VDH on Harris' Mythology

The noted historian raises many of the strange things we are asked to believe in spite of evidence to the contrary, or serious omissions.

My favorite of these is that she was raised in a "middle-class" household. This is meant to make her sound like an ordinary American, as almost all of America thinks of itself as "middle class" even though that isn't statistically feasible. 

Yet to be 'middle class' means less to be part of an economic category, and more to have certain values. Both of her parents were college professors, one feminist and one Marxist, each deeply critical in its way of that cultural 'middle class' that they refer to as the bourgeoisie. (In this she is very like Obama, except that both of her parents were aliens and she mostly grew up not in Hawaii but in a foreign country, Canada.) College professors earn a comfortable living; the only reality behind the claim that she was 'middle class' comes from the fact that her parents divorced, leading to straitened circumstances she would not have experienced if they had done that most 'middle class' thing and "stayed together for the children."

As we discussed some time ago, what she actually comes from is a caste -- the Brahmins -- that is so famously upper-class that its name was assumed by the historic elite of Boston. Her values are the values of the academic heights that can continue to entertain fantasies like Marxism, generation after generation, because they are so insulated from pragmatic realities. Vladimir Lenin wrote a book about why Marxism hadn't come true more than a hundred years ago, but Marxists and 'Marxian' economists and historians like her father remain gainfully employed at universities around the world. 

Oh, and she likes Glocks. Sure. 

11 comments:

E Hines said...

Oh, and she likes Glocks. Sure.

She likes the way the term spills trippingly across her tongue.

Eric Hines

raven said...

"Oh, and she likes Glocks."
See? I told ya'all she was not qualified...:>)
Glocks remind me of L.Francis Herreshoffs remarks on fiberglass boats-
"they look like frozen snot".

Anonymous said...

Owns a Glock...lol...so she owns one of those..."plastic guns"...that can't be detected by a metal detector (that's what we were told when the Glock came on the scene) and she "claims" to have fired it on a range (seems like a pandering pol like her would have video footage of that moment immortalized for just this moment!)...but no, sorry...she has been surrounded by armed guards with Glocks her entire political life.

And the guards with the Glocks are men.
nmewn

Grim said...

Although I've long ago settled on revolvers, I've owned and trained with many Glocks over the years. I have nothing against them; they're well made and serviceable, and require minimal maintenance for a semiautomatic. They all operate exactly the same way, break down exactly the same way when you do clean/maintain them, and work whenever you want them to as long as you keep a round in the chamber and the magazine loaded.

Nothing wrong with them. Nothing especially right; but if you don't make a better handgun than that, you've still done a fine job.

Anonymous said...

I had nice person who I know do her best to clarify to me that Harris owns a Glock revolver. The person was very serious, so I nodded and made the proper noises of appreciation, then changed the topic.

LittleRed1

Tom said...

Yeah, that must have been from their old line of semi-auto, lever action revolvers. I think they were making those in the 40s.

Mike Guenther said...

There's a few things that spill trippingly across her tongue.

Anonymous said...

Yes, my snarky comment was based on aesthetics, not performance, her comment was probably based on glock being the only firearm she could call by name.

Anonymous said...

Kamala Harris was a faculty brat. A double faculty brat. Upper-middle class would probably be more accurate than middle class. Yes, they sneer at the hoi polloi, but still upper-middle class. While her mother came from the Brahmin caste, her mother's work was not upper class.

Gringo said...

The previous comment was mine.

Grim said...

I beg to differ: her mother was one of the ones Joseph Schumpeter was talking about. In his analysis of why Marx had been wrong, he nevertheless ends on the note that he also thought capitalism was doomed -- not because of Marxist revolution, but because the children of the elite would turn against it. Both of her parents were of that ilk, and it was only their parents' stature that gave them the educational resources to join that movement. How many women from India in her generation went to college, moved abroad, married 'for love,' divorced -- regardless of caste?

Even in the divorce and subsequent poverty, she was living out that 'rejection of capitalism by the children of the elite' that Schumpeter was talking about. That wasn't a middle class thing to do.