Reactionaries are utterly at sea without an opponent against which to define themselves. Hatred & zero-sum competition are the only way they have to make sense of the world. Put them in charge & they will always, always create new enemies. https://twitter.com/ewong/status/1287041383455428610

This is an under-commented aspect of 90s politics. Without the USSR to give them meaning, reactionaries found themselves bereft & forlorn. They spent the entire decade trying to dredge up some new Big Bad. (It was drug dealers for a while, remember that?)

It explains why so many reactionaries were energized by 9/11 -- finally, a new Big Bad! Finally we can drop all this talk about peace & prosperity & chilling out! Our lives have meaning again!

We know how that ultimately worked out. We hit ourselves in the face several times, wasted billions of dollars, killed thousands of people ... to no clear end. Very unsatisfying. And so now the reactionaries have settled on a Big Bad they know won't go anywhere: libs.

The lesson I took from all that (just to wrap this up): any society is gonna have 20-30% reactionaries who don't *want* peaceful prosperity. Any peaceful prosperity that occurs will be against their efforts & will have to cope w/ their endless efforts at sabotage.