Remember way back in January when U.S. Representative and alleged white supremacist Steve King (Republican, Iowa) was stripped of his committee assignments due to his comments that “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” ideologies shouldn’t be considered offensive? Oh boy, did he learn his lesson and straighten up his life! No, I’m kidding of course.

Screenshot of the Steve King (R-Iowa) Facebook post from Saturday. Click the image above to view it larger. The original art was created by Yarek Waszul for a New York Times book review (here).

Over the weekend, King (who apparently isn’t related to Billie Jean King, Coretta Scott King, Stephen King, Larry King, Carole King, or Rodney King) shared a meme on his campaign’s Facebook page. With art ripped off from a New York Times book review, depicting blocky human figures composed of U.S. states fighting each other, the meme adds the words:

“Folks keep talking about another civil war. One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use.”

Like any meme worth its salt, this one is in ALL CAPS and is missing some puncutation (I’ve corrected that in my quote above). Also like any meme that makes claims, this one doesn’t cite any sources for those claims. Unlike most memes, this one was shared by a current member of U.S. Congress. It’s that last bit that makes this one newsworthy.

Several problems are immediately obvious.

Iowa Is A Blue State?

Though the meme’s art has been downsized and run through whatever software meme-makers use to makes images look offensively low-quality, it is still obvious in the file shared by King that Iowa (King’s home state) is part of the blue fighting person — it’s up there on the elbow, by the fist that’s hitting the red fighting person. In reality, Iowa isn’t a blue (Democrat) state. It’s actually fairly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Barack Obama won Iowa in both 2008 and 2012, but Trump won it in 2016. Three of Iowa’s four U.S. Reps are Democrats and the other (King) is a Republican. Both Senators are Republicans. The governor is a Republican. Other statewide offices are held by both Republicans and Democrats. In other words, Iowa, like many states, is fairly “purple”. But it’s blue in the meme, which makes King look stupid because he’s saying his own state would be against him — or he would be against his own state.

A map of the U.S. from the 2016 election, showing county-by-county results, with red for Republicans, blue for Democrats, and purple where both parties received close to half of the vote. Click to see it larger. This is not adjusted for population; note that many of the solid red counties are very lightly populated.

The Claims

The meme contains two claims besides the implied claim that a hypothetical future civil war would divide the states as pictured. That implied claim is, of course, absurd (see map at right). Most states in the U.S. contain both “red” and “blue” voters in significant numbers.

The claim that “one side has about 8 trillion bullets” is similarly unbelievable. Eight trillion bullets averages to more than 25,000 bullets per person in the entire United States. Though it’s anecdotal, I’ve known scores of gun owners and none of them have owned 25,000 or more bullets. Neither have their children or spouses. But this claim is saying that just one side has 8 trillion bullets. Once you subtract Texas from the red fighting person, it quickly becomes obvious that very few people are included in the red states pictured. They would actually have to own something like 100,000 bullets per man, woman, and infant. Maybe he meant the blue states have that many bullets? If so, the average goes down, but is still higher than 25,000. And regardless of which color he’s claiming has 8 trillion bullets, the meme says nothing of how many the other side has. I could find no source of any kind listing how many bullets are at large in the United States.

The other claim, that “the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use”, is, I assume, a cheap shot at transgender individuals, but if so it clearly doesn’t make sense. It isn’t the transgender people who have trouble deciding which bathroom to use; it’s Republican politicians like Dan Patrick (Texas) who want to confuse the issue by forcing some women into men’s restrooms and vice versa. And if King is talking about transgender people here, he might not be aware that in all 50 states transgender individuals account for less than 1% of the population (highest in Hawaii, at 0.78%, and lowest in North Dakota, at 0.30%.) If he’s talking about something else, like poorly marked bathroom doors or lack of unisex bathrooms, he should remember that it’s his party that is against regulation of minutia like this.

Is It Treason?

A former bureaucrat (from the George W. Bush era) and current law professor called it “treason” for King to post the meme. Though I am not, and never have been, a law professor, I don’t think it’s treason to post a meme, even if it does make light of a civil war. Another law professor countered that it is NOT treason, but that King is “fomenting and inciting” treason, which is “ample reason to expel him”.

I wouldn’t even consider the treason angle here. I think it is safe for reasonable people to assume that King isn’t actually advocating a civil war. However, he clearly thinks civil war is hilarious, has no problem posting untrue “facts”, and seems to get a kick out of making the U.S. Congress look bad by association with him. (I would have added that he’s making the Republican Party look bad too, but... Trump.)

Personally, I don’t think it’s okay for sitting congresspersons to post ANY kind of meme, because congresspersons aren’t in middle school anymore, but if they’re going to, it certainly shouldn’t be acceptable to post this kind.

Conclusion

Long before this weekend’s meme drop, Steve King proved himself to be a failed human being. This meme only reinforces that conclusion. The fact that he removed it, and refused to comment to journalists about either posting it or deleting it, also says a lot about him, but nothing that we didn’t already know. Just for self-punishment, I took a look at the Facebook page in question. A “verified” account, it consists almost entirely of memes, almost none of which are true.

This meme fails in almost every way, except correct apostrophe usage, and thus is a perfect addition to my Silly Meme Saturday series — which isn’t always posted on Saturday.