Posted on 04/30/2018 7:19:09 AM PDT by Kaslin
Turns out, when you’re a famous musician with 28 million Twitter followers people are going to sit up and pay attention to what you tweet, regardless of the topic.
So when rapper Kanye West, a man who got over 41,000 likes for tweeting the word “decentralize,” lit the social media world on fire last week with a series of tweets seeming to support President Trump, the world was quick to take notice. Is one of the most successful recording artists of our generation actually ‘waking up’ to the folly of liberalism? Has Kanye actually been red-pilled?
On the one hand, conservatives understandably but a little hypocritically took an altogether different approach with Kanye than the “shut up and sing” imploration they typically would take were such a celebrity spouting off the usual liberal nonsense.
As for liberals - along with the usual hysterics, name-calling, and denigrations of “mentally ill” that are generally doled out as a matter of course to those who even partially leave the Democratic thought plantation were implorations to, well, essentially “shut up and sing.”
A Thursday exchange between Fox News co-hosts Juan Williams and Kimberly Guilfoyle on The Five illustrates the divide.
“[Kanye’s] done nothing,” the liberal-leaning Williams said. “When it comes to substance, this guy has nothing. This is the guy in fact who said Cosby was innocent. This is the guy who condemned George W. Bush. You guys are suddenly flocking to him because it’s convenient but why you would take him seriously I have no idea.”
“That’s your opinion, but he’s actually a serious businessman,” Guilfoyle shot back. “He’s hugely successful … and he’s entitled to have his opinion like anybody is. You’re trying to diminish him because he’s a singer, a rapper.”
Of course they’re both right, to a degree. Kanye may be an enormously talented artist and a successful businessman in his own right, but that doesn’t make him a political expert, nor does he pretend to be. “I'm not even political,” Kanye tweeted. “I'm not a democrat or a republican.”
And yet, by tweeting a picture of himself wearing a red MAGA hat, perhaps the most iconic and enduring symbol of the miraculous 2016 presidential campaign (and thus of glorious liberal butthurt), Kanye seared an image into the public consciousness that’s unlikely to go away anytime soon.
In truth, whether he’s is an unstable, “mentally ill” celebrity, a budding Heritage Foundation policy expert, or somewhere in between, one would make a huge mistake to underestimate the astounding significance of West’s actions. Because even by acknowledging President Trump, someone who is literally the devil incarnate to liberals, as a “brother,” by advocating free thought, and especially by wearing that glorious red hat, West just opened the door to the exact kind of thought that has the potential to change lives by the millions - conservatism.
Even if he’s not a conservative himself.
Sure, maybe Kanye will get there eventually (listening to Candace Owens is a great start!), but he’s not there yet - not by a long shot. You may have missed it, but West also tweeted that he loves “Hillary too,” insisted at the behest of his wife that he doesn’t “agree with everything Trump does” (obviously, one doesn’t have to agree with Trump on all issues to be a conservative, but the point is that West was catering to the ‘haters’ a little with that tweet), and even tweeted a picture of Parkland gun control activist Emma Gonzalez under the words “my hero.”
In other words, even ‘woke Kanye’ has a long way to go before he’s the next Thomas Sowell.
Still, the image of someone like Kanye West wearing that iconic red hat encouraged conservatives just as much as it triggered liberals. At least it encouraged me. ‘Woke Kanye’ is way cooler than Taylor Swift and George Bush-bashing ‘SJW Kanye,’ by a yuge margin. Could this be the long-hoped-for crack in the armor of the black Democratic voting bloc? Could Kanye West, simply by his acknowledgment if not his endorsement of “our” side, pave the way for conservatives to finally get past the noise and reach black people with a message that’s sure to help them far more than liberalism ever has?
Pro-Trump singer Joy Villa seems to think so. “West has shattered the stereotype and myth that ‘all Republicans are racist,’” Villa writes in a Fox News op-ed. “He has challenged the music industry’s identity politics. He’s a hero to free-minded individuals of all colors.”
Liberal outlet The Atlantic is certainly concerned. “Now, were [Kanye’s] tweets to go ignored in the press they, indeed, would hold less power,” writes Spencer Kornhaber. “But they do hold power, already … ‘I love the way Candace Owens thinks,’ has likely already sent a lot of his followers, many young and impressionable, to the conservative pundit’s YouTube channel where she rails against the ‘losers’ in Black Lives Matter. It’s not unreasonable to think that his tweet may well have a measurable effect on this country’s politics.”
