DAN GAINOR: Leftists don’t understand the internet and it’s costing them the culture war

The Left can’t meme. That has been online reality for years. And they get indignant when the right does it. That’s been reality since the beginning of the political era of President Donald Trump. I still remember my favorite Trump meme – the one that redid his WWE appearance, yet turned it into a 2017 presidential smackdown of CNN. Hilarious. More so because of the media freakout.

Fast forward nearly nine years, and Trump is still meming and the press is still fuming. The latest meme pairs Trump with the infamous solitary penguin. The White House combined an iconic image of the penguin marching off on his own with Trump joining him. Add in an American flag and some Greenland mountains with the caption: "Embrace the penguin."

The response was predictable – a blizzard of angry comments and awful headlines. First the awful: Forbes chimed in with, "TikTok’s ‘Nihilistic Penguin’ Meme, Explained." Shockingly, they weren’t the only ones to put "nihilistic penguin" in headlines, which hopefully is a first for mankind. USA Today, The Independent and The Week all chimed in with similar word of the day headlines. There hasn’t been this much hatred for the penguin since the last Batman movie.

Then came the berserk ones from the Left. Under the header "Climate Change," Gizmodo whined, "Trump Urges Americans to Embrace a Suicidal Penguin as ‘Doomsday Clock’ Hits 85 Seconds to Midnight." The outlet tried to get all sciency by embracing an entirely bogus measure of how near doomsday is. These are the same people who are convinced Mother Nature is big mad at mankind.

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For an added little dig, it wrote: "There aren't any penguins in Greenland."

I want to write how no one cares, but clearly some in the press did. So, I’ll stick with no one important cared. There are only about 57,000 people in Greenland. It would have to look like the Opus-filled version of the Falklands (Human population 3,500, sheep population 500,000.) for people to care about the penguins in Greenland. Put another way, Greenland is similar to the population of mega cities like Kalamazoo, Mich., and nearby to me, Gainesville, Ga. But bigger than Alaska and California combined. "Hee Haw" fans, say it with me, "Salute!"

Trump and his multimedia minions don’t care about any of that. They care that they kept the entire world talking Trump and Greenland. And Trump. And the press looked silly freaking out about it. That’s a win, another win, another win. Oh, and a win.

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Sadly, Gizmodo wasn’t the only site made of soulless, humorless scolds – the Karens of the internet. Lefty Mediaite unknowingly embraced the "Ackchyually" meme while complaining, "White House Posts AI Slop of Trump and a Penguin in Greenland, Which Doesn’t Have Penguins." The Hill went the same route, noting, "Users on social media were quick to mock the White House’s post, pointing out that penguins live almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere."

The bitter folks at The Daily Beast had to remind their equally bitter readers of Trump’s age in their headline: "Trump, 79, Revives Greenland Fantasy With Absurd AI Post." Yes, at 79, he’s still better at this game than the entire Daily Beast staff. Newsweek warned, "White House Meme About Greenland Penguin Sparks Jokes, Backlash." Horrors, not "backlash." That never happens.

The pre-Trump penguin image comes from a 2007 documentary "Encounters at the End of the World." The White House responded to the silly media uproar, writing: "The penguin does not concern himself with the opinions of those who cannot comprehend." That’s a paraphrase of the famous quote, "The lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of the sheep." Sheep, my lefty journalism friends, means ya’ll.

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Normal online people (i.e., not the Gizmodo staff) also know the penguin is a metaphor. Conservatives, especially conservative men, see the penguin going off on his own as a statement that they don’t have to follow the crowd, that the penguin, "no longer belongs where everyone else is," as one TikToker phrased it. That he can make his own way in the world.

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That is the essence of Trump’s appeal. The essence of America First, the opposite of the globalist nightmare that exported jobs and imported job takers. The U.S. doesn’t have to do what other nations do. The U.S. doesn’t have to commit cultural suicide, embrace open borders or censor online speech like Europe and the rest of the West. We don’t have to destroy ourselves in a modern version of World War I, like Russia. We can be strong, independent and successful.

We aren’t the 1985 propaganda hit, "We Are the World." We are the penguin. Trump gets it. The press and their leftist allies never will.

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