Posted on 12/11/2019 3:07:19 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Trump voters in the flyover states are often referred to as the forgotten the men and women whom the media and other presidential candidates failed to understand. An entire cottage industry has materialized around them, intending to humanize them, or explain their perspective to a baffled coastal audience. J. D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, is typically seen as the prototype of this group.
But Will Arberys riveting off-Broadway play, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, dramatizes an even more obscure group, a forgotten sub-category within the forgotten a group Rod Dreher, whose influence weighs heavily on the play, might call Crunchy Conservatives.
Hailed by the New York Times as a red-state unicorn, Arberys play centers on four college friends who have returned to their college town in Wyoming seven years after graduation and are attending a party. As is typical (but often hilariously foreboding) at these types of gatherings, they drift outside to the fire pit for drunken philosophical conversation beneath the stars. And thats where the action ensues...
Only in this scenario, the four share a unique background. They each attended Transfiguration College, based loosely off Wyoming Catholic College (of which Arberys father is the president). While other schools are foregoing the Western canon and fostering a generation that Snapchats by day and hooks up anonymously by night, Transfiguration (like Wyoming Catholic), offers a classical education, rooting its mandatory curriculum in Latin and the Great Books. And cellphones and sex are banned.
Each saddled with their own personal angst, the four main characters launch into competing diatribes, each revealing a wrinkle of Trumps Crunchy Conservative subbase which proves itself to be rather nuanced.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Okay, right off the bat... “CRUNCHY conservative”?! What, we taste good with ketchup? Just silly.
From another review:
“If only. Eitheror even watching all of Game of Thrones in a single sittingwould be preferable to the hellish experience of more than two intermissionless hours with this pretentious, smugly provocative, virtuosically wordy but fundamentally empty play.” ~ David Fox
https://recliningstandards.com/2019/10/07/review-heroes-of-the-fourth-turning-dwells-in-darkness/
I had thought the only four year college in the state was the University of Wyoming.
"Crunchy conservative"? Still trying to figure out where they got that.
Reads as if "style" were far more important than substance.
Exactly the opposite of reality.
“Bizarre” is only one of the words I’d use to describe the article. “Overlong, pretentious, unreadable” would be some others I might use.
Good choices.
Long, self-ironic title.
THe "crunchy" part is a reference to granola. The idea is, these are conservatives on the opposite end of the spectrum from RINOs or neo-cons. Probably closer to paleoconservative: faith & family & yearning for a small farm someplace.
Ah! Thanks for the explanation!
bump for later
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