Thanks

This year, my thanks go to two women who powered against the rules of the boy’s club—and to all of you.

Usually, I give thanks for my family. But after the last two weeks of what Timothy Snyder has called “anticipatory obedience” to Trump, I’m dedicating this week’s thanksgiving to the magnificent Kamala Harris, who reminded us just this morning to never relinquish our power, and to Jasmine Crockett, who never needs to be reminded.

But if you need to be reminded (and don’t all of us mortals need to lately) Here are two moments to relish.

My first “moment” draws on a couple of notes from last week. I’d been (and still am) furious at how the corporate media, when they aren’t blaming Kamala Harris for the results of the election, are disappearing her entirely, as Democrats indulge in an orgy of self-criticism about how lousy “the party” has become at addressing the needs of the “working class.”

Kamala was far from lousy at that; she just didn’t do it Bernie Sanders style (better known as white man’s style), with her sleeves rolled up, bellowing about the price of eggs. (Can’t those guys come up with a different grocery example occasionally?)

Kamala was, you’ll recall, the candidate who actually talked about a REAL kitchen table, at which her ACTUAL working-class mother sat, worrying about how to pay the bills. Too bad she didn’t talk or LOOK “working-class” enough to rural white people (Black people knew better,) was married to a Jew lawyer instead of an upstanding white Christian, had the nerve to be educated, without biological children, whose self-assurance was read as “uppity” (not just a Black woman’s problem, Hillary had it too), who most men knew wouldn’t ever be interested in dating them, who the “liberal” media treated despicably, and who had to wade through a mountain of right-wing disinformation about “cultural” issues (and they then had the nerve to say they won because of “the economy”)

But enough rage, for the moment. This stack is supposed to be about thanks. And there is so much that I thank Kamala for, but perhaps most of all for blasting through the classic double-bind every woman aspiring to power has faced. Even in debate with a babbling Donald Trump she resisted having her femaleness erased while at the same time projecting an authority that—for centuries—has been assumed to be “natural” to men and a distortion when embodied by a woman.

Kamala defied that zero-sum-game, that necessity to choose between being all the things women have been associated with (nurturance, flirtatiousness, tenderness) and the power and authority associated with men as leaders.

For me, that authority was immortalized in the moment when Kamala strode across the stage to an already retreating Trump and declared her confidence (and how to pronounce her name) with a firm handshake.

Kamala was masterful in that debate. Trump fell apart. Commentators remarked how “unhinged” he became after she called his rallies “boring” and how “presidential” she looked.

What a president she would have made.

My second reminder of woman’s power is that stirring, exemplary moment when Jasmine Crockett wouldn’t let the white guys on the other side of the aisle claim the status of an oppressed group. Here she discusses the moment with Alex Wagner:

Jasmine is extraordinary. She provides, for me, the flutter of hope that in her generation something is bubbling away and gathering strength—and will see us through. My 25-year-old daughter gives me that hope too.

Finally, my gratitude to all of you who read and comment on BordoLines.

The sense of community that I feel with you is—as we so inarticulately say nowadays—“everything.”

Hugs! Susan.