The “Let’s go Brandon” meme comes to Canada
Episode Stats
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Summary
The Let's Go Brandon meme comes to Canada? Or is it fake news? We'll break it all down in today's episode of The Candice Malcolm Show. In this episode, we discuss the origins of the meme, where it came from, and what it means in the context of the current cultural moment we're living in.
Transcript
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The let's go Brandon meme comes to Canada or is it fake news? We'll break it all down.
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I'm Candice Malcolm and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.
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Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to the Candice Malcolm Show today.
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Thank you for supporting the podcast and listening to it.
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And thank you to everyone who tuned in last night.
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We did a live stream, a live event covering the Alberta municipal elections
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and that really important question on equalization,
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on the future of Alberta's sort of role in fiscal federalism
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and one of the reasons I think we've been so successful over the past few years
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And I think that this is a great example of it.
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We hosted our live stream, we interviewed some great guests from across Alberta
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to talk about the different aspects of the night
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And what we heard over and over again from our guests,
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from Danielle Smith, Sheila Gunn-Reed, Vitor Marciano, and Dr. Bill Buick,
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that the media in Alberta was hardly covering this election,
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that the mayoral race in Edmonton wasn't getting a lot of attention,
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But the question of the referendum, there was hardly any campaigning,
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there was basically no coverage outside of Alberta.
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For those of us living outside of Alberta, we barely heard anything about it.
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and really in Alberta's role in the future of Canada,
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it's a little surprising that the legacy media just barely covered it,
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didn't pay much attention to it, hardly even a headline.
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And again, I think that's why we have found our nation,
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found some success in this challenging media space in Canada.
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And so I really encourage you to go take a look.
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We had a lot of fun and it was always a great time,
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joined by my colleagues Andrew Lawton and my colleague William McBeth,
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who's usually a behind-the-scenes guy, but he's based out in Calgary
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and he joined us for the sort of role of decision desk
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And I will admit, one of the things that I kept hearing about
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in the chat, in the comment section, both on Facebook and YouTube,
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people wanted to talk about the Let's Go Brandon meme.
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I kept seeing that Let's Go Brandon pop up in the chat
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and I thought it would be amusing and fun to spend a show talking about this meme,
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sort of what it means in terms of the cultural moment that we're living in.
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And yes, there's a little bit of a Canadian aspect
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So whenever there's one of these memes that are sort of going viral,
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I like to quickly understand what it's all about.
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And I'm surprised that many people don't know what it means
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I was talking to a friend yesterday and I mentioned Let's Go Brandon
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They had seen it here or there on social media,
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And I was a little surprised that someone didn't know what it meant.
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So I thought, hey, let's break it down on the show.
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which was Thanksgiving long weekend up here in Canada.
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And down in the States, they also had a long weekend.
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But after the Xfinity NASCAR race at the Talladega Super Speedway,
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Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver, had just won his first race of the season.
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And he was being interviewed live on national television, on NBC Sports,
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by a reporter in front of a large crowd of fans who were all chanting something.
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I'm going to play it for you because it is glorious.
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But the crowd is very clearly chanting something about Joe Biden.
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And for whatever reason, the NBC Sports host plays this clip of the crowd saying,
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And now you can hear this crowd cheering for you.
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And it's pretty clear that they're not cheering for him.
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But she says they're saying, let's go, Brandon.
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I'll leave it up to you to determine what you think it is that they're chanting.
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Brandon, you also told me, as you can hear the chants from the crowd, let's go, Brandon.
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Brandon, you told me you were going to kind of hang back those first two stages and just
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What did you learn that helped you there in those closing laps?
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It was learning how each line didn't stay to one.
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And it went even more viral when Donald J. Trump Jr. shared this tweet.
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I'm pretty sure they're not chanting, let's go, Brandon, as the NBC reporter is telling
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And then he has the hashtag FJB, which stands for, I won't say it, but F Joe Biden.
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And so you can see that clip got 4 million views just there on Twitter.
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Why were they chanting it at the NASCAR stadium, the Talladega Super Speedway?
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Well, apparently these chants have been heard at college football games throughout the season
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for the entire school year since September 4th.
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According to Old Rose Sports, the chants were first heard at four college football games
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in the American South on the weekend of September 4th.
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That that was in Alabama, Virginia, and South Carolina.
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And now they're basically a feature at college football games across the country.
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According to Joe Biden's presidential Wikipedia page, it says this with approval ratings falling
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in September 2021, chants of F Joe Biden were heard at several college football games in
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the South before spreading to other NCAA stadiums, and then even more sporting events throughout
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Chants were heard at the 2021 Ryder Cup, a boxing match, the Talladega Super Speedway
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Spark 300, September 11th MLB matchup between the Yankees and the Mets, and NFL games between
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So the fact that it's made its way to Joe Biden's official Wikipedia page is quite something.
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It was at a New York Yankees game, New York Rangers hockey game.
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The LA Dodgers were playing the San Francisco Giants in a playoff game, and they were chanting
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It was heard at a couple of different concerts.
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It was heard at a congressional baseball game played in Washington, D.C., get this, where Joe
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And it even broke out at a food court where a bunch of women were eating lunch or dinner
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On October 11th, protesters were in Rome, Italy, and they started chanting F Joe Biden
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The protests were in response to mandatory vaccines in that country.
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And there was also another chant in Europe, out in Germany, where the Let's Go Brandon chant
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or F Joe Biden chant could be heard by a group of protesters in Germany.
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The Let's Go Brandon or the F Joe Biden meme chant has made its way into popular culture,
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The number one song right now on the Apple iTunes music list in the rap category is a song called
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And it is number two overall in all categories.
