As you know intuitively, you are the universe conscious of itself. No evidence exists that the consciousness of other life-forms encompasses thoughts not just about what exists, but also thoughts about thoughts themselves. We are, it seems, the only philosophical species in existence—anywhere, any time—though that consciousness extends our minds to accept the likely probability that in two trillion-plus galaxies, somewhere our equals and superiors do exist. It’s a big universe for just little old us.
With no evidence that such equivalent consciousness lies outside humanity, we can intuit our inherent loneliness. Isolated, we are driven on one hand by the dual realities of subconscious thought and feeling and on the other hand by personal and collective consciousness, to make sense of all existence. In the context of those enveloping realities, we have individually and collectively searched primarily for both personal and interpersonal meaning. And because of our failure to discover unshakeable absolutes, we have both imagined and invented meanings as diverse as there are groups of likeminded humans and, as some might argue, as diverse as there are individuals. Thus, personally and cooperatively, we seek meaning through accumulated information as a protection against the apparent randomness and chaos of a constantly changing universe. In short, we want the world to make sense.
But it doesn’t. And the senselessness we aim to transform into meaning is nowhere more apparent than in social contexts, especially in political ones.
Enter Kamala Harris
Some 200,000 years into human evolution and the search for meaning, humanity finds itself perched on the cusp of a surge of more meaninglessness, a happenstance of the contemporaneity of the most militarily powerful collective of consciousness ever gathered on this little dot in the universe and of a potential leader who seems to struggle with meaning, namely, Kamala Harris.
What is befuddling to me is the support among supposedly conscious beings for this purveyor of nonsensical tautologies * and circular speech. Believing that “the children of the community are [pause for dramatic effect] the children of the community,” and that community banks are banks in the community, Harris has somehow garnered a crowd of followers that believe she is the best person to lead one third of a billion people and the most powerful military ever assembled.
The irony that makes those Harris followers the stuff of befuddlement is that many of them claim some sort of mental superiority over those who do not follow her. Harris-ites have cast their search for meaning into the chaos of senselessness. Somehow they believe that Harris is worthy of representing them on the world stage.
With uncritical minds they accept as profound someone who says,
“significance of the passage of time, right, the significance of the passage of time. So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires. What we need to do to create these jobs. And there is such great significance to the passage of time when we think about a day in the life of our children.”
More recently, she responded to the question “Have you been to the border?” by saying, “I haven’t been to Europe either.” Her non sequiturs are as telling as her circular definitions and tautologies. One wonders what her professors thought when she was in college or law school. Could she compose a freshman composition or a law brief?
But Mastery of Rhetoric Alone Does Not a Leader Make
That Harris is not a modern-day Democritus is evident to all but her followers. But rhetorical prowess isn’t necessarily an indicator of intelligent thinking. Actions count. And action is the venue for logical judgment about her potential for leadership. What has she accomplished? She was supposedly in charge of the border, but has done little more apparently than to go to Mexico to say, “Don’t come”—as ineffective as Biden’s “don’t” in speaking about bad actors like Russia and Iran. Millions have illegally entered the country on her watch, and with them criminals and drugs like fentanyl imposing costs on American citizens in treasure and safety.
Nonsense Is Meaningful in the Minds of the Faithful
The struggle to find meaning will continue as long as humans exist. Today’s politics demonstrate this explicitly. Fickle feelings driven by propaganda and party loyalty will prevail over logic and commonsense. After 200 millennia of human evolution that produced consciousness and logic, a woman who spouts word salads has captured the loyalty of millions who either can’t hear or read or who, if attentive, lack commonsense and a fundamental understanding of logical expression and meaningful language.
But hope springs eternal. Maybe we will find meaning in the universe under her leadership. As Kamala Harris has said, “It is time to do what we have been doing, and that time is everyday. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.” Makes sense, doesn’t it? As she has also said, "I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled. Certain issues are just settled.”
