My good friend William Teach alerted me to this article via a tweet:

Where was the Charlotte Observer during the 4 years of Democrats saying nasty things about Trump, his family, and everyone around him? @sistertoldjah https://t.co/5zj2xFbDch

— William Teach2 #refuseresist (@WTeach2) January 7, 2022

From The Charlotte Observer, yet another McClatchy newspaper:

There’s a real danger behind the juvenile ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ meme

by Peter Horn | Friday, January 7, 2022 | 4:30 AM EST

Back in Charlotte for the holidays, I was out on a walk when I noticed my parents’ neighbor’s truck. It’s a big truck. White, newish, plastered with bumper stickers in dense but ordered rows — mostly political, some football-related. Among many others was “Mean Tweets 2024” and “Let’s Go Brandon.”

This, from a purportedly serious man. A grown-up by most senses of the word, likely born in the 1950s. A man with grown children of his own, a respectable career, two bowls of water by his mailbox for passing dogs and a nativity set in the front yard.

I stopped and stared for a moment, wondering, how did we get here?

Much of the author’s dismay can be found in his bio at the bottom of the article:

Peter Horn is a Charlotte native and a southern ex-pat for the greater part of the last decade. He currently lives in San Francisco and works as an investor and freelance writer.

Oh, he’s a native of Charlotte, but lives in ‘Frisco!

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden carried the Pyrite State by a huge margin, 11,110,250 (63.48%) to President trump’s 6,006,429 (34.32%), but it was even worse in San Francisco, where Mr Biden won 378,156 (85.26%) to 56,417 (12.72%). Mr Horn was apparently never so triggered^[1]In this, I am using the Urban Dictionary’s definition: “1.) *popular and well known definition* triggered is when someone gets offended or gets their feelings hurt, often used in memes to … Continue reading as he was when visiting his parents, because there probably aren’t a lot of “Let’s go, Brandon!” stickers seen around the feces-covered sidewalks and streets of the City by the Bay. While Mr Biden carried Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, by a wide margin, 378,107 (66.68%) to 179,221 (31.60%), Mr Trump carried the Tarheel State as a whole, 2,758,775 (49.93%) to 2,684,292 (48.59%). Hey, you go to Carolina, and you’re likely to see Trump stickers and signs!

I don’t mean the polarization. How did we reach this level of absurdity, where ”serious people” are comfortable putting thinly veiled ”F— Joe Biden bumper stickers on their trucks, like a group of 12-year-old boys snickering over walkie-talkies because surely Mom and Dad don’t know that word really means penis.

Well, it’s certainly one way to express one’s feelings about the current President without resorting to actual profanity. But if Mr Horn has been triggered, maybe it’s because he left his safe space on the left coast.

For those unfamiliar with “Let’s Go Brandon,” it’s a viral slogan that’s coded criticism of President Joe Biden. It started when an NBC Sports reporter suggested fans at an Oct. 2 Talladega race were chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” during an interview with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown. They weren’t. They were actually chanting “F— Joe Biden.”

It’s all just so juvenile. So pathetic.

One wonders: was Mr Horn similarly appalled at this, from his adopted home state?

Hundreds of Artists Have Come Together to Say ‘Fuck Trump’
Los Angeles gallery iam8bit launched the ongoing virtual exhibit on the President’s birthday

By Liz Ohanesian -June 17, 2020

On Sunday, June 14, the Echo Park-based creative production studio and art gallery iam8bit launched fucktrump.art, a hybrid virtual exhibition and protest where all of the works read “Fuck Trump” and are available to download for free as web and print resolution files so that anyone can share the message online or IRL.

The date of the launch was significant—it was Donald Trump’s birthday and Flag Day, as well as a day often used to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride—and the message was strong. Jon M. Gibson and Amanda White, co-founders of iam8bit, describe it as a “primal scream.”

“It’s like punctuation for us at this point,” says White of the phrase “Fuck Trump,” adding that their hope is for “everyone who disagrees with the administration to be comfortable screaming it at the top of their lungs.”

Google search for “Fuck Trump signs” and you’ll get hundreds of images. But, perhaps for Mr Horn, that’s different somehow.

But as I found myself thinking more about it, trying to find an historical parallel for this intersection of creeping illiberalism and giant oversized red shoes, it struck me how dangerous this moment in time really is.

Because every minute spent shaking one’s head at the latest display of self-debasement by the GOP is a minute not spent on the insidious machinations behind the veil. Save for a few notable exceptions — who are currently being driven out of the party with pitchforks and tiki torches — in 2022 Republicanism is Trumpism.

You can follow the embedded link to read the rest, but it boils down to one thing: Mr Horn was using his sight of a “Let’s go, Brandon” bumper sticker primarily as the supposedly snappy beginning for his complaint that evil reich wing Republicans are trying to prevent legal voters from voting. No, we want legal voters to vote, but we want to restrict the ability of the left for cast fraudulent votes. I may have mocked him for his supposed triggering, but I doubt he actually was triggered; he just needed a starting hook for what he wanted to write.

Mr Horn suffers from a kind of denialism: he really can’t believe that other people would think differently from him, that other people might take different choices than he would. That’s not an uncommon problem for much of the American left.