
The Pendulum Swing of the 50s
Just as the communists cherry-pick examples of the communal village “done right”, trads hyper-focus on the minutiae of a small window of American life, the 1950s.
I won’t get into all the details on why American life is fundamentally different now than it was in the post-war 50s. In summary, the middle class was booming, economic growth had skyrocketed, and there was a general social and cultural cohesion in the country. There were only a few channels on TV, many rural parts of the country had yet to be electrified, and most of the modern comforts we enjoy today were non-existent. But overall optimism in the country was high. There were many good things about this period in American history, but nothing is black and white.
Just as artistic and scientific minds co-exist in a functional society, so do those with differing opinions and viewpoints. For every five Amish boys who enjoy and believe in the Amish way of life, there is one who feels pulled to the modern world, leaving his Amish upbringing behind.
The trad fantasy assumes that through the enforcement of strict moral, religious, and social codes, the black sheep will inevitably fall in line.
This is false.
The order of the 50s was succeeded by a totalizing collapse of previous social norms. Children saw their parents as old-fashioned, sexless, uncool, and ignorant of the new, modern, way of life. In many ways they were right. But the hard pendulum shift in the opposite direction led to a period of unprecedented social chaos.
Rebelling against the locked room of their upbringing, meant, for many, indulgent sex, drug use, lack of ambition, and a turn toward Eastern spirituality. Rather than see some of the value of their upbringing, and work to adapt their old value structure to a changing America, young people in the 60’s went as far in the opposite direction as possible, and the country fractured.
Trads today engage in the same shallow, finger-wagging thinking, of social conservatives of the 50s. Trying to control “those damned kids”, leads to a shockwave of moral rebellion.
Joan Didion describes the dark feeling towards the end of the 60s in her book of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem:
“It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.”
The Noble Trad Myth
You might be familiar with the myth of the noble savage.
As the United States continued its push Westward into Indian-occupied territory, the American Indian became an iconic symbol of the unknown. For some, the dozens of tribes occupying what we now call the Great Plains were heathen barbarians — a savage death cult fueled by devilish mythical nature Gods that urged them to kill women and children. For others, the Indian tribes represented a return to nature — a pure and uncorrupted form of humanity that enjoyed the endless bounty of nature while “civilized” folk labored in cities and factories.
The noble savage myth was born in a time of rapid change and social upheaval. The steaming, smoking, clamoring, American city had been born. The industrial revolution was changing the world. With the growth of large-scale industry, rural life became less financially and socially sustainable. American blacks were free. Families moved from hamlets and towns and packed themselves in apartment blocks. The Irish and Italians emigrated en masse, leading to violent clashes and waves of anti-catholic sentiment.
America in the 1880s was a very different place than it was in 1830. Just as today, when the world changes, we latch on to an idyllic vision out of fear and uncertainty.
The progressive left imagines a social utopia. A magic place where food and technology just exist, while young poets and artists are free to write under a tree all day before tending briefly to the crime-free town's communal garden. There is no discrimination, there is only fair and equal treatment.
It’s a truly retarded vision; but for the historically illiterate — or highly empathic and unintelligent — it’s an easy one to buy into. It sounds perfect because it’s a fantasy, an attempt to reimagine human nature.
The trads, on the other hand, gravitate towards an attitude of “cracking down”.
It’s a decelerationist mindset. They are both skeptical and fearful of change. As the plains Indians were held up as paragons of natural human flourishing by the sympathetic anti-expansionists, trads romanticize the simple and morally pure 1950s middle-class family as the zenith of human prosperity. A cheerful homemaker wife, a well-paid corporate husband with a few project cars in the garage, two well-behaved children.
Rather than accept the fundamentally new reality of the 21st century, they engage in the same myopic thinking of those who saw American Indians as true in their nature.
Why You Lose When You Live in Fantasy
When you center your political or moral identity on cherry-picked images of the past, you’re effectiveness at solving real and existing problems will dissolve. You lose the game, and your enemies win.
There are aspects of the 21st century that people 100 years ago couldn’t fathom. The internet has connected the world, dating apps have become the way most new couples meet, and the world of work is changing rapidly through AI and other new technology.
Women are not going to be stripped of their right to vote or surge en masse to quit their jobs to find husbands whom they will willingly cook and clean and bear children for. The promise of middle-class life has evaporated for many, and no amount of “pull yourself up from the bootstraps” will change it. You may not like it, but this is the truth.
What the trads could do, if they were serious, is to propose policies that will enable families to thrive in this new world. To give those who want to incorporate the best aspects of past society into a modern, and adaptable framework for human well-being and live by the virtues they espouse online. People respond to incentives, not to being beaten over the head with “right” and “wrong”.
Progressive leftists have won because they lead with a promise. Trads lose because they tell you that everything about modern life is degenerate and morally broken. And because they speak from a podium of moral superiority (no matter how valid their point) hypocrisy evaporates their argument.
The left sees the world as a moral free-for-all as long as policy doesn’t affect the “oppressed” class. They don’t mind bending and breaking their rules as long as it suits the dichotomy of their childish worldview. The trads on the other hand, have built their worldview on religious and moral teachings that are alien to the modern city-dwelling young person. They are complex, ancient, and require a certain type of upbringing and self-examination to adhere to.
While these values are more robust, they become an easy target for the opposition.
When the trads slam phone-addicted teens and idol worship while posting clips of Jordan Peterson on Instagram, young progressives scoff. And why shouldn’t they?
The trads say it “should be” this way while using the same technology, enjoying the same comforts, and living in the same world as the rest of us.
In the next ten years, the American right has every opportunity to integrate and spread the best and most attractive aspects of their philosophy to the populace, but it’s only going to stick if they are willing to engage with reality as it is, not how they wish it would be.
As always, thanks for reading
-Joe
YES. Wrote a similar piece some days ago talking about why “trad” is a losing movement. Completely agree with this 🥂