20,000 National Guard troops were called to keep the Inaurgation of Joseph R. Biden Jr safe on January 20 .. a tension was building around the nation, the media informed us.. Threats and rumors of threats were abounding on social media.
The internet had become a raucous and caustic venue since the election.
We were doomed, it would.
And then, as the early morning snow and clouds broke to allow sunlight to shine down on President Biden and Vice President Harris, a miracle was brewing.. A moment was about to occur that, maybe, forever changed the course of American history. No, it was not Biden’s oath or speech.. and no, it was not Garth Brooks zipping around the audience with his massive cowboy hat.
It was a Bernie Sanders. Decked in his coat we have seen him in countless times, and dazzlingly massive mittens someone made for him from recycled plastic.
This image, quite frankly, made America great again.
SOME MEMES COME AND GO.. SOME NEVER GO AWAY
The internet is a vast wasteland of memes of yesterday. Only the strong survive.. so often they live on forever in brief compilation videos.. songs.. now and then old funny images from the mid 2000s or 2000 teens will show up in a GIF.
The Bernie Sanders meme, however, felt different. This was a coming of age meme moment in a way.
When the image of Sanders was captured by a Getty photographer at the Inauguration, it trended immediately. And while Joe Biden was making a speech he hoped would be a blockbuster call for unification, the Internet got moving.. mass production began.
By nightfall when Bruce Springsteen was attempting to sing his heart out at the star studded Virtual Gala, people around the nation were busy sharing the image of Senator Sanders. By morning, his image took over all forms of social media..
And within a day, people of all ages, races, colors and creeds were popping Sanders into their profile pictures, local businesses were putting him in their parking lots, spas were putting him in their waiting rooms, and restaurants at tables.
He is showing up in historical photos.. in the Game of Thrones.. In horror movies, and in the most GHOST.
When Brendan Smialowski changed history
Esquire talked to the Getty photographer who captured the image at the right time.
Smialowski, the Washington D.C.-based photographer who was working the inauguration behalf of the global news agency AFP, isn’t a stranger to having a front row seat to history or even going viral, but his shot of Sanders has served as a unique lighthearted respite during a lead-up that was anything but. The eye behind the iconic shot spoke to Esquire about the photo that inspired the masses. “It’s not a great photo, but it is a nice moment,” he says.
Brenden Smialowski said,
When I captured the moment, I had just decided to swing back, take it, and then I transmitted that photo from my camera to my editor. So there were three moments there and if your timings are not just right, it wouldn’t have come together.
The next morning I had a bunch of emails from bosses and such. I think when there’s a webpage that automatically drops Bernie into a photo, I think that makes it pretty clear that it made it.
But one more comment that he said, and this one we think, is what summarizes the moment:
I grew up without the Internet and have seen it all evolve since and in the early days, it was fairly lighthearted, fun, goofy and jokes. Maybe it feels like the early days.
Maybe it does..
GLORY DAYS
The internet was fun at one time! The wild west of the information superhighway. A few years ago, the notion of “digital decay” was noticed.. At that time it became apparent: The old internet was slipping away. Some sites like Archive.org or oneterabyteofkilobyteage are active in trying to keep some of the old alive.. We wrote in 2013 that one day online users will not even know what Geocities was. That day is now.
So when the Bernie Sanders memes started circulating, those who lived through the early days of the net felt a magical nostalgia. Others felt the feeling for the first time.
Innocence, it seemed, was reborn.
The cultural reset
For four years, memes were made to attack other political sides. Some had a biting sense of humor.. some had a cruel bite.
Each and every day, a new scandal erupted. CNN went into “breaking news overdrive” .. they declared the end of Trump. Democracy. The nation.. they ate up their ratings with no remorse.
The nation was driven into a constant ad sick medical condition of @realdonaldtrump Twitter addiction.. His account remained the must-go to location on social media as he opined on everything important and not, and threatened other nations with nuclear war.
Twitter got immediately dull when former President Trump was banned.
And the nation grappled with the aftermath of his presidency.. all of those public battles. All of the rolls of paper towels thrown to hurricane victims.. all of the weather maps with sharpie written all over them were over.
Foes suddenly had no one to hate and fans suddenly had no hope .. we were lost as a nation. Neither side felt comfortable. Neither side felt right..
The normal transition of power is always painful for the losing side. But this time half of the losing side wanted to lose.
Then came that Sanders photo. That little snapshot of a moment in time. With it, a seemingly noticeable cultural reset.
We cannot be naive
The world will adapt to change. There will be political fights … there will be claims of biased news coverage.. All of the old political factions will brand themselves for the new post-Trump age. Everyone involved with journalism and politics still looks to be grasping in the dark for their posture.. What the end result looks like may be a redux of pre-2016 years.
The staged events.
The canned talking points.
The typical news briefings with little said.
In a strange way the media may not yet realize what they just lost: The President who gave the press access of virtually everything! Trump loved the attention.. Chopper talk, hours-long press events… Sure, the relationship with horrid but both sides fed on each others egos and worst instincts.
That is why the innocence of the Sanders image is so vital in restoring something, at least among the distanced factions of Americans.
Good jokes or memes are tension breakers. Bernie became that..
Goodwill can end as quickly as it begins.
Hopefully it sticks around for a while.
Even if it doesn’t, we can look back at the short-lived moment when Bernie made America Great Again.
