Democracy During Fear
Harris quotes the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to underline the necessity to keep fighting through the darkest of times. A familiar (if not exactly accurate) image associated with the self-destructive outcome of not confronting what one fears is the starting point and what follows builds upon that idea by overlaying with a patina of patriotism:
“We cannot play ostrich. Democracy just cannot flourish amid fear. Liberty cannot bloom amid hate. Justice cannot take root amid rage. America must get to work. . . . We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust.”
The Voodoo That Republicans Still Do
Republican theories of economics are, to say the least, wildly out of synch with the reality the present. An enormous tax cut for the wealthy as still being sold as something that would trickle down so that everybody benefits in some mysterious black magic way. Harris presents concrete imagery that this is not and never has been how the process works:
“1 percent of American households, who now own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, which adds up to roughly $40 trillion. But it’s been a financial nightmare for the middle class. According to research done by United Way, 43 percent of households can’t afford basic expenses: a roof over their head, food on the table, child care, health care, transportation, and a cell phone.”
Systemic Racism
Many high-ranking government officials in the Trump administration against which Kamala Harris was running during the 2020 election refused to admit that there is systemic racism in America or even denied its existence. Facts are the kind of imagery that should change this opinion, but the summer of 2020 proves should is not a guarantee of will:
“when a police officer stops a black driver, he is three times more likely to search the car than when the driver is white. Black men use drugs at the same rate as white men, but they are arrested twice as often for it. And then they pay more than a third more than their counterparts, on average, in bail. Black men are six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated. And when they are convicted, black men get sentences nearly 20 percent longer than those given to their white counterparts.”
How to Be a Nice Person
It is getting harder and harder to be a nice person in America because more and more people demonstrate a fundamental failure of having learned the essentials. Rather than extending empathy and compassion, they rage or, at best, spew snark. Harris relates a moment from her youth when the woman she would term a second mother taught her a valuable lesson in the power of simply being nice to others. The backstory: Kamala’s first attempt at making lemon bars resulted in a little mix-up with the ingredients:
“`That’s delicious . . . maybe a little too much salt . . . but really delicious.’ I didn’t walk away thinking I was a failure. I walked away thinking I had done a great job, and just made one small mistake. It was little moments like those that helped me build a natural sense of confidence. I believed I was capable of anything.”
