{"id":370,"date":"2024-01-31T00:09:57","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T00:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/31\/the-uncomplicated-dumb-engine-driving-political-false-claims-about-taylor-swift\/"},"modified":"2024-01-31T00:09:57","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T00:09:57","slug":"the-uncomplicated-dumb-engine-driving-political-false-claims-about-taylor-swift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/31\/the-uncomplicated-dumb-engine-driving-political-false-claims-about-taylor-swift\/","title":{"rendered":"The uncomplicated, dumb engine driving political false claims about Taylor Swift"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I am professionally obligated to begin this article by explaining to you who Taylor Swift is, who Travis Kelce is and why I am talking about them. I know this will come off as condescending (if not insulting) to most of you, but for that one person who, this very morning, emerged from a 20-year-long meditative retreat atop Aconcagua and \u2014 as one would \u2014 opened The Washington Post\u2019s website: Here you go.<\/p>\n

Taylor Swift is a musician. More specifically, she is one of the most famous musicians that has ever existed on this Earth, in the company of Michael Jackson, certainly \u2026 if not, like, Beethoven. Travis Kelce is a football player who was well-known in sporting circles a year or two ago but who, by virtue of dating Swift, is now also well-known among Swift fans and, by extension, most Americans.<\/p>\n

The reason I am talking about them is that Kelce\u2019s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, won a playoff game Sunday that will return them to the championship game. And in response, a surprisingly large section of the American political right decided that this was somehow related to politics.<\/p>\n

There are lots of manifestations of this, including multiple presentations on the right\u2019s preferred cable news channel. The iteration that attracted perhaps the most attention, though, came from former presidential candidate and Donald Trump cheerleader Vivek Ramaswamy (speaking of people who suddenly emerged in the public consciousness to polarizing effect).<\/p>\n

In a social media post, a prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist linked Swift to \u2026 let\u2019s see here \u2026 ah yes, George Soros. In response, Ramaswamy offered a prediction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wonder who\u2019s going to win the Super Bowl next month,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAnd I wonder if there\u2019s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let\u2019s see how it ages over the next 8 months.\u201d<\/p>\n

The implication (again: forgive my telling you something obvious) is that the Chiefs are being ushered to the Super Bowl \u2026 somehow \u2026 to secure Swift\u2019s endorsement for President Biden.<\/p>\n

This makes a lot of sense because the Chiefs haven\u2019t been to the Super Bowl since, uh, last year, when they won. But before that they hadn\u2019t been since, well, two years before. But that one they lost! But they\u2019d won the year before that.<\/p>\n

You can see why they need \u2026 someone \u2026 to give them a boost. Because otherwise, Taylor Swift wouldn\u2019t endorse Biden, something she hasn\u2019t done since 2020 \u2014 the last time Biden ran.<\/p>\n

A lot of the responses to this broad line of argument \u2014 that the commingling of the Chiefs and Swift is somehow targeted at politics \u2014 note that it\u2019s probably not wise for Republicans to side against the NFL. The NFL is wildly popular, and attacking popular things is not a good way to yourself become more popular.<\/p>\n

But this backlash from the Fox-News-iverse isn\u2019t about electoral politics. It is about appealing to a more immediate source of power on the right: online and on-air attention.<\/p>\n

This was the crux of Ramaswamy\u2019s entire presidential campaign. He understood, having observed Republican politics over the past decade, that attention can be parlayed into a lesser form of power, elected office. Trump blazed this trail, certainly, showing others the path and helping clear it of overgrowth. Ramaswamy\u2019s 2024 bid was centered on jumping into the online conversation and bringing its themes and rhetoric to the campaign trail. It built him a loyal following of similarly online types, enough to get him about 4 percent of the primary vote by the time he dropped out.<\/p>\n

