A cap emblazoned with ISIS loyalty oath (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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It’s a year today since the triumph of then-candidate Joe Biden over the then-incumbent Donald Trump. But in the 12 months since, some have struggled to accept it. Not just the Trump supporters who continue to insist the election was stolen, but also the Democrats who seem to believe that Biden’s hold on power is so tenuous, so fragile, that it could all fall apart at any moment.
This mindset has been on full display this very week, during which the American press has offered readers and viewers pretty much nonstop coverage of an utterly stupid controversy. If you’ve been lucky enough to remain unaware of it, the basic gist is as follows: on October 30, Associated Press reporter Colleen Long tweeted that the pilot on her Southwest Airlines flight from Houston to Albuquerque had signed off after landing with the phrase, “Let’s go Brandon” — to the shock and horror of several passengers, who let out “audible gasps” upon hearing it.
“Let’s go Brandon,” in case you missed it, is a Right-wing meme that originated at a Nascar race. The crowd was engaged in a raucous chant of “Fuck Joe Biden!” which was clearly audible in the background of an NBC Sports interview with Brandon Brown, a charismatic underdog driver who had just won his first race — but the interviewer claimed, bizarrely, that the crowd was actually shouting, “Let’s go Brandon.”
Whether she genuinely misheard the chant or was only pretending to, the incident went viral. First, Right-wing Americans cited it as an example of the mainstream media’s untrustworthiness — which they believe is pervasive — when it comes to any story that’s unflattering to Democrats. But then, inevitably, the phrase became a meme: a fun, new, coded way to say “Fuck Joe Biden” without actually saying it.
In the weeks since, “Let’s go Brandon” has popped up in a number of places, including an October 21 speech on the House floor by Rep. Bill Posey of Florida. But it’s this alleged airplane incident, and the response to it, that reveal something truly fascinating about its place in our cultural moment.
Based on nothing but Long’s twitter thread — in which she describes demanding access to the locked cockpit in order to confront the pilot — the media sphere erupted with a response that one might generously describe as disproportionate (or, less generously, as a hysterical pearl-clutching panic). Former federal agent and CNN analyst Asha Rangappa compared the meme to an ISIS loyalty oath. Others suggested the phrase indicated a state of impaired judgment, public drunkenness, or maybe even dangerous rage. One widely shared comment, purportedly from an anonymous pilot, stopped just short of painting the accused as a Trump-loving suicide bomber who might well crash the plane to make a political point.
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SubscribeAh, the “false narrative of a stolen presidency”. I am one of many millions who believe the Nov 2020 election was stolen. I may be wrong, but my reasons have never been allowed to be openly discussed, so I will keep on saying, just for starters, that when 5 swing states all – for the first time ever – stopped counting votes at about the same time on the evening of 3 Nov when Trump was ahead in all 5, and then he wasn’t when counting officially resumed on 4 Nov, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
If any of this had happened in Russia and not the US no one seriously challenge allegations of election rigging
Of course, the author had to add (to preserve her bone fides “ And it was true: Trump was a uniquely terrible president, one who made an insane, albeit unsuccessful, play to hang onto power after the American people voted him out. But Biden”.
Trump accomplished much (see Middle East, see economy for black workers before the covid lockdowns) and Biden has accomplished nothing and made things worse (see Iran, see Afghanistan withdrawal, see inflation and people leaving the workforce, see racial divisiveness spewing from his pen and mouth about “White Supremacy”, see him lapse into senility in the middle of a sentence – even while reading, etc. )
Just what we need more of (nyuck, nyuck) – left wing journalists telling us about American politics
I can understand your doubts, but one reason I might think the election was not really stolen is that multiple and independed polls – hundreds and hundreds of them – and analyzed every which way in the US and in the UK – essentially told more or less the same or similar story, namely that Biden would win. More in doubt is maybe by how much – and certainly people like Nate Silver (who cautiously called it for Biden) agrees that the final results were a bit better for Trump than his analysis of the multiple polls would have suggested, meaning that the polls lack precision at some level. But even those who leaned more for Trump nevertheless showed that the popular vote was clearly in Biden’s column. It may be less clear as to what happened in terms of the electoral vote count, and it’s not inconceivable that just a few thousand votes going the other way would have given Trump the win, in much the same way that a few thousands votes (I thinking less than 80,00 in various key states) out of millions could have swung the election the other way in 2016.
