Just curious. Do you think you can be both reactionary and conservative? I don't really get why they're reactionary though. To change? In their view I imagine what has always worked has always worked, but I'm befuddled to why they don't really have input on anything beyond being reactionary? I think they will say this applies to the left too, but my experience is that while the left media are not saints, they tell the truth about the right more than vice versa. I tend to think part of that is the degree to which they lie, so the lies compound themselves to cover for the initial lies. There's conservative influencers, national conservative radio, the NY Post, Faux primetime, X, etc. Not much there in terms of factual news IMO. I remember the guy on reddit who replied to why there are no real "conservative" search engines. Answer: because they will just lie.
Conservative.. definition:
Averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values.
ie: maintainers of the status quo, believing in change where needed, by limited incremental small variations
Reactionary ... definition:
a person who favors a return to a previous state of society which they believe possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary. (worthy of note: the "previous state of society" is almost invariably a total fantasy)
Reactionaries are a specific form of revolutionary - they typically aim to tear down the current status quo, in favour of an imagined previous "golden age" setup.
You can have both right and left wing conservatives, reactionaries are always right wing, although revolutionaries come in both reactionary (right wing) and progressive (left wing) flavors.
As reactionaries (MAGA, Tea Party) have taken control of the US Republican party, they have adopted (appropriated) the "conservative" name tag - but there is nothing conservative about their politics or ideology.
Most of the Democratic party have for decades been conservative in both politics and ideology, although in the US context they have been painted as "left wing", if you look at their policies and ideologies in a historical and international context, the US Democrats are a right wing party.
Even the most "extreme" left wing politicians in the USA, are proponents of policies and ideologies that the rest of the world considers at most centrist.
The USA overton window is so far to the right that there is barely a vestigial left wing left.
Like all sociological movements through history, the pendulum does swing... and the more to the right it swings, the more extreme the counter swing will be.
The Russian Empire, was the most autocratic (right wing) government of the late 19th century....which led to the communist revolution.... and then all the way back to Putins autocracy.
Most of the rest of the world introduced constitutional monarchies, diluted their autocracies, and thereby limited the "swings of the pendulum".
The more extreme Trump is, and the more successful he and his cronies are, the worse the counter swing will be. (and the counter swing could take decades, look at the USSR).
Conservatives basically try to dampen the motion of that pendulum... gently adjusting to the right or to the left, but doing their best to avoid massive revolutionary changes - in the knowledge that such actions are by their nature unpredictable... hard to tell how far the pendulum will swing, and how far back!
Yes a progressive can be conservative, or a progressive can be revolutionary - but not both.
A conservative cannot be a revolutionary - cannot be a proponent of massive dramatic change - not without ceasing to be conservative.
Calling MAGA "conservative", is basically the same as calling NAZI's "socialist" - yes both appropriated the respective terms, it was part of their marketing / PR.... but in both cases their actual policies were (and are) the exact opposite of the appropriated term.
