Thread by @SethAbramson

(MEMES) I don’t yet know what to write or say about it, but as a political commentator/analyst I feel I need to at least acknowledge that #DarkBrandonRising appears to be a thing that’s happening and gaining traction as President Biden keeps piling up the wins at home and abroad.

I guess I’d say this: the idea of a politician as a supernatural authoritarian creature doesn’t appeal to me at all, and I don’t think it appeals to many Democrats. But what the meme registers is that President Biden seems to be inexplicably good at getting *certain* things done.

Republicans want to be ruled with an iron fist and have [everyone else’s] freedoms taken away, so the “Dark MAGA” meme made a lot of sense: it encapsulated how much Republicans hate democracy and love the idea of a Big Brother/Daddy. With Democrats the whole thing hits different.

I think—from this standpoint—we can see #DarkBrandonRising as more of a metamodern joke: simultaneously serious and unserious. It is serious in the sense that Biden is a better president than many realize, and unserious in the sense that no Democrat wants an authoritarian leader.

(Okay, so I guess it turns out I *did* know what I wanted to say about this. Surprised myself, there.)

PS/ We certainly can’t ignore the possibility that the #DarkBrandonRising meme is *primarily* a sendup of the preposterousness of the “Dark MAGA“ meme—inasmuch as yes, Biden’s kicking ass pretty hard right now, but the way of depicting that we see in #DarkBrandonRising is satire.