What Is Settled?
The universe will never make sense as long as there are people like Kamala Harris trying to discern that meaning for sycophants incapable of recognizing nonsense when they hear it.
Merriam Webster: “needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word”
With no evidence that such equivalent consciousness lies outside humanity, we can intuit our inherent loneliness. Isolated, we are driven on one hand by the dual realities of subconscious thought and feeling and on the other hand by personal and collective consciousness, to make sense of all existence. In the context of those enveloping realities, we have individually and collectively searched primarily for both personal and interpersonal meaning. And because of our failure to discover unshakeable absolutes, we have both imagined and invented meanings as diverse as there are groups of likeminded humans and, as some might argue, as diverse as there are individuals. Thus, personally and cooperatively, we seek meaning through accumulated information as a protection against the apparent randomness and chaos of a constantly changing universe. In short, we want the world to make sense.
But it doesn’t. And the senselessness we aim to transform into meaning is nowhere more apparent than in social contexts, especially in political ones.
Enter Kamala Harris
Some 200,000 years into human evolution and the search for meaning, humanity finds itself perched on the cusp of a surge of more meaninglessness, a happenstance of the contemporaneity of the most militarily powerful collective of consciousness ever gathered on this little dot in the universe and of a potential leader who seems to struggle with meaning, namely, Kamala Harris.
What is befuddling to me is the support among supposedly conscious beings for this purveyor of nonsensical tautologies * and circular speech. Believing that “the children of the community are [pause for dramatic effect] the children of the community,” and that community banks are banks in the community, Harris has somehow garnered a crowd of followers that believe she is the best person to lead one third of a billion people and the most powerful military ever assembled.
The irony that makes those Harris followers the stuff of befuddlement is that many of them claim some sort of mental superiority over those who do not follow her. Harris-ites have cast their search for meaning into the chaos of senselessness. Somehow they believe that Harris is worthy of representing them on the world stage.
With uncritical minds they accept as profound someone who says,
“significance of the passage of time, right, the significance of the passage of time. So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires. What we need to do to create these jobs. And there is such great significance to the passage of time when we think about a day in the life of our children.”
More recently, she responded to the question “Have you been to the border?” by saying, “I haven’t been to Europe either.” Her non sequiturs are as telling as her circular definitions and tautologies. One wonders what her professors thought when she was in college or law school. Could she compose a freshman composition or a law brief?
But Mastery of Rhetoric Alone Does Not a Leader Make
That Harris is not a modern-day Democritus is evident to all but her followers. But rhetorical prowess isn’t necessarily an indicator of intelligent thinking. Actions count. And action is the venue for logical judgment about her potential for leadership. What has she accomplished? She was supposedly in charge of the border, but has done little more apparently than to go to Mexico to say, “Don’t come”—as ineffective as Biden’s “don’t” in speaking about bad actors like Russia and Iran. Millions have illegally entered the country on her watch, and with them criminals and drugs like fentanyl imposing costs on American citizens in treasure and safety.
Nonsense Is Meaningful in the Minds of the Faithful
The struggle to find meaning will continue as long as humans exist. Today’s politics demonstrate this explicitly. Fickle feelings driven by propaganda and party loyalty will prevail over logic and commonsense. After 200 millennia of human evolution that produced consciousness and logic, a woman who spouts word salads has captured the loyalty of millions who either can’t hear or read or who, if attentive, lack commonsense and a fundamental understanding of logical expression and meaningful language.
But hope springs eternal. Maybe we will find meaning in the universe under her leadership. As Kamala Harris has said, “It is time to do what we have been doing, and that time is everyday. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.” Makes sense, doesn’t it? As she has also said, "I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled. Certain issues are just settled.”
What Is Settled?
The universe will never make sense as long as there are people like Kamala Harris trying to discern that meaning for sycophants incapable of recognizing nonsense when they hear it.
Merriam Webster: “needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word”
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