In his book The Reactionary Mind, Corey Robin notes that this attack on the old regime — the eye of consensus, as I have glossed it — is an essential, rather than accidental, feature of conservatism. The old regime is always in some sense to blame for allowing the revolution or reformation to happen. The defenders of the old regime, according to the reactionary, “lack the theological wherewithal to press the cause of the old regime with the requisite vigor, clarity, and purpose.”

This seems right, as well as a perfect description of “The Flight 93 Election” screed, which is nothing but an attack on the old regime’s unwillingness to defend itself. But we are led back, I think, to the (technological?) causes and conditions that have led to such an effective attack on the eye from the right, at least since Clinton and metastasizing during the Obama years.