Kamala and the Kamikazes

“For in a republic, who is ‘the Country’? Is it the Government that is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.” — Mark Twain (Letters from the Earth)

As Kamala and the Kamikazes officially launch their 2024 national tour this week, I wonder what they would make of the proposition Mark Twain advanced 118 years ago. The very idea that a government — whose vast domain and awful power now meddles with every facet of an American citizen’s life — should be “merely a temporary servant” whose “function is to obey orders and not originate them” is a concept so foreign and out of tune to progressive ears that it would take a United Nations interpreter to help them understand the meaning — assuming there’s anyone at the UN who isn’t an imbecile.

Then again, Twain also wondered, “…whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it?” For my part, I suspect we now have a conglomerate of both. Though he was quite enamored of the autocratic impulse, Barack Obama had the deft linguistic touch necessary to pull off the vaguely invigorating possibilities of “fundamental transformation,” which when put into action had all the charm of a chiffon-laced bulldozer leveling civil society.

Today, unburdened by what has gone before (including basic economics, national sovereignty, and national security), we’ve also transcended time and space itself as the soon-to-be crowned Democrat Presidential Nominee is on record as being both for and against a great many of her own policies on important issues:

• Despite casting the deciding vote in 2022 that not only allowed the IRS to tax employee tips, but funded more IRS agents to track down those employees, she now supports ending said taxes on employee tips.
• Despite saying in 2019 that, ”We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,” Harris’ campaign said she would not pursue such a buyback program.
• In 2019 Kamala Harris wanted to ban fracking. Today she doesn’t.
• Having supported the decriminalization of illegal border crossings in 2019, she now supports more border security measures and vows to get tough on the deluge of criminal border crossings.
• She supported “Medicare for all” before she recently stopped supporting it.
• In 2020, Harris said, "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking, I have a history of working on this issue.” But she’s unburdened by this history too, as she promises not to ban fracking.

Kamala Harris is not only unburdened by the Kamala that prattled and babbled before, she’s also unburdened by philosophical coherence. It’s tough, after all, enjoying tax-free tips if one is unemployed, which will surely happen if Harris remains true to her kamikaze mission of implementing price controls.

You see, when starry-eyed utopians print money to pay off student loans for example, or to fly illegal immigrants directly into the country and then to pay for their meals and lodging, or to spend $7.5 billion for 7 electric vehicle chargers, it inflates the cost of goods and service, including groceries.

Unburdened by reality, Kamala proposes to lower the cost of food not by addressing the causes of inflation itself, but by wielding federal power to tell grocery stores what they will and will not charge for their merchandise. There is no problem too complicated or too simple that half-witted politicians won’t make worse using the wrecking ball of government intervention.

As CNN’s Scott Jennings recently noted:

If you like bread lines, product shortages, black markets, hoarding, if you want to recreate the happy economic conditions of The Walking Dead, then Vice President Kamala Harris has a plan for you.

Embracing the dictum that “No good deed goes unpunished,” Democrats gather in Chicago to construct a federal government that wields an iron fist over its own citizens while caressing violent criminals and terrorists with a velvet glove. Truly, there is no more appropriate nominee to lead such a party than Kamala and her Kamikazes.