On MindWars and MindWarriors
Satanic eyebrows? The Temple of Set? Satanic pedophiles? Oh my!
In the United States military, the rank of lieutenant colonel is, like most middle-manager ranks in it, surrounded with far more pomp than it probably deserves. Among those who could write their name as “Lt. Col.” are Aaron Burr (yes, that one), Tulsi Gabbard, and Tammy Duckworth.
And into such esteemed company entered one Michael Aquino during America’s tragic “adventure” in Vietnam. Apparently the things he did there messed his mind up so much he started babbling about “Mind Wars”. However, his former rank, and the lack of attention to detail often brought to issues by conspiracy theorists, led to his rank being rapidly inflated: if you listen to them, he was a “high ranking military officer” or even a “three-star general”.
These days, rather humorously, it seems Lt. Col. Aquino has shed this title for a far more pompous one (if such were possible): the Baron of Rachane. I will respect this and use “Baron” going forwards.
I’m sure Baron Aquino really did some “psychological warfare” in Vietnam, perhaps even some “psychological operations”. But by the far-off year of 2013, the year in which he published MindWar, this type of thing was so far out of fashion in the United States military, and the rest of the national security state, that his jumbled-up vision for the future of the military landed in Barnes&Noble rather than the Oval Office.
Just as well, I’d say, for the Baron of Rachane would have his MindWarriors wearing berets and sporting ridiculous badges with furries on them:
There’s really nothing more to write on this. If you read the above and think that this is worth taking seriously, consider just playing Dungeons and Dragons or something.
Jim Stewartson need not apply.
Addendum—Giving the Devil his due
I tend to like Satanists, and were I to meet Aquino, I’d probably end up liking him too even while thinking “God, what a strange dude this man is” and “yup, as indeed everyone has said, the man is a creep”. So, now that I have trashed MindWar, it is time now to give this self-proclaimed Devil his due, and try to glean a positive reason for his having written it.
One could charitably interpret Aquino’s MindWar as a response to post-traumatic stress disorder or another mental illness he acquired during his military service. He rails in the book against many military doctrines: both conventional wars and the types of psychological warfare he conducted in Vietnam. Perhaps Aquino, traumatized by his time in Vietnam, and the actions of his country there, but still a patriot at heart, (if a Satanic patriot,) wanted to change the nature of war.
Yet, as he was an old man already by the year 2013, and a man far removed from his military service, he perhaps had no real idea about the internet nor (perhaps) any inkling that conspiracy theorists would slurp up his trauma-manifesto qua LARP docu·mess and turn it wholesale into StewAnonsense. He perhaps had no idea that far from changing the nature of war, he’d only embolden the worst elements of the online right.
If this interpretation be true, it is the saddest of all, but such is the problem with staring deep into abysses as deep and treacherous as StewAnon.
