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British PM Johnson’s Tweet Congratulating Biden Also Had a Hidden Message to Trump

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Symbolism matters, appearances matter, especially when it comes to the legitimacy of a self-governing people. If one wants a government where no one is making decisions by military command, the symbolic stuff and rituals matter a great deal. It means that the system is not only working, but it is expected to work. The expectation might be more important than the words on paper. Without a commitment by the right people, the constitution is just a piece of paper.

So it matters that Trump-friendly United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson calls Joe Biden to say “congratulations, you won.” Boris just did exactly that today:

Now that is what we’re talking about. If we just had a Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham say the same thing, we could start to move on as a nation without the very serious dangers we are facing, the type of danger where democracy is never quite the same, where the lasting impacts increase the danger even more.

Boris Johnson is particularly important because, obviously the U.K. is one of the U.S.’s two closest allies, along with Canada, and second because Boris was always seen as close to Trump, like the U.K.’s own “Trump.” There was almost nothing symbolic about Justin Trudeau’s call to Biden to congratulate Biden because, as everyone knows, there was always some friction between normal (and very handsome) Trudeau, and not at all normal and not at all handsome, Donald Trump, so Boris’s call means something.

It is akin to Netanyahu’s call to Biden, because again – the relationship with Trump, and yet the realization that “reality” has to win out here.

UPDATE:

Some very smart folk on Twitter have discovered that Johnson’s image tweet congratulating Biden was earlier a congratulation for…Trump. Oh, how the British Empire has fallen.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak

Jason Miciak
meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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