The Conservative Grievance Business Is Always Hiring

Given his age when he first came to the world's attention and assuming continued good health in the intervening decade and change, Marine Todd would be in his late 30s today. That would be if he was a real person, though, and Marine Todd was the invented hero in a classic bit of dippy Obama-era conservative memecraft. In the original story, Marine Todd knocks out a cocky atheist college professor in front of his classmates to prove the existence of God. There are many other versions of this fable; the evangelical God's Not Dead franchise, now at five films, should probably give it an onscreen story credit.

It's more accurate to say that Marine Todd, as a conservative figure of fantasy and the beefy personification of a foundational urge that runs through that movement, is both very old and very current. That fantasy is about violence, but it is also about impunity—"God was busy protecting America’s military," Todd tells his professor, once he comes to, "who are out protecting your right to say stupid shit like that, so he sent me to fill in." Righteously smashing whoever and whatever offends or just inconveniences you is something like the essential reactionary fantasy; the great work of the conservative movement, then and now, is creating the circumstances and structures that make it possible for the right type of smasher to get away with doing that.