As you’ve likely heard by now, Kanye West has spent the week documenting his latest meltdown on Twitter.
And weirdly, a lot of folks seem less interested in the legitimate causes for concern – such as the revelation that Kanye struggled with an opioid addiction – and more worried about the fact that his political beliefs are different than what they would have assumed.
Is it surprising that Kanye loves Donald Trump?
In a sense, yes, as this is the same man who famously declared “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” during a live telecast.
But in another sense, we can’t imagine anyone who’s well-acquainted with Kanye’s outsized personality actually being surprised that dude identifies with Trump.
Both men are basically sentient egos brought to life in a lab.
You could reverse the names on Kanye and Trump’s tweets, and no one would really notice.
We’ve known that Kanye is a Trump supporter since 2016, but we suppose the fact that Yeezy has stuck by the Donald’s side throughout his disastrous 15 months in office is a bit unexpected.
It’s also surprising to learn that Kanye doesn’t just like Donald Trump … he full-on loooooooves his president.
Naturally, Twitter is having a field day with this outpouring of political affection, and the memes have been flying fast and furious.
“I had this crazy dream my favorite artist who was known for being progressive endorsed Trump. Whew. That was scary,” tweeted @imjsanch.
“Gonna be wild when yeezy season 6 includes distressed MAGA caps,” @NathanZed tweeted in one of those jokes that may well turn out to be an accurate prediction of the future.
“Kanye is basically Trump if his wife liked him,” @JesseMclaren aptly observed.
Of course, ‘Ye has also received support from some of his famous friends, including the uber-progressive Chance the Rapper, who tweeted:
“Black people don’t have to be Democrats.”
Naturally, Chance received a fair amount of backlash for that observation, but it’s important to remember that it’s not necessary to box in large segments of the population, or to disavow everything that Kanye has accomplished and the aspects of his character that you might still be able to appreciate simply because you don’t agree with his political beliefs.
At this point, folks are furiously rewriting the man’s history and distancing themselves from their own past opinions, and it’s a little strange to observe.
There’s also this weird phenomenon happening where people want prescience points simply because they don’t appreciate the fact that Ye’s been dropping classics since “Through the Wire.”
That’s how you end up with white people who are only vaguely aware of the concept of hip-hop boasting that they were never Kanye fans to begin with, goshdarnit!
They might be from opposite ends of the political spectrum, but these people share a lot in common with the Angry Karens who have never watched a down of football but were quick to inform their 43 Facebook friends that they never liked that Colin Kaepernick to begin with!
Of course it’s upsetting to learn that a progressive voice in the black community has aligned himself with a president who’s emboldened white supremacists and who still hopes to decorate our country’s southern border with a multi-billion dollar monument to racism.
But when we bust out the torches and pitchforks simply because we don’t like Kanye West has to say, we sacrifice something significant.
The comparisons between the folks trying to shush Kanye and the Laura Ingraham “shut up and dribble” crowd aren’t entirely accurate, but it’s occasions like this that test our commitment to freedom of expression and that old Patrick Henry chestnut about defending one’s right to say things you don’t agree with.
So by all means, keep the memes coming, but maybe stop calling for Yeezy to be banned or questioning his mental health
And definitely stop bragging that you never liked the guy or threatening to boycott his next album.
That just makes it sound like you don’t appreciate good music, which is very nearly as bad as expressing dumb political opinions on social media.
