No no sillyo. I am not talking about revolution vs reform. Talking about something quite different. There is the stereotype common people who willingly uphold the power are stupid. The idea is anyone who can reason would conclude the power is a purely narcissist force that only aims for control. Stereotypes indeed rarely if ever hold up when put to the test and this is no exception. In a quite well known book there is a character named Syme. Syme is one of the people behind creating newspeak. Syme is a very intelligent person and sees right through the party yet he is one of the most orthodox and loyal followers of the party. He constantly talks about how his work is helping the party limit the range of thought. With every cell in his body he supports and actively contributes to a system that only aims to control him. The party ends up vaporizing him for knowing too much even though he was one of the most loyal and orthodox people around.
The conclusion of many more traditionalist beliefs in theory seems to be totalitarianism as we know it. Traditional has a prerendered concept of what society should look like and demands it conforms to that shape no matter what. It demands leaders who have these views ingrained into them and demands power gets exercised to enforce this image. Laws exist only for the reason of upholding this image. To pass bills the only available framework is arguing for how it will contribute to upholding the image. How come is it that the traditionalists would bother to even make pricy jails when their supporters would be perfectly happy shooting the unemployed? Go ahead and search up morals. Morals has a quite bending meaning as it only aims to define what is right and wrong in the context of any given system. So many people who bluntly only support the demands of traditionalism at the same time will preach freedoms and liberties. These freedom and liberties seem to fundamentally clash with everything traditionalism stands for. And that is because they indeed dont support freedoms and liberties. All they need is to do the bare minimum to keep a appearance.
Every system feels the need to frame itself as the good side. When the system fucking sucks there are two options. One: Use fear and demonize opponents to scare people into upholding the system, two: do things to appear slightly less terrible than what opponents say making the system a relative good in the minds of many. As much as the system wants to just kill anyone they dont like they need to do the bare minimum to avoid being caught in a blunt enough manner for the indifferent people to get radicalized. The supporters will uphold no matter what but the indifferent people can tip the scale if they wake up. The system needs to act like it tried and failed and "there is no other way". Often times the issue was caused by the system in the first and nearly it not existing anymore will fix the problem. No need for a mass fix it effort when wounds heal with time when no longer getting stabbed at. In the same book old Syme came from the party never just flat out killed its opponents. It would get a genuine confession out of them first. They take the time to convert thought criminals into moral citizens and only once they are good orthodox citizens and upholders of the system again does the party kill them. This way no one is left dying a hero and the party and its supporters can sip their victory gin with a bloody smile.
Syme's arent the types to actually be able to talk about this type of stuff with. They are about crushing their opponents and keeping the high ground as the moral (even though it doesnt mean much) heros of the world. In their minds they will have always had to do anything they did. Every necessity just so happens to also enable narcissists to control. The concept of not doing something is unthinkable. The concept of not having rulers is unthinkable. Its so mind twisting hearing bright people only be able to think within this framework. A intelligent mind will only be able to produce thoughts within a given framework if limited to it like how a video game is limited to the resolution of its monitor no matter the graphics card.