Representative Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, appeared to combine multiple half-baked grievances about millennials and "wokeness" into a single tweet when he, referring to fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent invasion of Ukraine had inflamed global nuclear hostilities, appeared to brag about knowing what it was like to live in fear of a nuclear threat.
Higgins, 60, came of age when Cold War tensions were arguably at their height and was 30 years old in 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. But his scorn for millennials, who, he says, have spent their entire lives living under a "woke sky," left many scratching their heads.
Higgins even went so far as to nonsensically complain about non-binary people when he accused millennials of making "quite a non-binary fuss to save the world from intercontinental ballistic tweets."
You millennial leftists who never lived one day under nuclear threat can now reflect upon your woke sky. \n You made quite a non-binary fuss to save the world from intercontinental ballistic tweets.— Rep. Clay Higgins (@Rep. Clay Higgins) 1645989760
His tweet left many flabbergasted but perhaps no one as much as the official Twitter account for Dictionary.com, which acknowledged that it could not make heads nor tails of Higgins' tweet even though "we’re literally the dictionary.”
We\u2019re not entirely sure what this tweet is supposed to mean, and we\u2019re literally the dictionary.— Dictionary.com (@Dictionary.com) 1645993991
Many found the response, which quickly went viral, hilarious.
The mf dictionary calling out @RepClayHiggins for being illiterate We love to see ithttps://twitter.com/dictionarycom/status/1498033493561032710\u00a0\u2026— \ud83e\udd84 (@\ud83e\udd84) 1646052447
Imagine getting absolutely wrecked by the dictionaryhttps://twitter.com/dictionarycom/status/1498033493561032710\u00a0\u2026— Quinn (spiteful hot era) (@Quinn (spiteful hot era)) 1646017309
Whoever does social media for @Dictionarycom needs a raise. ASAP.https://twitter.com/Dictionarycom/status/1498033493561032710\u00a0\u2026— Sunny Hostin (@Sunny Hostin) 1646009249
This may be the single greatest response to a tweet in the history of time.https://twitter.com/dictionarycom/status/1498033493561032710\u00a0\u2026— Jo \ud83c\udf3b (@Jo \ud83c\udf3b) 1646017101
I think a dictionary just murdered somebody.https://twitter.com/dictionarycom/status/1498033493561032710\u00a0\u2026— Harlemgerl (@Harlemgerl) 1646006633
i am howling like a wolf\n\nimagine getting dragged by the dictionaryhttps://twitter.com/Dictionarycom/status/1498033493561032710\u00a0\u2026— Felix Grotesque \ud83e\udd8a (@Felix Grotesque \ud83e\udd8a) 1646056130
\u201cYes, hello, police? I\u2019d like to report a murder AND nominate someone for a Pulitzer prize for a tweet.\u201dhttps://twitter.com/dictionarycom/status/1498033493561032710\u00a0\u2026— Gabriel Urbina (@Gabriel Urbina) 1646004376
Others merely expressed further confoundment over Higgins' tweet
I don\u2019t understand what this means— Molly Jong-Fast (@Molly Jong-Fast) 1645993063
Not a single millennial \u2014 myself included \u2014 understands what this means— Hugo Lowell (@Hugo Lowell) 1645999626
you\u2019ve been playing with the magnetic poetry on the fox news break room fridge again haven\u2019t you— shauna (@shauna) 1645993415
Type "You millennial leftists..." and let autopredict complete your sentence. \n\n"You millennial leftists are the most important and most likely people ever to be in my own head." \n\nMakes as much sense as Rep Higgins' statement.— Nico Reznick \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\u26a7\ufe0f\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udf0d (@Nico Reznick \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\u26a7\ufe0f\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udf0d) 1646043193
The response to the absurdity of Higgins' tweet is considerably more lighthearted than the response he's received for other social media controversies.
Higgins, who has never confirmed his vaccination status, has been criticized since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States for pushing back against vaccine and mask mandates, once writing that he does not support what public health experts have called common sense safety measures.
Higgins has also advocated for violence against Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrators, and at one point had posts deleted per Facebook's content policy after he suggested that armed demonstrators should be met with force to "eliminate the threat," later asserting that the United States is "being manipulated into a new era of government control."
