Heroes of the Fourth Turning: A Play about a Growing Populist Divide

National Review ^ | Nov 2019 | Nora Kenney

[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 Arbery’s 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,” Arbery’s 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 that’s 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 Arbery’s 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 Trump’s “Crunchy Conservative” subbase — which proves itself to be rather nuanced.

[Retrofitted]

Okay, right off the bat... “CRUNCHY conservative”?! What, we taste good with ketchup? Just silly.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

From another review:

“If only. Either—or even watching all of Game of Thrones in a single sitting—would 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/

[colorado tanker]

Until this post I'd never heard of Wyoming Catholic College. It is new but is a real thing.

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.

[marktwain]

Bizarre article.

Reads as if "style" were far more important than substance.

Exactly the opposite of reality.

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

“Bizarre” is only one of the words I’d use to describe the article. “Overlong, pretentious, unreadable” would be some others I might use.

[marktwain]

Good choices.

[Mrs. Don-o]

In case anybody is still wondering, it must be 10+ years ago that American Conservative blogger Rod Dreher wrote ""Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers and their diverse crowd of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party)."

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.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Ah! Thanks for the explanation!

[Albion Wilde]

bump for later