You seem to think this is recent, or you’re pretending it is anyway. The Left has been panicking about memes for several years now – c.f Pepe and the NPC meme.
They’ve become so humourless that anything slightly chucklesome that goes viral has them in a flap.
Excellent point and this is particularly true in stand up comedy. Much of standup will offend someone, and yet it is being toned down, self-censored, and just not as funny anymore in many cases. Jimmy Carr makes rape jokes–and they are very funny. Jim Jeffries–back when he was funny–made a rape joke, he’s more of a story teller, really, about Oscar Pistorius–just super funny. He also tells and re-enacts the story of Oscar Pistorius shooting his girlfriend….You have been texting a rugby player…. Jimmy Carr has made jokes about the Holocaust, 9/11….
Edgy? In poor taste? You bet, but hilarious. I suppose these jokes are off limits now.
Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster at Triggernometry spoke about how they knew comedy was dead when the organizer of that huge annual festival in Edinburgh (I don’t remember the name) walked out onto the stage and said something like “We look forward to the new generation of woke comedians showing us what’s going to be acceptable in comedy from now on.”
I’m fascinated how the term “right-wing” has grown to include everything from Adolph Hitler to NASCAR spectators. It’s a very convenient cudgel to use against anyone who doesn’t reflexively pledge fealty to leftist demigods. The success of far-leftism has always been a triumph of marketing. The failure of far-leftism has always been the whole governing thing.
Excellent point. The same may be said for the term “hate speech,” which I have defined as anything the radical left dislikes and/or anything that might offend anyone at any time for any reason.
Actually, I’m a fan of “hate speech,” which some might call plain speech. Too many euphemisms, too much virtue signalling. When something is woke, call it out in no uncertain terms.
The success of the left is due to the massive increase in under achieving middle class arts graduates since the 1960s. They have no knowledge or interest in improving the contions of the poor. The injustice they perceive is their lack of success in life which is due to their grossly exaggerated inflated judgement of their abilities and self worth.
Not only in arts
Adolf Hitler wasn’t right wing. Don’t let the left walk away from that one.
Sorry but socialists and communists were the first inmates of Dachau
Yes, and the Soviet gulags were full of socialists. Just not the right kind of socialists.
This article and the comments are very insightful. I for one, did not know that there was a possibility that the reporter misheard the comment–Let’s go Braves for Let’s go Brandon–which seems logical, in a cheeky, regional rivalry sort of way. Heretofore I had believed that he actually said it, and I was mildly proud of him for doing it. I think it was inappropriate, I wouldn’t do it, but good for him! Of course this changes if it was Let’s go Braves! May I respectfully raise the issue of “rush to judgment?” The many who have called for the pilot to be fired do not seem to have all the facts? Is it “believe the woman,” because, well, a woman made the allegation–though she seems a bit of a nutter (self-described) if she tried to rush the cockpit? #MeToo tells us that we must believe the woman, always, w/o question….unless it’s inconvenient, such as allegations against Biden, or even allegations against Cuomo when he was riding high. How quickly one can fall!
And doesn’t this bring us full circle to the origin of Let’s go Brandon? That the real chant was changed to Let’s go Brandon shows the absolute duplicity of the mainstream press (Maybe the reporter misheard, but she hasn’t clarified, so I feel it safe to say that it was deliberate.) The main stream media was and is fundamentally dishonest.
I see one commentator talk about his belief that the 2020 election was stolen. Maybe. My vote from abroad didn’t count (typical incompetence or voter suppression?), and there are about 11mm Americans abroad. More than enough to skew the election. What’s up with that?
But what I will say is that there is no doubt in my mind that the 2020 election was not “free and fair,” a bit different from saying the election was stolen, but maybe close? Take one example: at a time when it really mattered, because it would show how corrupt the Biden family is, Twitter silenced a legitimate newspaper, The Post, from stories about the Hunter Biden laptop. This was later “corrected,” when the election was over. If UN observers were on the ground, would this suppression of news be evidence that the election was free and fair.
