WEST EXPOSES THE DEEP DIVIDE FOR ALL TO SEE
Kanye West did it again.
As prolific Twitter commenter @comfortablysmug might say, West “owned the libs.”
Posting pictures of himself in a MAGA hat and telling people they cannot make him not love Donald Trump was step one.
Step two was throwing shade at Barack Obama, saying that the former president was in office for 8 years and did nothing about the violence in Chicago.
Just as people were focusing their rage on West, his wife, reality television star and businesswoman Kim Kardashian, piped in to defend him being able to think for himself and not cave into the mob.
And then just as she became the new target, Chance the Rapper chimed in and said black people don’t have to be Democrats.
And then everybody’s heads exploded.
The most interesting part of all of this was not what Kanye West or Kim Kardashian said. It was not even what Chance said, though that was plenty interesting.
It was the response to what was said from those who claim to be the most open-minded and tolerant.
And it highlights something that we more or less already knew: for many, this is not about having differing opinions and realizing that is just a part of life. Instead, it is about shaming anybody who does not see things your way and branding them as an enemy.
Jesse Kelly has been talking about this for a while, insisting that the United States should be split into two parts because we cannot co-exist anymore.
It is quite odd that we would see this divide so clearly when it comes to celebrities who choose to speak about politics, but we almost always do.
When a liberal celebrity opens up his mouth, conservatives complain about celebrities opining about politics and liberals accuse conservatives of wanting to suppress speech.
Fair enough.
But the second any major celebrity expresses even the slightest bit of affinity for something or somebody on the right, liberals cannot handle it. It is the same thing we see when a black person, a gay person, or somebody from any other minority group dissents.
Those people are not just of a differing mindset. They are traitors who must be destroyed.
Shania Twain is a recent example. After saying that if she were an American citizen she probably would have voted for President Trump, people went insane on her and forced her to backtrack.
The difference is Kanye West refuses to back down and does not seem to care about the mob. This is nothing new for him, as he has a habit of saying things people do not like — most famously that President Bush does not care about black people after Hurricane Katrina — and sticking to it regardless of what anybody else says.
Now people are talking about boycotting him. If that is what you choose to do if you disagree with him, that is up to you.
But if we are truly at the point where liberals and conservatives are so divided that people are going to boycott those who even think differently than them?
Well, then maybe there is no point to continuing the charade and we should all just admit that Jesse Kelly is right.