While most people have and are continuing to abandon the deranged ship that is Kanye West, some would still like to believe there is a master plan behind his increasingly escalated expression of ardency for an old white man that is orange. The expression of which took yet another macabre turn when West met with Trump ostensibly to talk about nothing under the guise of mental health issues, prison reform and other “hot-button” issues that were not addressed as West went on one of his usual stream of consciousness rants, one that veered off into, much to Trump’s delight, a misogynistic bent as West explained his love for the MAGA hat as follows: “I’m married to a family that, uh, you know–not a lot of male energy going on. I love Hillary, I love everyone, right, but the campaign ‘I’m With Her’ just didn’t make me feel, as a guy that didn’t get to see my dad all the time, like a guy that could play catch with his son. It was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman. That’s my favorite superhero. You made a Superman cape for me.” Along with legions of other reductive, off their rocker narcissists.
Looking very pleased with himself as he said, “The liberal will try to control the black person through the concept of racism because they know that we’re very proud, emotional people,” West just reduced centuries of systemic abuse and prejudice to a “concept”–all in your mind–while basically insisting that black people are too blind (read: dumb) to see it, therefore easily manipulable, also adding in for good measure, “The problem is illegal guns, not legal guns. We have the right to bear arms.”
Still even after all of this, like Dave Chapelle vaguely does, do we want to believe that there is some grand scheme contained within the cringeworthy actions of West (including hugging Trump and declaring “I love this guy” as Trump presumably splooged and had to change out of his crusty underwear right after)? Is Kanye coming at things “with love”–doing the “spread love to get love back” tactic–in order to wrap Trump around his finger and, at the very least, get an iPlane 1 made? Is this some elaborate homage to Andy Kaufman that even puts Andy Kaufman to shame in terms of commitment to a hoax with a grand intention that won’t be fully revealed until twenty years from now? It really is the only justifiable explanation if people are going to keep referring to this man as a genius–even musically. As Chappelle put it in a recent interview before West met with Trump (with Jim Brown as a silent prop in the background), “I think the angle he’s seeing things from is about the division that he sees. And–and he’s not inconsistent with what he’s saying… I’m not mad at Kanye. That’s my brother–I love him, I support him. I just trust him as a person of intent.” Even so, Chappelle had to admit, “But yeah, he shouldn’t say all that shit.”
And here’s why (apart from the fact that feeding the ego of a narcissist is not a long-term plan, so much as part of an end game): White America is pretty fucking literal (you know, the Pete Davidson ilk), so when they see someone like Kanye West–black first and foremost in the eyes of white people–“supporting” Trump, the fuel for their own support is only going to be augmented, using the president’s “friendship” with a famous black person as a means to argue that Trump is an open-minded, non-racist guy. Then again, like Taylor Swift being lost to the Democrats, maybe Trump’s most devoted, white supremacist constituency is starting to question their leader. Wait, is this West’s master plan? Infecting Trump with his blackness so that the Orange One’s supporters are so sketched out that their support begins to wane? Maybe he is a genius. Or maybe Kim needs to start strongly taking Kris’ advice and draw up those divorce papers. Unless, of course, she can see the potential opportunity for even more power in America in Kanye West being invited into Trump’s Cabinet–which is something even Nixon (somehow more popular than Trump at his lowest point) would not deign to ask Elvis as a means to bolster his impossible to repair credibility with the public. Even a public as obsessed with celebrity culture as the one that exists in the United States.
