The Double Down Changed the Rules

Long ago, our predecessors on this Earth fought what were known as “gentlemen’s wars”, in which two opposing sides would line up across from one another on the battlefield and shoot across the gap until one was defeated. Undoubtedly grizzly and horrible, as is any life cut short, but strangely honorable as well.

The gentlemen’s war, however, could not last.

Beginning with the first world war, advanced weaponry and guerilla tactics put an end to gentlemanly combat. Tactics, subversion, and secrets prevailed as militaries grew smarter and more advanced. Increasingly, war was fought behind closed doors. As military science became more sophisticated, it became ever clearer that a ‘traditional’ war would never be possible again. The development of the atomic bomb and the subsequent race to build and hoard weapons of mass destruction by the world’s superpowers cemented this fact via the principle of mutually assured destruction: as soon as the first bomb is launched, everyone in the world is doomed. There were those who hoped mutually assured destruction meant the end of war, after all, if we can’t have another war without wiping ourselves off the face of the planet, surely we won’t have another one. But war finds a way. The cold war brought the concept of fighting behind closed doors to full fruition. An intelligence race between the United States and Russia that saw the rise of the spy, covert operations, governments hiding deep state secrets from themselves, and countries performing amoral experiments on their own people, all in the name of crumbling the enemy from within.

Perhaps most infamous of the experiments performed by the US government was MKUltra, a series of experiments majorly surrounding mind control. Officially, MKUltra existed from 1953 to 1973, but many believe that operations continued after the official disbandment of the project. At perhaps it’s most outwardly terrifying, MKUltra included tests involving exposure to high doses of LSD, electric shocks, and torture. It permanently damaged the minds of its subjects, many of whom went on to commit suicide, or to murder others, not the least of which being Ted Kaczynski — the Unabomber. While the more abhorrent experiments of MKUltra are the most widely known and publicized, the primary focus of the project was widespread control. One of the most successful elements of the project was its research into subliminal messaging, or the process of injecting ideas into the collective minds of the public via imperceptible messages. Flashing text for fractions of a second in films, or imagery suggestive of secondary meanings in print. The technique is so powerful that it became the bread and butter of modern advertising. Commercials, product placement, even logo design is all meticulously curated to turn consumer’s brains on to specific products without them necessarily even knowing it.

But you already knew that, right?

The concept of subliminal advertising is so well known in modern day that we pretty much all know that it’s happening to us most of the time. In a world where skepticism is king, product placement in media has become obvious and laughable, and consumers have grown too smart to fall for cheap, sneaky tactics by advertising companies. What was once the pinnacle of military science has become transparent to the everyman. A fact of life that we are all more or less equipped to combat.

In theory, war is over. We’re too well equipped for face to face combat, and too smart and too distrusting for a war of the minds. The common person is too skeptical to be fooled easily by world powers, both governmental and corporate.

Or so we thought.

As in all of human history, war has found a way. It is a new, deeply insidious way that no one could have fathomed. Nietzsche was right when he said ‘God is dead’, but he was 130 years before his time. God is dead, and we killed him. And we did it in 2012.

The prophesied end of days, as foretold by the ancient Maya, would be the winter solstice in the year 2012. The actual date notated by the calendar is disputed, to a large degree, but Hollywood and popular media cemented 12/21/12 in the public consciousness. Some people took it to heart and truly believed. After all, how could a really old circle be wrong? Most of us didn’t fear Armageddon, but the thought was there at the back of our minds. What if? There was always an off chance that it really was going to happen. And whether you believed or not, the clock kept counting down. The edges of society started to fray. Some prepared for the end, others made peace with their gods, but some people just decided to get a little weird with it.

The state of our collective minds in 2012 can be best summarized by an event in March of that year, which was at the time, unprecedented. That’s right, I’m talking of course about Taco Bell unveiling the Doritos Tacos Locos. In what was at the time considered by many to be the greatest food crime ever committed, Taco Bell created a taco with a shell made of pure Doritos. And had we all not had the possibility of Ragnarok lurking in the back of our minds, we might have just laughed them out of business. But like I said, people were more than ever ready to get a little weird, and Taco Bell capitalized on that in a genius way. However, intentionally or not, they opened a door that could never be closed. Clear evidence of this came almost exactly one year later.

