Don’t RETVRN

Reject modernity. Embrace tradition. So goes a beloved motto of the online right that is frequently accompanied by a kitschy aesthetic and recommendations for lifestyle self-help. At their crudest, these calls to abandon modernity seem a lot like mere nostalgia, a kind of barely thought-through instinct that the past must have been inherently better than a debased present. The easy thing to do, therefore, is to just go back to the past. Like a lot of easy answers to complex problems, “RETVRN” is easy because it’s lazy and wrong.  Read Full Article »