A few thoughts on kids dabbing in Congress:
Context: the first time a kid tried to dab in Congress was exactly two years ago, when a Republican majority was being sworn in.
The son of Kansas Republican Rep. Roger Marshall attempted a dab during his dad’s swearing-in. Paul Ryan was not amused, which was part of why social media loved it.
Today, a Democratic majority was sworn in. When Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib stood up to deliver her vote for Speaker Pelosi, both of her sons dabbed—a double-dab?—to the apparent amusement and bewilderment of the legislators in attendance. elle.com/culture/career…
As @oureric points out, the older kid’s dab was especially spectacular. 
Both the 2017 and 2019 dabs were funny and went viral, as the kids probably hoped they would, but here’s why I think they’re effective on a political register:
The past two years have been a period of staggering legislative disregard for the needs and experiences of children.
Under Republican control, Congress’s rhetoric of concern for the unborn has been coupled w/a hypocritical storm of anti-child policies in the form of state-enforced family separation, inaction on school shootings, climate change denial, dismantling of civil rights, and on & on.
All of this while the Boomer and older generations—the blocs that put Trump and kept Ryan in power—have taken to blaming Millennials for their own economic misfortune and “kids these days” for doing childhood wrong.
What makes the dabbing images resonate under these conditions is not just their juvenile disruptiveness and general inappropriateness for the chambers of Congress—it’s their insistence that young people must be looked at and tended to.
Such a move, under Speaker Ryan’s tenure and a Republican House majority that ignored kids so egregiously, was a political act, whether the kid from Kansas intended it to be or not.
Ignore kids at your peril, or they might punk you. More likely, they will grow up to vote against you
Today, under Democratic leadership, the positive reception of the dabs, along with the exuberance of Pelosi’s granddaughter, the crowding of kids behind her as she took the gavel, etc, signals a (hopefully) greater attentiveness to the needs and mere existence of kids.
The Congressional kid dab, with its origins in hip-hop, is a carnivalesque subversion of the corridors of power by members of one of society’s most powerless demographics.
Regardless of what these kids think of this or the next Congress, they have momentarily overtaken its image and made their presence known to a chamber that has, until today, been ignoring them on a historic level.
And best of all, most adults don’t even know what dabbing means. Which gets to my last point: that kids dab reminds us that they are culture-watching and-producing agents.
They are in sea-to-shining sea conversation with each other—from Detroit, Michigan to rural Kansas—about pop and digital culture, sports, games, everything kids love. And yes, politics.
Meanwhile, the people who write laws for all of us are asking what a Facebook is. google.com/amp/s/www.vox.…
With dabs, kids remind us that they are here. They are watching adults. Has Congress been watching out for them? /end.
