There is a running meme on the internet with relatively left-leaning, younger folks who we'd take to be left-liberals involving taking Chinese propaganda pictures of Joe Biden and the United States in general and asking why it makes him look so cool. I mean, it kind of does. He's sitting on an Iron Throne made of machine guns with dark aviators on. But there is something genuinely new about this. It's American liberals embracing being mean and embracing the state with all its power and all its baggage. Dark Brandon is an avatar for a very uniquely American muscular progressivism that harkens back to the New Deal as it really was – a lot of corporatism, national development, and militant left-liberal internationalism. This is an essay about Europe not understanding what happened in America, but it is also about my own political development.