But this is the incentive path that\u2019s feeding the Swift clamor. The wilder your assertion, the more traction it\u2019s going to get. Your allies will riff on it and build on it, and you can come along for the ride. Maybe you\u2019ll end up as a member of the House of Representatives from Georgia or Long Island. Maybe you\u2019ll go higher: landing a recurring spot on Sean Hannity\u2019s prime-time show.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to recognize the overlaying element here: The speculation should leverage the widespread belief on the right that Democrats only get legitimate votes by brainwashing their idiotic base. (Republicans also believe Democrats get lots of stolen votes too, of course \u2014 a similarly incorrect theory.) This idea comes up a lot, that Democrats win by snookering college kids or duping credulous city voters into ignoring their apocalyptic surroundings. (This is ironic, given that believing that cities are hellholes requires a credulous acceptance of propaganda from the right, but I digress.)<\/p>\n

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Republicans losing the presidential popular vote in 2016, the House majority in 2018, the presidency in 2020 and underperforming expectations in the 2022 midterms has built a strong incentive to look for nonpolitical explanations for strong Democratic performance \u2014 since many Americans don\u2019t know anyone who holds opposing political views, including Republicans baffled at the idea of voting Democratic. So, particularly given Trump\u2019s insistence that the 2020 race was \u201crigged\u201d by media and cultural elites \u2026 somehow, it is quite fashionable on the right to suggest the existence of intricate plans aimed at securing Democratic votes from glassy-eyed voters.<\/p>\n

Like, say, that a football team gets ushered into the Super Bowl to secure an endorsement from Taylor Swift.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve avoided doing so but I can no longer resist: How would this work? Did the Baltimore Ravens take a dive? Did someone pay them? Are they just that committed to Democratic politics that they all agreed to lose? Did the Buffalo Bills before them? And the Miami Dolphins before the Bills? Or does the government have some Havana-Syndrome-esque device that it trains on opponents, causing field goals to go wide right? What\u2019s the mechanism, exactly?<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter, obviously. These are not rational conclusions drawn from observed facts. They are, instead, clout-chasing assemblages of words that, through a process of grim Darwinism, seek rewards in the right-wing conversation.<\/p>\n

Never mind that the supposed outcome here \u2014 the Swift endorsement \u2014 is itself wildly overpowered in the right\u2019s imagination. One of Swift\u2019s first prominent endorsements came in 2018 when she backed the Democrat in Tennessee\u2019s U.S. Senate race. Polling was close; he then lost by double-digits. You think that Swift \u2014 whose fan base includes millions of people younger than voting age \u2014 is so valuable an endorser that you\u2019re going to rig the NFL? Okay. Sure.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all silly, but the silliness exists over a range that runs from innocuous to bizarre.<\/p>\n

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OAN host says it makes sense for Biden to have Taylor Swift date Travis Kelce in a massive deep state psy op, because sports in general starting at the youth level is also used to brainwash kids when they should be focused on Jesus instead. pic.twitter.com\/VBySLURPes<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 30, 2024<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I\u2019ll leave you with the wise words of Ramaswamy, almost certainly responding to the (wonderful! desired!) controversy he\u2019d stirred up with his football observations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the [media] calls a \u2018conspiracy theory\u2019 is often nothing more than an amalgam of incentives hiding in plain sight,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOnce you see that, the rest becomes pretty obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n

The natural Step 2 here: When the media points out that my comments make no sense, it proves that I\u2019m right. Okay.<\/p>\n

Wait. Actually, I\u2019ll leave you with an observation attached to Ramaswamy\u2019s second post, one that comes from the world\u2019s most prominent seeker of attention by way of posting controversial\/bizarre\/unnecessarily-political comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cExactly,\u201d wrote Elon Musk.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on The Washington Post<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am professionally obligated to begin this article by explaining to you who Taylor Swift is, who Travis Kelce is and why I am talking about them. I know this will come off as condescending (if not insulting) to most of you, but for that one person who, this very morning, emerged from a 20-year-long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}