Not Only Is She From America, She IS America

By JOHN YOUNG

Mike Pence just turned a whiter shade of pale. nnThe very last person with whom he wanted to share TV glare on-stage is coming his way.

If Donald Trump can’t delay the election, can Pence delay the vice presidential debates — till Bowl Week?

Kamala Harris vs. Mike Pence is, um, Muhammad Ali vs. Jurgen Blin (KO in 7).

She is everything the Democratic Party aspires to be. Smart. Quick-footed. Quick-witted. Serious. Eloquent.

More importantly, she’s a reflection of a nation of possibilities. If I were the GOP’s troll-in-chief or his troll-in-waiting, I’d fear her, too.

Then again, from the sublime to the unconscionable, Harris isn’t the only political star who made a splash last week.

So did Marjorie Taylor Greene, GOP congressional nominee from the Planet QAnon.

Greene, nominally from Georgia’s 14th District, is living a reality that isn’t entirely real.

Let’s just say that when she speaks, one can hear radio waves interviewing moon rocks. One can detect the songs of intergalactic static.

She’s all in on QAnon, the “deep state” conspiracy club that I could attempt to explain, but why waste good pixels? It could take pages.

However, one could whittle much of it down to a three-syllable component: racism.

Greene called the election of two Muslim women to Congress an “invasion of our government.” She has called the leaders of Black Lives Matter “idiots” and said “the most mistreated people in American are white males.”

No wonder Donald Trump thinks she’s peachy.

What a contrast: One woman who stands for a nation that would move forward in bringing out the promise of every individual based on his or her own special attributes vs. another who doesn’t buy into that “all created equal” stuff at all.

There’s been talk of Trump dropping Pence and adding a woman to his ticket. How about Georgia’s queen of “Q”?

Actually, we may be premature in so crowning her, planetary origins aside.

On Colorado’s western slope another contender for the title has arisen.

In March, Lauren Boebert, who owns a restaurant at which wait staff wears guns on hips and invites firearms onto the premises, defeated District 3 incumbent Scott Tipton for the GOP nomination.

Boebert has praised QAnon as a sign of a resurgence of American values. And of course Trump has praised her as the hope of his party.

We’ll see about that.

Ironically, a whole lot of Republicans are worried about people like Boebert and Greene becoming the face of their party.

Former Arizona senator Jeff Flake, for instance. “If the GOP wants to be a relevant political force in the future, it cannot endorse those who embrace QAnon and other conspiracy theories.”

You mean, like a president who has retweeted garbage promoting QAnon at least 185 times?

If you’re a thinking American who worries about the ascendance of a QAnon believer to Congress, don’t. It only makes her more visible and her party less viable. It’s the same dynamic by which Trump is leading his party off a cliff in 2020.

Back to Joe Biden’s running mate and the claim Trump’s adoring wingnuts have made about Kamala Harris not being an American. If you are thinking of Donald Trump’s America, she most assuredly is not.

However, if you are thinking of a country where a little girl born in Oakland to a mother from India and a father from Jamaica can grow up to be vice president, she is of that America. If you are thinking of a country where a little boy born in Hawaii to a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas can grow up to become president, she is of that America.

Biden and Harris are that America.

John Young is a longtime Texas newspaperman who now lives in Fort Collins, Colo. Email jyoungcolumn@gmail.com. See johnyoungcolumn.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2020

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