No, I’m not surprised by what Ariana Pekary said. If you followed the blackout in real time it was too deliberate to have been anything other than a direct order. You don’t switch out a candidate’s picture for someone else and omit them from debate lineup coverage for no reason

A lot of people still haven’t realized how big of a deal it is that Yang managed to penetrate the political bubble that is the presidential fucking primaries at all. They didn’t want him on any of the debate stages, they didn’t want voters knowing who he was

A lot of my frustration with progressives who work in electoral politics and dismiss yangs candidacy is that it was the first real example of a true outsider breaking through said political bubble through the use of the internet. It was the trump route with no name recognition

The internet made trump, the internet propelled yang onto the debate stage against the DNC’s will, the internet got QAnon into congress, the internet is a fickle thing and will continue to bleed further into our politics and our current politicians do not understand that

See also, why those 8chan white nationalist losers latched onto the Yang campaign early and made all those 1k bro virgin trump chad yang fashwave memes. Someday I will write a book on this. Someday

And this is ultimately why I cape for Yang even though caping for politicians is cringe. His asianness and simultaneous outsider status/proximity to power turned him into this wild symbol for so many people, good and bad when he’s rly just a dude in pursuit of a positive populism

An important thing to note about the media blackout is that his asianness made it possible. The stuff they did can’t be done otherwise. Which speaks to the liminality of the Asian American experience and the idea that Yang could be the ultimate “compromise candidate” —

I disagree with Wes Yang on a lot of things but I deeply agree with his thesis that “the Asian-American, [...] because he is neither loved nor feared by anyone, can become the universal figure in American politics and life — the compromise candidate for a polarized electorate”

From his book the souls of yellow folk, which predates yangs candidacy https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1194684515953893376