It was only a matter of time before Harvard Law’s double hater (liberalism and democracy) emerged from the scholarly shadows to join his soulmate JV “Junior Varsity” Vance in the Trumpian spotlight. Damon Linker puts Adrian Vermeule at the heart of an emergent “politics of reactionary negation,” in which not even the fanatic Catholicism people like AV sashay around with has any real meaning to them. Rather, disgust at modernity altogether – a disgust as deep as the Mariana Trench – seems to propel world-loathers into Trumpworld.

Specifically, the double haters hate the “personal existential emptiness … the meaninglessness and inertia” with which contemporary secular American life oppresses us all. Only a Catholic theocracy (UD calls it a Cathophate) will smash a country where “liberalism is the great enemy that must be fought and defeated so that something more wholesome and spiritually invigorating can take its place.” The American government will be run by priests and their acolytes, and will graciously rid us of our personal existential emptiness.

There is no neutral ground on fundamental questions of God, good and evil, and the purpose of human life. Political conflict entails conflict about these ultimate things… Accordingly, [radical rightwing Catholics] view public institutions, social structures and religion as an integral whole. Nothing is truly private. Everything affects the common good; there is no private life or private conscience. The resulting vision is of a hierarchical society with concentrated power, close coordination between church and state, and public regulation of religious orthodoxy… [In short,] the Catholic Church should strategically co-opt the American state. The result would be a return of state-sanctioned religion and a politics that is at once socially conservative, statist and economically populist… [The ultimate goal of all human life] is heaven, and the integralist means of getting us to that destination is to subordinate politics to the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church.

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So here’s a modest policy suggestion from UD: Before fully committing themselves to the overthrow of American democracy, Vance and his army of reactionary negationists should ask themselves whether their sensation of personal emptiness and inertia has more to do with excess ejaculation than modernity.

It’s quite possible, in other words, that they are mainly reacting to the post orgasmic, post coital tristesse that tells you you’ve gone and emptied yourself of sperm yet again.

These men after all are America’s most prominent pronatalists, led ultimately by the hyper-childed, always depleted-looking, Elon Musk. Wouldn’t they all feel silly if the miserable hollowed out feeling they ascribe to the rest of us is an epiphenomenon of their excruciating coital self-coercion?

It’s important to remind ourselves that semen retention has a distinguished spiritual history:

• karezza (Italian)
• maithuna (Hindu Tantra)
• sahaja (Hindu Yoga)
• tantra (Hinduism and Buddhism)
• cai Yin pu Yang and cai Yang pu Yin (Taoist)

Every one of these traditions recognizes coitus reservatus as providing benefits in terms of focus, a greater sense of purpose, and overall harmony. I would urge Vance and his followers to give this a try before extending their own sense of emptiness to everyone else.

Remember: Our side is known as The Happy Warriors.