By Douglas V. Gibbs
When a society abandons the rule of law for the rule of man, a dance around a golden calf is never far behind.
Culture matters. Civilizations don’t run on laws alone; they run on the virtues that give those laws meaning. As Andrew Breitbart famously observed, politics is downstream from culture. A corrupt culture inevitably produces corrupt governance.
This is why we should be alarmed by the creeping incrementalism of Cultural Marxism, an ideological strategy explicitly designed to dismantle the moral foundations of non-comminist societies. The goal isn’t reform; it’s deconstruction. Collectivism cannot seize control of a functioning system until it has first delegitimized the norms, institutions, and moral structures that sustain it. Antonio Gramsci called this “The Long March Through the Institutions;” a patient strategy of infiltrating and subverting a society’s cultural, political, and academic pillars until they collapse under the weight of their own alleged contradictions.
Enter Lane Kiffin.
After spending six years rebuilding Ole Miss, guiding the program to an 11-1 record and its first-ever College Football Playoff berth by the end of the 2025 season, Kiffin shattered the team’s momentum at the worst possible moment. He announced his departure for SEC rival LSU, then abandoned his players before the postseason. The timing delivered chaos when it was least needed. While his players and the fans had bought into his vision, he cashed out for a bigger paycheck without as much as a “howdy-do.” The subsequent poaching of players and staff during the messy transition only confirmed what the move suggested: for Kiffin, there is very much an “I” in team.
His behavior was disloyal, harmful to the sport, and fundamentally unethical.
Now, instead of pariah status, Kiffin enjoys celebrity treatment. Dr. Pepper and DoorDash have turned his betrayal into punchlines (“illegal Lane changes,” “Fansville: Fishing Trip,” and “Don’t fan for free”) transforming shameful conduct into savvy branding. Satire can be a weapon against hypocrisy, but here it’s being used to celebrate the hypocrite. These commercials don’t condemn Kiffin’s greed; they normalize it. They teach the next generation that winning unethically is just another form of winning, that grabbing headlines matters more than keeping your word.
John Adams understood what was at stake when he warned that our constitutional republic required a “moral and religious people.” Benjamin Franklin, during the Constitutional Convention, said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
I am not suggesting that a soft drink commercial will single-handedly unravel the republic. But Kiffin’s ads are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a deliberate campaign to demoralize our institutions, erode our shared values, and render our culture unrecognizable to its founders. The normalization of shifting moral standards, market-tested and focus-grouped, gradually acclimates us to a world where loyalty is laughed at and greed is winked at.
This is psychological warfare disguised as entertainment. An inch here, an inch there; and soon you’ve moved miles from your foundational principles.
Given an inch, they take a mile.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
