It has only been two days since Joe Biden stepped aside from the presidential campaign and I have learned a lot more about Charli XCX than I was expecting. Meanwhile, the Democrats have raised $100 million and counting.
A lot of the Republican response has been boringly predictable, and none of it has anything to do with Vice President Kamala Harris as a person or as a politician. They are stuck in a hermetically sealed room with Donald Trump and the smell of their own ideological farts.
But a couple of the complaints have caught my attention, in that Republicans are saying she doesn't speak well and produces "word salad." (I bet they've been saving that up since Sarah Palin, you betcha.)
Even an arguably respectable publication like Newsweek called one of her signature phrases "confusing," and others seem to be mixing up a coconut tree with a turnip truck.*
Let me explain.
Harris gave a speech in which she quoted her mother as saying, "'I don't know what's wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?'" Harris went on to say, "You exist in the context of all in which you live, and what came before you."
That is to say, you didn't come out of nowhere. You have a family and a community and a history and a culture and a world.
The other thing that Harris likes to say is, "I can imagine what can be, unburdened by what has been."
I don't find that statement confusing whatsoever. And coupled with the previous statement, it's a whole philosophy.
You come from somewhere. You exist in a context that includes culture and history and family and other people and the world at large. Those things inform you...but they need not limit you. The future can be lifted up by the past and present, it doesn't have to be weighted down by them.
That's a beautiful, hopeful sentiment. I like it.
Assuming that they're telling the truth about what they actually think and not just Gish galloping through life (which is never a good bet, to be honest), the people complaining that she doesn't make sense are either not smart enough to follow the thought or constitutionally incapable of grasping it.
The same people make fun of her for laughing, as if joy is also something they can't understand. Notably, unintelligent and narcissistic people commonly lack a sense of humor and tend to take themselves very, very seriously.
(There are people who laugh at things I don't think are funny, but that's not actually what they're complaining about. They seem to be upset that she's laughing at all.)
Harris speaks about growing up in a family full of women who laugh big belly laughs. I did too, and it's one of the things that makes me like her.
Women who laugh loud don't make ourselves small to appease others. We don't suppress our own joy. And we fear no one.
*The phrase "I didn't just fall off the back of a turnip truck" basically means "I wasn't born yesterday" and while it is a fine turn of phrase, the connotations seem to be different.