Europeans who express shock and horror at the American election system don’t really understand that it’s winner take all. Biden “won” not by a lot, but he has ALL the power and is determined to raise his middle finger to the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump, and the perhaps tens of millions of Americans who voted for Biden because he was not Trump, and not Bernie Sanders either. For Biden to shift shape into Bernie is the classic “bait and switch.” All the Biden voters I know but one regret their votes; counting on him to come around eventually.
Perhaps the left has a sort of “Biden Fragility,” because they know that this demented, doddering, dotard is not in charge, and the world can see that the emperor has no clothes. Thank you, Australian TV for keeping the pressure on.
So as someone who absolutely despises career politicians such as Sleepy Joe Biden (and this was before Scotland), let me sign off with a hearty
Let’s go Brandon!
Quite well said. That the Congress imagines it has a strong majority when it has but a tiny thread amplifies the delusions of the White House and Biden as a figurehead. LGB as a meme strikes home and brings down the notion of “we have the power”.
“bait and switch” exactly.
‘the Democrats who seem to believe that Biden’s hold on power is so tenuous, so fragile, that it could all fall apart at any moment.’ Exactly the same could be said of the Democrat story about the 2020 election. There was a large amount of prima facie evidence of voter fraud, including many sworn affidavits from electoral workers and scrutineers. Why is the author so confident that there was no vote fraud? To date, the Democrats have done everything in their power to prevent cases going trial, audits both forensic and legal being done, and for the primary evidence to be scrutinized. I’m sure they are doing that because they are just so confident that the election was clean…
“if we don’t learn to tolerate the annoyed, angry — even profane — dissent of the losers who have now found themselves pushed to the political margins”…
You wish?
The US doesn’t seem to do grown-up politics, for better or worse. But surely it can contrive to offer better contenders than Trump and Biden. How on earth one is expected to vote in a presidential election without laughing beats me.
In 2016 I would have agreed about Trump not being a serious politician. By 2020, he was the first serious politician, at least on the Republican ticket, since Reagan (well, Cruz deserves credit as well). He took the unusual step, especially for a Republican, of actually attempting to accomplish in office what he promised on the campaign trail. He didn’t get it all. The role of president wasn’t designed for them to be able to do anything and everything they want. But he made attempts at all of it, and was sometimes stymied by the separation of powers which exist for a reason, even if I didn’t always like the outcome they provided in his instance (but I’m sure grateful for them now).
But for decades, the typical Republican response–not just presidents, but senators and representatives and governors, etc.–was to promise to resist the left-wing ideas on the campaign trail and promote conservative ideas, yet if they were elected they would simply give in to what the Dems wanted (it’s only fair) while ignoring the issues they promised to support (it might make the media and opposition sad). He was the first in a long time who didn’t care, he spoke what he thought the people wanted, he was elected, and he did what was within his power to achieve the goals he promoted during his campaign. Sure, it might have been possible without the mean tweets. But he’s not the Queen, his job isn’t to smile and wave. And quite frankly, he was significantly less vulgar than many presidents before him, and for that matter than other elected officials and media personalities during his own time.
As a president, his job is to do the job of president. He was one of the few in a long time to actually do that. If that’s not a ‘grown up’ approach to politics, then I don’t want a grown up. You can keep the adults who talk nice on campaign and while in office ignore their voters to keep the other side happy because that’s ‘consensus’ politics (which oddly never seems to content nor benefit everyone like the name would imply). But I’ll still contend that to be a ‘grown up’ means having to stand up for your beliefs and commitments, even if not everyone likes them, and trying to get into government is in effect a pledge, often to millions of people, that you will put your strength into achieving the goals you promise them. The politicians who have successfully bilked their countries would disagree, of course, but I insist they are the problem with politics, not the point of politics.
Build that wall!
the mainstream media’s untrustworthiness — which they believe is pervasive.
I think the article proves the point
In a follow-up Tweet Ms. Long wrote, “Also in defense of airline I was asking them to open locked c**k pit and probably sounded insane!”
They set the tone with disrespect for the POTUS and now it’s coming back to bite them. They’re like tantrum throwing children and stuff like this just demonstrates their hypocrisy and emotional instability more and more.
