In what we can only assume was some sort of cruel ploy to drag America’s entertainment news writers away from our post-barbecue stupors as punishment for, well, all the shit we’ve said about him over the years, Kanye West has just announced that he’s gifting America the 2020 presidential candidate it truly deserves: Kanye West.
Kanye has, of course, toyed with the idea of announcing a presidential run before—although usually with an eye on a nice, distant date like…Well, like 2020, but he was saying that shit back in 2015! (We all assumed he’d get distracted!) It was the sort of thing we could all have a little fun with, in those pre-Trump days, before letting the whole thing dissolve back into a primordial ooze of existential political dread. But this time, West’s aiming for an election that is depressingly soon—although not so soon that he’s not still within the filing deadline for running as an independent candidate. (And yes, the Late Registration jokes have already been made.) As to why he’s doing it, we do have some theories, but they mostly start and stop with “His home planet has finally run through its last supplies of life-giving attention, and this is his last-ditch effort to finally save his world.”
Regarding his politics, meanwhile, West’s stances have typically amounted to “Whatever will get him trending with the largest combination of words”; over the last four years, he’s claimed to support Donald Trump, then to be playing Donald Trump, then he said that shit about slavery, then he said he was sorry. Then he decided he was only making IMAX movies about his Christian music. It’s been a lot, is what we’re saying. And even though this will obviously, undeniably amount to nothing more than an attempt to sell a few more ugly shoes—and possibly some accidental fundraising for good causes somewhere down the line—it’s also just going to be so goddamn exhausting. At least when Kid Rock pulled this kind of shit, we could identify it as a joke fairly early on. But with West, it’s never just a joke: It’s also a statement, and an advertisement, and an effort to sell some more of those ugly fucking shoes.
Anyway, the first high-profile person to respond to West’s tweet was, obviously, Elon Musk, which: cool. Maybe they’ll be running mates. Maybe they’ll provide Cybertrucks and free Yeezys to the whole helpless nation. Maybe this blood vessel behind our eyes will stop fucking around with just throbbing uncontrollably, and actually, finally pop. Miracles happen, right? #2020VISION