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The song's gone viral on TikTok, on Instagram, and it's got millions of views already on YouTube.
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And I will warn you, it is a little bit graphic.
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But you get the idea that this song, he's saying, we know what they're really saying.
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When you say Let's Go Brandon, we know what they're really saying.
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And then he goes into quite the tirade against Joe Biden, where he calls him a communist
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and basically says that the whole country has turned against him.
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And I say that this Let's Go Brandon meme has come to Canada because there was a memo circulating
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Again, it was getting millions of views on Twitter and on different social media sites,
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alleging to say that the Canadian government was banning any use of the euphemism Let's Go
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Brandon, the anti-Joe Biden euphemism Let's Go Brandon, that if any civil servant was found
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to be using this meme, they would be fired immediately.
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And we at True North held off on reporting on this because it just didn't seem real.
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And there were a few things that were a little bit off.
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It was a printed piece of paper, which is just a little bit odd for a memo to come out
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Also, the way that the top of the paper is indented didn't look authentic.
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The way that the date was written was a little bit off.
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So there were some weird formatting issues that didn't make this look real, which is
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why we at True North didn't run with it right away.
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But I will just say the reason that this thing did go viral is because, let's be honest,
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you could imagine the Canadian government putting something like this out.
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This would be like par for the course for the Trudeau government to ban a meme and to
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say that anyone sharing a meme is racist, violent, alt-right, whatever.
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And so it was believable, which is, I think, why it did go viral and it got reported in
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This is a formal notification that all government correspondents must be professional in nature
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When applicable, all correspondents must be vetted by the PMO for framing and message
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prior to public disclosure or internal distribution.
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And it goes on to say that the use of colloquialism and sayings with intended double meaning or
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offense are strictly prohibited in all means of correspondence communication, specifically
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the use of the wording, let's go, Brandon, and any variation thereof under any circumstances
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Please contact your department head for the applicable writing references.
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We've been informed that this will be zero tolerance issue within the management structure.
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This position is fully supported by the leadership of PSEC.
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So you can tell right there that this isn't even written in proper grammatical English,
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Well, according to the National Post, they have confirmed that the memo is fake.
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It says thousands have shared an image of a memo that appeared to be threatening Canadian
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civil servants with immediate dismissal if they use let's go, Brandon.
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According to Tristan Hopper over the National Post, he says the federal government said it
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had nothing to do with a memo shared widely across the internet purporting to order a ban
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against usage of the term let's go, Brandon, by Canadian civil servants.
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Let's go, Brandon is used widely among conservative circles as a euphemism for F. Joe Biden in reference
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to U.S. President Joe Biden that originated two weeks ago when NASCAR driver Brandon Brown
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was being interviewed live on camera in front of a crowd chanting F. Joe Biden when the
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NBC anchor misinterpreted it as a supportive chant of let's go, Brandon.
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Over the weekend, thousands of people shared an image online of a paper memo that appeared
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to be threatening Canadian civil servants with immediate dismissal if they use let's go,
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And then he just goes on to dismiss it saying by Sunday night, the memo was making headlines
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Canada threatens to fire federal employees using let's go, Brandon, and correspondence reads
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one typical headline in the Daily Wire, one of the United States most trafficked right-wing
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The image appears to have originated from a small anonymous Twitter account claimed to be
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And the account said that the memo came to me in a DM from a Canadian friend.
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I wasn't looking for any more followers or likes.
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I have known this Canadian friend for quite some time and they have always sent me the
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And he continues by saying, Canadian government departments are not known to promise immediate
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dismissal without recourse or label union representation.
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A policy that the memo claims has received support from union leaders.
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PSAC, the public service union mentioned in the memo, is currently a strong opponent of
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policies to punish or dismiss civil servants who refuse to be vaccinated.
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According to the National Post, they say it is just not so.
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But I think, again, the reason that so many people shared it, the reason why U.S.
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outlets reported on it is because it's something that could be true.
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It's within the realm of possibility, given the insanity of the Trudeau government and the
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way that they push their heavy-handed totalitarian measures.
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And again, I think that this is why the whole Let's Go Brandon meme is taking off.
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You know, the media can sort of write it off as a fringe right-wing phenomenon.
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But again, that doesn't really explain why it is the number one hip-hop song in America
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Why it is being chanted at stadiums and concerts across the U.S., including in very staunch blue
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It's staunch pro-Democrat areas like California and New York.
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I think that what is happening in our culture is that we are hitting a tipping point.
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People are just so sick of the heavy-handed COVID mandates, the heavy-handed rules, the
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restrictions, the ongoing, never-ending lockdowns, rules, masks, vaccines, all of it.
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And they are just sick of heavy-handed measures.
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So that is why they're saying F you to Joe Biden.
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And that is why a fake memo of Justin Trudeau banning the use of the meme is so realistic
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and so believable because people just, they've had enough.
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You know, this isn't going to the ballot box and voting them out because we can't do that
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But what it is, is the culture, the art, the internet culture, fighting back, pushing
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back, making a mockery of the culture of the media, of the sitting president saying enough
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And this is one of the best tools that we have to push back.
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And it's good to see when the culture is pushing back against the dominant left-wing
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norms because we all think that the culture is dominated by the sort of woke left-wing
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This shows that there is pushback from the sort of common sense side of the world pushing
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against the woke left totalitarian mindset that we see in so many left-wing leaders and
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But again, it's an important cultural moment showing how so many people have had enough
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and this is how they are pushing back against the totalitarian dominant left-wing ideology.
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I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.