When I Look To the West

It seems ironic that the only major performer in rap who goes by his given name could get in trouble with the law for fake names.

Kanye West, whose head looks more and more like a fist with eyes when I look at him, is being accused of electoral fraud - a different fraud from the one that Trump charges comes from mail-in voting.  The petitions submitted for West's presidential "campaign" in various states to get on the ballot have been rejected for using fake names.  His home state of Illinois rejected his petition there because some names may have been forged.  New Jersey rejected his petition because the same name was used over and over and over.  West got his petition to appear on the ballot in Wisconsin - where Hillary Clinton barely lost to Trump in 2016 and where Democratic Governor Tony Evers barely won in 2018 - just in the nick of time, but the fake signatures found there mean that he likely won't appear on that state's ballot, either.  There are even reports of real people being tricked into signing a West petition without knowing what it's really for; they signed under the pretext to show that they're registered to vote.

Kanye isn't really running to become the forty-sixth President of the United States anyway.  Republicans have been gleefully helping West get on the ballot, and he's already assured to appear on the ballot in Oklahoma.  Possibly Colorado as well.  The idea was to help West get on the ballot for President in as many states as possible to hurt Joe Biden, the supposition being that he would draw votes from young black voters.  Most of his fans are white, though, and black people resent him for his once strong alliance with Trump.  In a rare moment of candor, West recently admitted as much that he's part of a plot to damage Biden.  Gee whiz, even the thugs who conspired against Nancy Kerrigan to help Tonya Harding in the 1994 Winter Olympics were better at this sort of thing.  The big fraud here, of course, is that West never really broke with Trump.  He's actually helping him do his dirty work.

Fraud, of course, is nothing new for West, who has been part of the larger fraud to convince people that rap is art and should be treated with the same respect as jazz.  Those who disagree with the idea of rap as music and with Kanye's self-professed claims of genius, particularly classic-rock-era musicians,  have spoken out against this fraud, only to be dismissed angrily as white male "rockists" who don't get it.  So, I am enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing West's mostly liberal defenders realize what an idiot and a poser (as David Crosby called him) he really is.

Because he is clinically insane, West will not go quietly.  But, given his quixotic efforts to give his buddy Donald Trump an advantage in the election while pretending to have disavowed him, he will indeed go. The sooner, the better.