Political Memes

It obviously has a point of view. Just like any text, image, or other media.

It's fun because it's pretty much true. If you want to make sure to include Johnson (hey - can we do the whole JFK thing here? Cause you know Johnson was . . . I guess that wouldn't fit in this particular meme) or Carter (yeah a meme is probably not the place to re-litigate his administration, though that's a good idea) one could, and apparently that would work towards being less "propaganda" like, but it wouldn't be very brief.

If you're saying the overall message of the meme is wrong, well we'll disagree there. But if you're saying it's just not properly balanced; I mean - Yeah. Obviously. Y'know what else isn't properly balanced, though - actual news articles from the New York Times and Washington Post, every single day. "Biden is old, Biden fares poorly in some poll we found on the floor. Trump does outlandish bullshit again, people love it." C'mon. We can take a look at the point of view of those articles and that would be propaganda in a more denotative sense.

So calling out a pro-Biden meme for being propaganda is, well, not wrong, but . . . kinda . . irrelevant? Hey, you wanna explore each of the listed presidential administrations and go through their accomplishments to see how true the meme is? Man, that's a long thread but we can do that - and when we finish, guess what - it'll be pretty close to this. But sure. Why not, Let's go.

I guess we can, what, use JFK as a "gimme" and just allow that a defining accomplishment was to create the space program as we know it. Should we add anything in there about the Cuban Missle Crisis or - ? What even would that be? "Faced down communist aggression"? "Skillfully negotiated aggressive military . . something"? Yeah ok let's just leave it at the moon thing. I mean, he only got three years, right.

Reagan. Why'd we jump to Reagan? We missed Nixon! Oh man, where are the Nixon memes amirite. Well, Regan - who as we know served two terms - really laid the foundation for the absolute mind-meltingly disastrous republican party politics that we know and love today. What was the defining element of his two administrations? (Should we split the two or just - I guess the format is for one line each so, no - ok) Well, he's really most famous for taking money from federal programs and giving it to the military contractors or back to other people who have money, i.e. the rich. It's actually pretty apt. But we can debate that one, everyone loves a good Reagan hullabaloo. We could also do the October Surprise, or Iran Contra, or invading El Salvador or a bunch of other shady shit, but let's go on an "affects Americans daily lives' bend. "Gave money to the rich" is correct.

Bush I - oops we skipped him, hm. Why's that I wonder. (Oh, hey maybe it's two term presidents only?) Eh, Let's just put Iraq I and then I guess we'll have to figure out why we went to war for oil. Oh - or we could just put "blood for oil" and hope that the economic implication is obvious enough. Anyway, moving on.

Clinton - well, we could talk about the whole healthcare reform thing that was a major component of the first term. Or in how he pulled the rug out from under Newt "contract with America" Gingrich by declaring big government "over" and adding a ton more cops. That's . . y'know . . true but . . . not as . . pithy? as we're going for here. His balancing the budget and actually leaving office with a surplus is, frankly, astonishing in retrospect though. It's absolutely no small feat and no one thought it was even possible since Reagan just said it's fine to blow all the money and hope future generations figure it out. Well, he figured it out. So that's not nothing. That doesn't seem like propaganda, that seems about right actually.

Okay the meme is getting really long at this point but I think you see the direction I'm going here. Is it misinterpreting "the other side"? Only in the sense that a meme is a single point of view and a deep discussion of the differences would be more balanced and nuanced but also take a long time and wouldnt ultimately be that far off from what we have.

So if you really feel like this meme is some horrible brainwashing propaganda of "the liberal left" or whatever? I dunno what to tell ya. Yeah? I guess? And it's nice?