107 Days, by Kamala Harris
107 Days by Kamala Harris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What 107 Days Promised, and What 285 Days Betrayed
When I was a young man, I saw the United States of America as a source of good in the world. I dreamt of migrating there and becoming a hot-shot IT guy in Silicon Valley.
My belief was further fuelled by people like Noam Chomsky, Barack and Michelle Obama, Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt, Robert Langer, and, last but not least, Kamala Harris.
I feverishly followed those 107 days of Harris’ campaign and loved how she presented her vision for the USA, the world, and herself. Her authentic passion and the joy she exuded gave me hope.
Then the USA elected, for the second time, the racist felon whose Republican administration is now responsible for the death of millions of people around the globe. The current US administration is dismantling everything good about the USA and leaving it as many from my generation have always seen the USA: an imperialist nation that forces other countries into compliance.
Now, my only hope is that the sheer incompetence of said administration will be their downfall: an intellectually challenged president, an oafish backwater turd as VP, a “war” secretary running the Pentagon like a frat house on steroids – a drunken, misogynistic circus where the bar tab is as scandalous as the supposedly secure documents, a self-styled medical maverick who treats science like folklore, spreading conspiracy memes, apologising by text, and claiming no memory of infamy, a blonde right-wing barbie spinning inflated stats, and picking civil rights when they’re convenient – just ignoring the rest of the US Constitution, and a mercurial voice claiming civil liberties, parroting disinformation, shifting ideologies, and cherry-picking minority rights when it fits her brand.
All the more so since Kamala Harris had wonderful ideas and plans. Had she even been able to implement a fragment of what she describes in “107 Days”, ironically, it would have actually made the US great again.
Harris writes engagingly in short- to medium-length chapters about every step along the way. We don’t learn anything really new, but it’s still highly interesting to get to know Harris’ personal points of view and how she actually felt. More often than not, I was in tears when comparing her ideals, her plans, and what she did with what is happening right now.
I agree with almost everything she writes but one major point she’s trying to make: Harris writes that two thirds of the US population did not vote for Trump. She’s being honest in stating that one third simply stayed home instead of voting. This is not a valid excuse, though: the US citizens knew what was at stake – namely their democracy – and they still didn’t vote.
This is why Harris is wrong: You The People are responsible for Trump. You The People are complicit in what your administration is committing. You The People do not rise against the current administration in defence of your democracy.
Instead, you let your modern Gestapo, ICE, randomly arrest people who are not white enough or speak with an accent. Your corrupted Supreme Court is the new Volksgerichtshof the majority of judges of which give all of this their blessings.
What we see in the news daily, this is who you are now, and I promise you: We, The World, may eventually forgive but we will never forget.
Five stars out of five.