For a group that hasn’t voted GOP by any margin over 15 percent since Jackie Robinson campaigned for Richard Nixon in 1960, any “measurable effect” at all could be disastrous to a party all out of ideas yet hellbent on keeping all hands inside that ‘Democratic plantation.’
My opinion and not that it matters:
You don’t have to like Kanye’s music to appreciate the fact that he jumped off the Democrat plantation.
Right now, he’s Tweeting black conservatives and giving them exposure to a key demographic that they would never get without someone of Kanye’s stature.
This is a big culture shift, a paradigm shift of epic proportions.
As older conservatives, we need to get on the bandwagon and salute these young people who are brave enough to stand up to the Democrat Thought Police.
Get on Twitter and start following people like Cernovich and Jack Posobiec. You don’t have to completely agree with them, but these guys are definitely in the fight.
Give Kanye a shout out for being a free thinker. We need people like that.
hanging out with the kardashians is enough to teach anyone that something is wrong with that way of living... perhaps he sees the light.
“the liberal-leaning Williams” LOL!
The democRATs are the party of slavery. They want power and control of others. Keeping people as a permanent dependent underclass is a way of keeping power over them. All the talk of helping them and blaming their problems on the successful is only an excuse to tax the successful making them slaves to the state too.
If Kanye West keeps saying “Don’t let anyone tell you what to think” and the leftist media responds with “Don’t listen to him, you must continue to support all the leftist causes” it will create massive cognitive dissonance.
The best thing for the media to do would be to agree with him, encouraging people to think for themselves and decide which side of issues they are on. But they will never do that.
The left is completely invested in shaping reality for others..... it starts in kindergarten and continues through college. It is reinforced throughout culture and in the media. Sadly, like communism itself that looks and sounds great on paper, it is always crushed when it meets the real world.
There has never been a generation more indoctrinated in the ideas of the progressive left than our current crop of young people. the progressive left has become more shrill in our lifetimes, but eventually there is a day of reckoning for everyone. One has to wonder if the kid with a masters degree and 200k in student loan debt who makes my coffee at Starbucks will “question reality” at some point.
This is the fear among the progressive left and it is why they keep doubling down, but at some point it is like a drug. Higher doses lose their effectiveness and the lie is revealed.
They are afraid. This does not mean Kanye is one of us, but we should applaud any one who questions the status quo because it exposes the lies.
Decentralize?
My God, he’s a libertarian!
“On the one hand, conservatives understandably but a little hypocritically took an altogether different approach with Kanye than the “shut up and sing” imploration they typically would take were such a celebrity spouting off the usual liberal nonsense.”
Yeah, I think it’s hokey when we are suddenly BFF’s with someone just because, WOW!, they agree with us on something. Maybe we’re so used to having the cards stacked against us that we take the first “woke” dissenter that comes our way.
An exaggeration.
The Democrat Party has ideas. Plenty of them.
More the petty, since they’re all bad.
Can you imagine what would happen to the Dems, if just 20% of Black folks started voting Republican consistently? That’s why they are working so hard to give illegals the vote. I never understood it either, living here in the South, black churches are packed on Sundays and Wednesdays, being gay is still pretty taboo in that community as well. But I guess the welfare state overwhelms the other reasons to vote.
Might wanna stay away from them broads..
They made Kayne a Republican, Lamar Odom a crackhead and Bruce Jenner, a woman.
150 year-old bad ideas, that originated from that German dude with the initials 'KM'.
They really should just be honest and replace the jackass with the hammer and sickle as their 'Party' symbol.
tru dat.
Dissent is infectious. Especially when the party line is a lie, and all it takes is someone who is hard to demonize or ignore to do the “emperor has no clothes” routine.
I don’t think it’s the welfare state. It’s the “Republican don’t like black people” thing.
He says that like it's a bad thing...
Agree that it’s a paradigm shift.
What I texted to my son the day it happened
“There is a tectonic shift in reality going on;
I feel it,
It’s like a snowball rolling down the mountain gathering speed and size,
Good is taking over,
Love,
And Freedom”
Lets see if I can get this in the right amount of characters:
Theyv cryd racism for u all ur lyf. U gave them ur vote. They gave u crumbs. U stil gave them ur plantation vote. get woke.
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