When a large chorus of boos greeted Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl, her response summed up what many leftists are likely thinking after Donald Trump has come into the Oval Office like a whirlwind and started systematically dismantling the corrupt machine they have been using for decades to exercise hegemony over the political and cultural spheres.
A year ago, the much-heralded young chanteuse wielded so much influence (or was assumed to wield so much influence) that according to a Monmouth poll, nearly one in five Americans actually believed that she was part of a deep state effort to help Old Joe Biden win reelection. When Swift eventually endorsed Kamala Harris, the New York Times hailed her as “one of America’s most celebrated pop-culture icons” and noted that she had “an enormous following across the world.” Swift’s endorsement, the Times said, “offers Ms. Harris an unrivaled celebrity backer and a tremendous shot of adrenaline to her campaign, especially with the younger voters she has been trying to attract.”
As it turned out, the shot of adrenaline turned out to be a fizzle, and by Super Bowl Sunday, Swift didn’t seem to be much of a celebrated pop-culture icon at all. The New York Post reported Monday that “after being caught off guard by the harsh reception to her presence, the singer turned to her pal and rapper Ice Spice in the VIP box. ‘What’s going on?’ the ‘Fortnight’ singer, who was at the game to cheer on boyfriend Travis Kelce, was seen saying on the scoreboard in response to the boos.”
“What’s going on?” Indeed. In three words, Taylor Swift could have written the epitaph of the left’s cultural hegemony. Leftists over the last three weeks have been bewildered by how quickly their fortunes have taken a downturn. As Rich Lowry noted, “A blitz of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump have taken dead aim at left-wing cultural priorities and pillars of the left’s cultural influence. Fashionable progressive ideas that have long been ascendant, including DEI and gender ideology, have received hammer blows since Trump’s inauguration, and there’s more to come.” Much, much more to come, we hope.
And it has all happened in the blink of an eye. Trump’s extraordinarily active first three weeks have left more than just Taylor Swift blinking their eyes in disbelief and muttering, “What’s going on?” Not too very long ago, the left’s lunatic ideas, including the insistence that some makeup, a wig, and some hormone shots could transform a man into a woman, were ruthlessly enforced. The social media giants relentless and unapologetically deplatformed and silenced dissidents from the left’s agenda, including Donald Trump himself.
Many people who knew better played along with a sense of quiet resignation, duly referring to Rachel Levine as a woman and Elliot Page as a man, and pretending that the rogue’s gallery of freaks and psychopaths that the Biden regime brought in to staff the White House were competent professionals. Two plus two was five, and if it meant total ostracism to say otherwise, then two plus two was five indeed, and patriots glumly searched out small corners of the Internet where they could affirm the truth, while trying to find ways that they could still have a voice in the larger culture while attempting to appease the left’s unappeasable gods.
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But the left’s cultural hegemony has crested now and begun to recede. It started even before Trump’s second administration began, but has picked up significant speed since then. Even Taylor Swift herself could have asked her plaintive question long before the boos came cascading in at the Super Bowl. Back in Sept. 2024, NBC News reported that “about 47% of Republicans say they view Swift negatively in a poll conducted days after her presidential endorsement, a sharp uptick from the 26% who reported viewing her negatively in NBC’s Nov. 2023 poll, the last time she was included in the survey. Just 12% of Republicans report positive attitudes toward the singer, down from 28% last year.”
They were just Republicans, which probably meant that they mattered little to Swift, but even that increase in negative views of the singer wasn’t supposed to happen. Back in Oct. 2020, NBC News said that “Swift has previously stayed out of politics, in fear of isolating her audience.” Yet given the left’s cultural ascendancy, endorsing Biden in 2020 was the safest thing she could have done. Patriotic Swifties were used to that sort of thing and would have borne it patiently, and so she wouldn’t have lost any of her audience at all.
By 2024, however, her endorsement of Harris had little impact, and then there she was on Sunday, getting booed at the Super Bowl. “What’s going on?” The left is losing its edge, that’s what’s going on. And it’s a glorious thing to see.
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