Justin The Baptist
When a bloodied severed head appeared in Act 4 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it was a hint to the Elizabethan audience that more mayhem was to come.
While senators grilled the social media titans accusing them of having “blood on their hands,” over teen deaths, real blood on real hands was to be found on Justin Mohn, who decapitated his father for being a Biden supporter (among other offenses). Additional charges by Justin were that his father, as a federal employee for over 20 years, must have been a member of the “federal government,” an organization dedicated to “destroying America.” The video, with its dramatic severed head shots, was Shakespearian as Mohn punctuated his monologue.
It’s too bad that only Meta, Snap Inc., and TikTok were in the Senate docket. Otherwise, Rupert and Fox, OANN (One America News Network), Bannon and Breitbart, and loony tunes sites like Punchbowl and the Daily Caller might have to explain why they gave Justin Mohn the very ideas that motivated him to cut off his father’s head. His rants and raves about traitors, immigrants, and sexual deviants was out of a MAGA page. At times, I thought he was channeling Tucker Carlson or his predecessor Lou Dobbs. Or, for that matter, a Carson mini-me like Maria Bartiromo. A score of Republican House Freedom Caucus members paint an apocalyptic doomsday visual portrait of their Democratic opponents.
Trump, of course, is the loadstone for severed head rationalizations. His uses of the terms “enemies” and “radical communists who hate America” never lowers the political temperature. He has long known that unstable people who listen to him are perfectly capable of committing political violence against anyone they don’t like. Trump has been warned by multiple sources that there is a rising tide of acute divisiveness. However, instead of calming the waters, he relishes in promoting anger and uses his campaign platforms to deliver ever more lethal doses of hate.
The OG Baptist, the New Testament’s John, was also into the end of days scenario. Events seemed startlingly out of control in the Jesus years; with the godless pagan Romans in charge, there were a plethora of deities. These did not jibe with the Jewish ones. No doubt it seemed like the end of the world to the Israelites. No coincidence here that Trump has been termed the orange Jesus by his inner circle of detractors.
The delusional Justin Mohn had a problem in marketing the “militia” he tried to raise, one familiar to everyone in commerce. That would be competition. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Wolverines already have their right-wing militias at the ready. They already tried to topple the federal government and deny Americans their elected president. So Justin Mohn’s pleas for his own army were too late. He probably felt he needed to up the ante with an act far more dramatic than the gallows and noose used at the Jan 6 insurrection.
I mean, those ended up being just symbolic; the mob never caught Pence or Pelosi, after all. Justin’s father’s head was much more of the real deal.
The Republican Party has succeeded in gaslighting Americans so effectively that nothing has any concrete reality. Taylor and Travis, thrown games, expected Superbowl endorsements, and every conceivable inane idea are now official MAGA currency. In a universe as toxic as this, how could everyone keep their head? Michael Mohn being minus his is exhibit one that this is going to be increasingly difficult. Fox, OANN, and Bannon’s War Room will continue to spew out insanity until more heads roll.
For sure, someone somewhere in the MAGA universe will decide (or already has decided) that this was a “false flag” operation, one designed to discredit MAGA beliefs and repulse moderates into voting for Joe Biden. Reverse reality is now the standard operating system for Trump and his henchmen.
When a bloodied severed head appeared in Act 4 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it was a hint to the Elizabethan audience that more mayhem was to come.
I have no doubt that Justin Mohn’s act is a similar prelude to more bloodshed. If you make people crazy, they do crazy things. Just ask Trump.