“Calling out around the world! Are you ready for a brand new beat? Summer’s here and the time is right/ for dancing in the streets!”
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! For such a moment as this, Kamala Harris is the ideal Vice President! For the first time in years-that-seem-like-decades, I am happy! Thrilled beyond measure! I have all but given up on America under Trump. The man has so many faults that a whole team of Democrats were required to offer the antidote to the illness that is Trump and Trump-ism.
Joe Biden is a good man. I have never doubted that, and I never will. The endorsement by Barack Obama of Biden was good enough for me. But I believed it before Obama made his case, because Biden is an actual person. Is Biden a great man? I don’t know that he’s ever claimed to be. That’s why he has been so hard for Trump to pin him down.
What Trump calls “sleepy” is what criminals call “boring”. They see no future in honesty and hard work, or suffering and growth. As citizens, we Americans have believed in “get paid a lot for doing no work because you deserve more than others” (see Kim Kardashian) as a model to aspire to. Donald Trump is the icon of that worldview.
Biden’s not an icon. He’s just a guy who does his job to the best of his abilities, with a good, if flawed heart. Biden is not a one-dimensional image. He’s a humble, decent man who makes mistakes like a real human being does — at work, in the midst of real life. Trump is an image, the guy who got to say, “You’re fired!”, who hasn’t really worked honestly a day in his life. Like Kardashian, he is “reality TV”, not most people’s lived reality. Trump doesn’t know what to do with that.
But back to Kamala: she’s “young, gifted and black” to quote Nina Simone. We need all of that right now. The moment when we welcome more of America to be an actual part of America, when we move closer toward a more inclusive America requires new, fresh ideas from the younger present and future of our democracy. Harris will know a Tik-Tok from an Instagram and will not be threatened by either the White establishment or Black Lives Matter. She will bring experiences that no other VP has ever had, closer to the experience that half of the population has.
Yes, she’s a woman. Does that make her a better leader? It doesn’t make her a worse one. After nearly 250 years of male leadership, I think it’s time to at least try a woman’s leadership. No one has said of her, or any woman candidate, “she’ll try to kill 150,000 people with her incompetence”. It’s a low bar, yes, but we put it there.
In her sleep, without even getting out of bed, Harris is a better leader than Trump or the soulless sycophant we have now. Could she do worse? Could any woman? They’d have to work really hard to come close to it. And for those right-wing people who will say, “she hates America”, she hates Russia more.
Finally, and this is my favorite part, Harris believes in the Rule of Law. Bill Barr and his tories, who believe the President is King, and doesn’t believe that “government derives its power from the governed” has met his match. Harris believes in law as we had it, and she believes in justice as we might have it, with better laws enacted. Bill Barr and Trump’s criminal cronies can see the writing on the wall. They should be scared, as we search for justice for so many who have been wronged.
To sum up, Goodness, humanity, and justice by the actual people who make up most of America, are the combination that Biden and Harris bring to the future and, for the first time in a long while, I want to go there.
Resisting with Peace, and hope for justice,
John
Because It Matters 