NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE J oe Biden likes his coffee dark. That’s what the president tells us in a video posted to his Twitter, in which he sips from a mug bearing an image that depicts him as having laser eyes. Biden’s team is sending a message to his meme-savvy supporters online that “Dark Brandon” is here for 2024. Memes are often difficult to trace back to their origin, but we know Biden’s alter ego Dark Brandon was born on Weibo, the Chinese blogging site, after “Let’s go Brandon” became a right-wing meme for dunking on the president. The joke was then mainlined into American social-media discourse by a viral tweet noting that Biden looked pretty cool as a malevolent dark lord, with fire in his eyes, perched upon a throne of seized AR-15s. Welcome to the internet. While it’s funny to see politicians dabbling in memes, there’s no escaping the truth that humoring the darkness is corrupting our political culture.
According to a report from Axios, Dark Brandon products account for more than half the revenue taken in by Biden’s reelection-campaign store. The “Dark T-Shirt” and “Dark Roast Mug” are best-sellers, among eight other villain-themed items starring the president. So much for the days of “Hope” and “Change” swag from the Obama–Biden campaign.
Dark humor around political leaders is nothing new, but with the exception of Dick Cheney’s warm embrace of the Star Wars “Imperial March” in 2005 and of the “Cocaine Mitch” moment, there aren’t many past cases of politicians claiming the mantle of “bad guy” willingly. Perhaps the change is owed to the deep negative partisanship in our politics today, a situation in which support for a politician or official is strengthened by the intensity of hatred directed at them by the other side. It’s the best explanation for Donald Trump’s resilience in the face of indictment after indictment, and for why Dr. Fauci prayer candles ever came into existence.
Embracing dictator humor is certainly a sign of the times. Politics and government are frustrating and tedious; politicians who follow the rules and observe the niceties just don’t get much play. Mythologizing mere mortals revs things up — thus Ronald Reagan is depicted as a conservative warrior, armed with submachine guns, atop a velociraptor, and Bernie Sanders as a Thanos–Terminator hybrid.
Dark Brandon can do what Joe Biden cannot; he won’t stand by as a conservative Supreme Court overturns Roe or dismantles his unconstitutional student-loan-cancellation plan, for he has laser vision. “God Emperor Trump” would never endure another impeachment or raid on Mar-a-Lago; he would make good on locking up Hillary Clinton and abolishing the FBI. We can see efforts to establish a similar aura around Ron DeSantis during the early stages of the 2024 GOP presidential-primary campaign.
The expression “it’s funny because it’s true” applies to memes: They express something truthful about the people who make and share them, including the Democratic voters snapping up Dark Brandon mugs while their support for the Supreme Court has dropped by half in just two years.
Americans are no different from human beings anywhere else. We want our leaders to get things done, and for there to be justice and order. Candidates make moonshot campaign promises knowing that, if elected, they’ll fall short in a system of government that requires compromise and the rule of law. When reality sets in and politicians are revealed, yet again, to possess distinctly limited power, voters get angry and dole out punishment in the next election. Why wouldn’t they? They were promised action, and all they get is excuses about obstructionists in Congress and what the Constitution says. This is when politics gets dark. Voters start telling pollsters they’d support undemocratic solutions such as executive orders and Court-packing to reverse disfavored rulings, and expressing the view that the Constitution might be “irrelevant.”
In a republic, government is the vehicle through which the people attempt to exert some control over their world. Our representatives are convenient spearheads in that effort. But in the interest of preserving liberty for future generations, the Founders designed a system meant to deny us easy access to the blunt solutions that only totalitarians can offer.
And so we conjure up cartoons and memes in which politicians are powerful, all-knowing destroyers of worlds. It’s all in good fun until it’s not. “If you gaze long enough into an abyss,” Nietzsche said, “the abyss will gaze back into you.”
I’m reminded of the wizard Saruman, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, who spent years preparing for the return of the Dark Lord Sauron by studying his ways and the Rings of Power. Ultimately, his study of the darkness morphed into a twisted admiration for it. Elrond, an elven leader, lamented of Saruman’s fall, “It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill.” Saruman became an agent of evil, convinced that his corruption was just pragmatism, merely smart politics.
Darkness always takes more of people than they might have bargained for when they let it in.
In the midst of a populist wave of opportunists and radicals all too happy to cater to the passions of the public, this is the single most important time for our leaders to model humility and respect for America’s founding ideals. Team Biden should rethink its flirtation with Dark Brandon, because it seems like, ever since 2016, the dark jokes have become our reality.