4:20 AM. Easter Sunday. I awoke in a cold sweat in my childhood bedroom, suddenly haunted by the uncertainty that surrounds us. What do I really know? Am I even real? Well, I am thinking, I thought, and according to Descartes, that means that I am. But what else do I know? I jumped out of bed and fired up my laptop to find some answers. Any answer.
I opened Google and searched for “three undeniable facts”.
My heart was racing. I clicked on the first link. It was a video featuring a fellow named Rob Smith from Turning Point USA. The three undeniable facts are as follows: America is the greatest country on the planet, Donald Trump is saving America, and America will never be a socialist country.
No figure in American politics combines weirdness and consequential power like the state legislator. Just in the past decade, examples include the Georgia senator who was tricked by Sacha Baron Cohen into biting the head off a dildo and screaming the N-word to deter terrorists, the New Hampshire state representative who founded /r/TheRedPill, one of the most misogynist areas of Reddit, and the Tennessee state representative who drank out of a chocolate syrup bottle on the House floor (a privilege that I would ABSOLUTELY take advantage of).
Many of these civil servants reside and work in other states outside of Michigan. Here, we usually have legislators who don’t stray too far into personal weirdness no matter how strange their beliefs. However, there always seems to be an exception to the rule, and Michigan’s exception truly embodies this spirit of deep weirdness to go along with his munted conservatism — Beau LaFave (R-Iron Mountain).
You may wonder why this publication, which usually writes about campus issues, is writing about a guy who represents a remote part of Michigan over 400 miles north of East Lansing. Well, about two months ago (ten years in COVID-19 time) we came into the possession of meeting minutes from a joint meeting between the MSU College Republicans and MSU Turning Point USA. The slides were filled with useful information about upcoming conservative events along with some cursed boomer memes. These organizations wanted to bring LaFave to the university in some capacity, which brings us to the man himself (a recent graduate of this very university).
Here are many things that Rep. LaFave has done that would be bizarre to any sane human, but are selling points for MSU’s College Republicans.
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned East Lansing into a ghost town. The Grand River strip is dotted with restaurants that no longer have bustling dining areas. People have retreated indoors to self-quarantine, shutting down most club activities. Even MSU’s museum has closed, depriving students of hours of fun on mandatory class field trips. What is left in a college town with no college?
I don’t understand your strategy. You consistently write about various instances of collegiate “leftism” on campus yet, as a self-titled conservative outlet, refuse to comment or criticize anything. It seems almost contradictory that your tagline reads “objectivity, not subjectivity”, yet you blatantly label yourself as the only conservative publication on campus.
Recently, I got back from a tedious session of discussion about left-wing philosophy at the library to find a flyer slipped under my door. In fact, the flyer was slipped under the doors of everyone on my floor. After picking it up, my eyes popped out of my head and onto the floor, as the event advertised that national college conservative group Turning Point USA’s “Campus Clash” tour comes to MSU today. You might remember TPUSA as a group that once dressed up as babies to protest “safe spaces”, or for producing the oft-mocked “gun girl” Kaitlin Bennett. Founder Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens are the headliners, with intellectual heavyweights like Tuscon cop Brandon Tatum, YouTube commentator Dave Rubin, America’s greatest failson Donald Trump Jr., and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle relegated to special guest status. This promises to be the greatest act of lib-owning this campus has ever seen.
The Evening Look 