The missing nut graf was "The GOP is nostalgic for the antebellum South; Democrats are nostalgic for 2016."

The point stands that both parties are focused on the rear view, which is pretty much textbook "conservative," regardless of how the term has been intentionally co-opted.

I've been thinking about the difference between conservatism in general and what is Conservatism in the United States with a capital C. The ethos of conservatism in general is to depend on established systems and to be risk averse, and this is a great summary of the behavior of the Democratic party for the last few years. Capital C American Conservatism as it exists in the US is a radical right wing movement which opposes liberalism fundamentally, which is composed of democracy and capitalism. Although Capitalists prefer what is to the right of them than to the left of them, Fascism and Feudalism are to the right of capitalism which will allow anything in the interest of profit good and bad. Fascism and Feudalism are much more restrictive than capitalists, and will oppose "woke business" whenever it opposes traditional right wing values. The contemporary capital C Conservative movement in the United States opposes even the Enlightenment values of the Founding Fathers (who were themselves slave-holding capitalists) in favor of a more traditional feudal structure which is venerated by Fascism. DeSantis is the leading figure of the far right in the US, and does not wish to revert the US to a prior state, but to revert the US to a system which existed prior to the United States in the interest of traditional values which are centuries old. One of the key components of fascism is to mythologize the past and contend to "return" to the ideal which never actually existed. This is the ethos of the capital C Conservative movement which does not seek to conserve but to enact a far-right system similar to what existed pre-enlightenement.

Liberalism is a conservative, pro-capitalist ideology