Kamala Harris “For the People”…but what are REAL PEOPLE
All politicians — and for that matter, all people — want to be liked. The question remains, What are REAL PEOPLE?
First, let’s get out of the way what real people are not. Real people are not an algorithm, not a computational technology and not linear-sequential-logic machines. People are emotional beings, searching for personal meaning and seeking to predict conditions — including political conditions — that benefit their survival and its enrichment.
Seeking victory, campaigning politicians are seemingly required to specify their policy positions and plans. But that requirement can lead us astray. Many people liked George Herbert Walker Bush’s policies, but didn’t vote for him. The opposite is true for Ronald Reagan.
Roger Ailes said an important issue during Bush’s victory over Michael Dukakis was
keeping TV cameras at least 40 feet away. Ailes’ reasoning was people do not vote for a president with hooded eyes. And apart from policy pronouncements, it has been said that Reagan’s voice was an important asset inasmuch as his voice sounded like a mother cooing with its newborn baby. There is more going on between candidate and voter than a logical consideration of policy positions.
Real people are complex, future-oriented and at times are self-contradictory, paradoxical and ironic. Their cognition can instantaneously jump from one thought to a vastly different theme or matter that nonetheless is a personally related topic. Peoples’ goal is not to make objective sense, but to make subjective sense.
One thing that is going on in a presidential election is the emotional state of candidates and voters from the viewpoint of what are REAL PEOPLE. Let’s look at that.
Donald Trump is not a real person, nor are the subset of extremists in the MAGA movement. Their world is quite simple, so they don’t need to think. They primarily feel one emotion: anger. They want revenge and want to dominate. They hear a stimulus word such as “Democrat” and they shut down and say “No.” The same for words such as “Kamala” or “Blue” or “Woman” or “Black Woman” or “Immigrant.” No thinking is required. It’s the perversion of the idea of instinct whereby an organism encounters what it defines as a threat in its environment such that an automatic reflex in initiated to counter it. The body tenses as a fight response is readied. With Trump and the extremists in the MAGA movement this is a severe reduction of humanness in how they see the world. This amounts to Kamala Harris saying “…they are out of their minds.”
A major reason Trump seems flummoxed by the candidacy of Kamala Harris is not the abrupt shift from Joe Biden. Kamala, no matter how Trump mispronounces her name, is a real person and not someone who just says “Yes” to him (like so many Republican yes-men in Congress), is not someone he can try to shame by his name-calling (remember “Little Marco”) and does not feel diminished by his misogynistic attitude.
Trump does not know how to relate to a real person, especially if that person is a woman and is also the offspring of a Black man and an Indian woman. Trump just keeps on reciting his litany of lies and fantasizing about recreating his version of the past which, by the way, the current interconnected context of the present world cannot support. In the pieces of the puzzle Trump shapes of the world, the pieces do not fit. Donald, you are no Picasso.
Trump’s world has a population of one. Trump just sees himself. There is no consciousness of any other entity.
On the other hand, Kamala Harris is a real person. She recognizes life is not simple; life is context-dependent and shape-shifting. And she identifies with real people. To Kamala, real people are not pawns or ciphers and are not judged solely by appearance, but by the nature of their Being.
Importantly, Kamala Harris is attentive to Conservatives and non-extreme MAGA supporters who feel left behind by an American society focused on the size of one’s seven-plus digit bank account and Wall Street holdings, the size and price of one’s wardrobe and how many internet followers one has.
Not coming from the Billionaire-class, and being raised by a wise mother who taught her important lessons about life, Kamala Harris recognizes the burden of worrying how to make ends meet, of how one is going to put food on the family table, of providing a good education for one’s children and of how to “rob Peter to pay Paul” in order to keep a roof over the family’s head. Such worries are a heavy yolk on one’s shoulders such that a person’s chin is lowered by an inch or two and so not only is vision foreshortened, but so is one’s time horizon. Under such circumstances, cynicism can creep in. And cynicism is the death throes of creativity. That lands the final blow because soon will arrive the assumption that everything will turn out bad in the end. That’s the guillotine of freedom and the production only of hate.
Kamala Harris’ “joyful warrior” must be a condition of every person, or at least an aspiration to address the future with energy and a realistic optimism. For some in America today there is a malaise. Perhaps an antidote to that is written and voiced by “The Boss” Bruce Springsteen in his album ‘Born to Run.’ In those songs you hear the restless yearning for a better life.
Kamala Harris generates hope, but also is REAL-istic. She knows that given the way our Founders designed our democratic form of government the President of the United States of America does not have absolute power over all things. Change in a three-part government of checks and balances mostly happens slowly. Moreover, media and context look at the assumption of fast, sweeping changes the way bears look at migrating salmon. What Harris does offer is truth, a commitment to the essence of humanity and an eye on “doing” step-by-step instead of complaining, seeking vengeance or just being plain selfish. Kamala Harris offers progress over chaos, and yes, a smile instead of a grimace.
The other day I heard on TV news a Republican strategist say what people want most is “relief.” He is wrong. Relief is experienced by the human central nervous system as lessening of a negative. What humans want is satisfaction, which the brain feels as joy.