On December 22, miraculously, we all woke up. Even those who were sure it was the end must have breathed a sigh of relief to discover that they were wrong. But the damage was done, and Taco Bell had started a chain reaction that they never could have anticipated the effects of. In March 2013, almost exactly a full year after the Doritos Tacos Locos, KFC introduced the Double Down. For the uninitiated, the Double Down is a chicken sandwich in which THE CHICKEN IS THE BREAD. That’s right, two pieces of chicken that you hold with your disgusting hands sandwiching bacon, cheese, lettuce and tomato. It became clear at this point that the rules had changed. The thin veil of society was being thrashed about by a harsh new wind. As fast food began a new arms race to develop the most outrageous products available, the goalposts for what was normal and safe in the world moved with them. Food crime flourished over the next few years, Olive Garden made spaghetti pie, Pizza Hut invented Cheez-Its pizza, every insane product an agent of entropy, marching us closer and closer to hell’s gates. The benchmark for what was food was constantly thrown out the window as we were forced to normalize each new level of absurdity. When the Doritos taco debut, it had been considered the most ridiculous thing Taco Bell had ever done, but if one does not accept the Doritos taco as a simple fact of life, one’s mind will not be able to comprehend such atrocities as the Naked Chicken Chalupa (a dish in which a chicken breast has been contorted into a container to hold taco fillings). Our minds warped, unable to process such vile inventions as the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos chicken sandwich from KFC, without first sweeping such atrocities as the Double Down into the broom closet of normalcy inside our minds. Some of these products probably sound pretty alright to you, I’m sure. You’re not alone. When I found out that Taco Bell was going to be making Nachos Fries, I marked it on my calendar. But we must all face the amount of small concessions we have had to make to even be able to conceptualize a Triplelupa.

In February of this year, 2020, I wrote a short piece on Planter’s Nuts, meant to acknowledge the new stone they had turned in viral marketing by releasing a commercial in which beloved mascot Mr. Peanut died in a fiery car wreck. After the tragic untimely death of Kobe Bryant shortly after the commercial aired, Planters backed off of the new campaign and resurrected the legume in a Superbowl commercial. While unprecedented as the first televised death of a major brand mascot, it was not the first time one had been brought back to life. However, there was one key difference; five years before Mr. Peanut was given a second chance at life, real life dead person Colonel Sanders was Frankenstein’d for a viral ad campaign by KFC.

In order to understand the ghoulish nature of the Colonel’s resurrection, we must first gain a greater understanding of the real man. Harland Sanders was born in 1890 in Indiana. He grew up caring for his siblings after his father passed away. Without a chance at an education, and born into relative poverty, Harland saw little success for the majority of his life. He bounced from job to job without much true aim. He was however, beloved by those who knew him, and bestowed the title of ‘Kentucky Colonel’ by the then governor of Kentucky. His last job before the founding of Kentucky Fried Chicken was running a small motel. This was where he perfected his chicken recipe, which he would take with him after leaving the motel to travel the country in search of a business partner to open a restaurant with him. By living in his car and rarely eating, Sanders managed to traverse the country and franchise a number of restaurants, rocketing him to fast food stardom in the 50s and 60s. Yes, that’s right, the Colonel was in his 60s when he first began to make a name for himself. In 1980, 16 years after selling the brand and retiring, Colonel Sanders passed away of leukemia. Surely, after a long life of hard work, Harland Sanders must have been proud of his achievements in life, and found peace in death.

That is of course, until May of 2015, when Darrell Hammond donned the dead man’s suit and appeared on our TVs, speaking those haunting words: “I’m Colonel Sanders, and I’m back America”. That’s right, the advertising team at KFC decided not just to bring the Colonel back as a figurehead, but to CANONICALLY BRING HIM BACK FROM THE DEAD. Over the next five years, the mantle of the Colonel would change hands sixteen times as actors and comedians whose careers were declining would flock to the role. The second Colonel, after Hammond, would be Norm Macdonald, then Jim Gaffigan, each proclaiming the previous to be an imposter, and themselves the real Colonel Sanders. As time went on, the role fell to wrestlers, models, even Reba McEntire. Most recently at the time of writing, Sean Astin bore the role in one of the most disturbing commercials yet, in which he became the Colonel simply by wanting it so badly that he actually slowly transformed into the fast food icon. Similarly to the outrageous menu item arms race, KFC overloaded our senses with as many Colonels as possible as quickly as they could, so we would forget just how disrespectful the campaign was to the real man behind the brand. It seems that not only was KFC committed to returning Sanders to life, but to ensure the spirit of the man saw no rest by making his visage the heavy crown under which all past-prime comedians would wish to find themselves. What had begun years before with a fucked up sandwich had now culminated in the blatant disrespect of the brand’s dearly departed patriarch. And thus, the true beginning of the end had begun. If we could normalize this, surely any chicken abomination they created would practically go unnoticed. The societal veil was fully pulled away, and there was no going back.

Perhaps there is no better proof that the world had just taken a shocking turn than this; in June of 2015, just one month after Darrell Hammond glued on that famous goatee, Donald Trump announced his run for US president, and boy, have we normalized a lot since then.

Many people think the beginning of the end was in 2016, when the world saw an inexplicable mass exodus of celebrities from the mortal plain, or when America saw it’s most terrifying president yet take office and Great Britain voted to undermine its future generations, but I believe the signs were there long before that. In a way, maybe the Mayans were right about 2012, but rather than the return of Quetzalcoatl or a world-ending meteor, the beginning of the end came in the form of a taco and a messy chicken sandwich.