Saturday PSA: Rough Beast Seen Slouching, Wearing 'MAGA' Hat

{Rather than my usual ‘Saturday Lecture,’ today’s post is a Public Service Announcement: a rough beast is reportedly slouching towards America, a bad moon is on the rise, and the forecast calls for a hard rain to begin falling shortly. I suggest heading for the hills.}  

“There’s something happening here / What it is ain’t exactly clear…” (Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth)

“Shelter me from the powder and the finger / Cover me with the thought that pulled the trigger…” (Neil Young, “Powderfinger”)

Please don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Marine officer, former Congressional page, and spiritual warrior Josiah Lippincott informs his readers at American Greatness:

“The coldest of all cold monsters.” That is what the modern state is. Nietzsche’s devastating analysis in Thus Spoke Zarathustra hit the nail on the head: the state is an engine of death. It wages war on the people, its agents are “annihilators” who seek the destruction of everything vital and potent. All who witnessed the last 18 months of the COVID regime and the biomedical tyranny imposed by Joe Biden and his handlers implicitly understand what Nietzsche meant. The bureaucrats who make up the arm of the state, who serve this cold monster, hate the people. They make their lives miserable. Lockdowns, vax mandates, mask orders, critical race theory in schools, transgender bathrooms . . . the list goes on and on.’

Why, you may wonder, must bureaucrats be so evil? What is the point of making people’s lives miserable?

“Ritual humiliation is the point. The agents of state power see themselves as the rightful masters of the people. To these creatures of the institutions, citizens are nothing but human resources to be bent to their malformed will. This perverse view extends even to the American military. The time is coming, soon, in which the armed forces will be turned openly against the people. The Biden inauguration lockdown in D.C.—replete with checkpoints, thousands of national guardsmen, and the full weight of the nation’s security apparatus—was only a taste of things to come. The Biden administration would not hesitate to turn its full military might, including atomic bombs, against the populace in a war. The state, the coldest of cold monsters, headed by an endless mob of Anthony Faucis would not hesitate to impose its will in the most brutal manner possible.” ¹

Allow me to point out, as politely as I can, that the above (and, in fact, the entirety of Lippincott's article) is sheer lunacy, or, as mental health professionals call it, “freaking loony tunes stuff”.

So, you ask, why waste time on it? Why call attention to it?

Well: Josiah Lippincott, the author of the lunacy under review, is a graduate of Hillsdale College in Michigan, a bastion of conservative scholarship. He received a B.A. in Politics and he is currently enrolled in Hillsdale’s Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship. In addition, Lippincott “is a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps. In 2019 he deployed to Japan as an operations planner for the use of rocket artillery in the Pacific theater. He previously worked as a Congressional Page, an intern for Congressman Devin Nunes, and an intern for the Heritage Foundation's Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics. He was named a “Publius Fellow” at Claremont Institute (California) in 2020.” (2020 Publius Fellows (claremont.org))

The Heritage Foundation, Claremont Institute, Hillsdale College, the Marine Corps, and an internship with a leading figure in the Republican Party: Mr. Lippincott’s conservative credentials are exemplary, and his future appears bright—which makes his delusional rhetoric all the more chilling. If Lippincott (along with the likes of J.D. Vance and Senator Josh Hawley) is any indication, today’s political Right is not just (to borrow a phrase from Lippincott’s article) “a bunch of low-IQ rednecks”; its red, white, and blue basket includes academically accredited (albeit reality-challenged) deplorables as well.

Is this honestly what the Republican Party and/or the conservative movement in America has become? What is in the Kool-Aid they’ve been drinking, and is there an antidote in sight? Note that Lippincott’s article contains not a single mention of policy disagreements that he and his readers might have with the Biden administration (or with any Democratic administration). His Hillsdale education notwithstanding, Lippincott offers neither analysis nor argument but an hysterical screed composed entirely of ad hominem invective and paranoid conjectures: “biomedical tyranny,” “bureaucrats hate the people,” “ritual humiliation,” “malformed will,” “mob of Faucis,” etc. And, of course, the piece de resistance: the claim that the full might of the nation’s military, including atomic weapons, will “soon be turned against the people”.

Does Josiah Lippincott believe this? I have no idea, but I guarantee that some of his readers will; describing “the modern state” as nothing but “an engine of death” determined to “impose its will on the populace” should play nicely into militia fantasies of “Second Amendment remedies,” especially given Lippincott’s references to Waco and to Ruby Ridge.

Lippincott’s deranged (but mercifully brief) manifesto ends with a call for “unceasing spiritual warfare against our degenerate and corrupt ruling class within the foreign policy establishment.” Desperate times call for desperate measures; after all, “We live in a regime of edicts and emergency “public health” measures. The Constitution is long dead.” Lippincott spells out his strategy:

“If Americans on the Right are to prevent the use of the military and national security apparatus against the people, we must defang these institutions. ² The most powerful weapon at our disposal right now is mockery. We must strip America’s surveillance state and our bloated military industrial complex of honor and deference. As a practical measure, we need to get public approval for the military to below 40 percent. Without a majority backing its actions, the armed forces cannot be used domestically without significant problems.”

Leading by example, Lippincott has already launched spiritual warfare from his Twitter account, claiming, “I have a mandate from heaven to fight back against this ‘coldest of cold monsters’ using every spiritual weapon at my disposal.” Imagine if Saint Paul had access to Twitter!

I will be honest: this man’s rhetoric frightens me; the fact that he is a product of, and no doubt a rising star in, America’s right-wing intelligentsia, with connections at the highest levels of government, frightens me even more.

I suspect this will not end well.

_____________________

The Biden Regime Will Turn the Military on the People Unless We Push Back › American Greatness (amgreatness.com)

¹ As Ronald Reagan famously said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m Doctor Anthony Fauci and I’m here to help.” The Gipper is long gone, but his legacy of mistrust for our own government lives on.

² I don’t know if “defang the military” will catch on like “defund the police,” but it is kind of catchy.

Comments

[Jack Shifflett]

Dochumi--thanks for your comment. I'm perfectly willing to be done with "American empire"; I just don't want it to take all of us with it.

[Dochumi]

I’ve been deeply afraid of how malleable the American public is, how easily swayed by blather and righteousness into fascism, for some time. As I watch the degraded political discourse in today’s America, the increasingly violent threats -and actions- of the Right, I shudder to think of the death throes of American empire. Our bloated military is the least of our worries.