I do not like gratuitous profanity casually used in serious media, it makes it feel like loose standards, that it is somewhat disrespectful of the readership, and overly familiar with the reader. Lowers the tone of the media and writing,
Ephesians 4:29 “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
Then you must have hated the entire five years from 2015 to 2020 when “F&ck Trump” was being repeated everywhere.
The problem being what counts as ‘corrupting talk’ and ‘good for building up’ are extremely subjective, to put it mildly. While I suspect I know what Paul’s take on the F-word would be if he visited us today, a lot of things he said that were considered reasonable then (and even twenty years ago, for that matter) are now considered practically hate speech by some. So for a secular free-speech society, that verse is useful for while in church and even on a personal basis, but not something to be enforced on secular publications. Actually, I just realized I should take back the part about being useful in Church. A lot of the ideas Paul preached are being abandoned by a shocking number of prominent denominations anymore, which turns even more of his statements in ‘hate speech.’
Too many US focused articles. This is taking over British media.
Yes but US politics is worrying for the UK due to its export to the UK of intolerant wokeness.It is to be hoped that US voters can pull us back from the brink
That is my hope too. Once all this Uber wokeness gets stopped in the US, hopefully U.K. and other European countries will follow. If the U.S. falls for this nonsense, we have no hope in hell, that it’ll stop here. The same goes for New Green Deal politics.
Thank you. Exactly my hope in both cases. But I think that UK as part of the anglosohere is more at risk than continental europe. It’s so unfair as UK has been one of the worlds most tolerant countries.
Sweden is a large part of the problem, and the pandemic may have started at a uni in Stockholm. “Hen,” some made up Swedish word to denote a third gender? DNA tracing needed to determine when this toxic and moronic word escaped from the uni, spread to the US, and then the world.
Sweden is a largely rational country, not like the 70s, but it has caused great harm…..
An interesting analysis that basically suggests that the USA cannot find a suitable candidate for the presidency.
I expect you all remember the hanging chads in Florida ? I have seen the endless voting strip for that election with all sorts of low grate positions on the same ticket. I was appalled. Keep it simple, and not mechanical or digital. No matter how long it takes to count make it a tick in a box with invigilators roaming the hall where the vote is counted. Do not have a system where a spotty youth with a laptop in a car outside can hack some of the voting machines used by some states. Oh, and by the way, make it one system for Presidential votes in all states !
And make every vote equal!
Has no one asked the pilot what he said?
I never knew that there was actually something called “Bidenism”.
The increasing usual over reaction. If it did indeed happen, then I do think that it was inappropriate for the pilot to express his political opinion the way he did, imagine if it were the opposite opinion Republicans would (rightly) be angry, but, really, hysterically calling for sackings, mock outrage. The only thought that comes to mind is -get over yourselves.
Whether it happened or not I would have thought (particularly and very obviously in the US) you really, really do not want to hear your pilot express (any) political opinions over the intercom. You don’t have to be political to want that stamped out.
What about the cast of your play? What about the server in your restaurant? What about the barista in your coffee shop? All of those refused to serve Trump supporters or gave them free political lectures over the last four years. Or its ok to disrespect the Deplorables but not the Good People?
Yes it’s the hypocrisy that really grinds my gears
For that matter, a lot of people take sports more seriously than politics. To that group cheering on the wrong team is far worse than supporting the wrong candidate. And do smokers like being reminded they can’t smoke in flight and of the penalties for doing so? Are we really comfortable being reminded of what to do in case the plane crashes, since that brings unpleasant thoughts to mind?
All of that kind of leaves the pilot and stewardesses with nothing to say other than “We have arrived,” doesn’t it?
I was partially playing devil’s advocate. I really don’t want pilots talking politics either. But then again, Biden has personally threatened the livelihood of pilots, which is very unique among presidents. How is saying “Let’s Go Brandon” anywhere near on the level of threatening to leave a person unable to feed themselves and/or their family? There seems to be a notion among some, particularly those who lean left, that politicians should be allowed to commit harm without consequence because it is their right, but for normal people to even express displeasure at being harmed is indecent and should be punished.
You do know that expressing support for a sports team can be political, all the way back to the ancient Romans? In my own upbringing in Scotland, people with Irish Republican sympathies would support Glasgow Celtic; the Union was for Glasgow Rangers. Their allegiance had nothing to do with an appreciation of the sport.