Kamala’s Seductive Amnesia
3rd September 2024
Human beings are conflicted animals. We are capable of great devotion to the people and things we cherish, and will strive tirelessly on their behalf. Yet we long to be done with worry and struggle, to close the open wounds of existence and be relieved, once and for all, of anxiety and toil. At times of cultural exhaustion, this longing can afflict a whole people. We see this today in the United States.
Americans have suffered bruising blows for four years now: the Covid shutdown, urban riots and crime, ballooning inflation and debt, open borders, civil strife, the gloating of our enemies and the collapse of the international order. The electorate is weary and dispirited, and seems ready, like a boxer on his last legs, to take a sweet nap on the canvas.
Kamala Harris’s handlers understand this perfectly well. Having accurately discerned the national mood, they have made her the woman of the hour. She seems to float above all weighty issues. In her campaign poster “Forward”, a knockoff of the iconic Obama “Hope” image, her uplifted gaze radiates joy and “upliftment”. Her invocation of “What can be, unburdened by what has been” is happy and hopeful.
If all that sounds attractive, consider that Harris’s candidacy involves a deep memory-wipe. Politically speaking, she has sprung into being as a fully formed adult with no discernible past or historical recall. Her plan to control food prices repeats a common, famine-inducing error of communist regimes. Her tough-on-crime and border-securing persona rests not just on amnesia, but on media-driven amnesty. And yet, propelled forward by the cheerful drone of the “KHive ” and the good vibrations of “Brat summer”, Harris may surf all the way to the Oval Office.
In the immortal words of the Clinton Campaign Song: Don’t stop thinkin’ about tomorrow/Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone….