If History Repeats Itself, Then Who Is Kamala Harris? - The Lady With The Wilted Flowers In The Back Row

Kamala Harris has always believed herself to be the reincarnation of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, seducer of emperors. No one could resist her, so beautiful and sensuous was she, nor resist the allure of the sybaritic East. Enobarbus, confidant of the young Caesar Augustus describes her thus:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes.  

For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool 

'I am Cleopatra', Kamala said to the image in the mirror, admiring her burnished mahogany skin, her lustrous eyes and full lips, 'Queen of the Nile'.  Or Nefertiti, she reflected, although there was something a bit too austere and patrician about the wife of Tutankhamen, nothing of the full-figured, sensual woman that looked back at her in the mirror. 'No, Cleopatra will do, and I will do her proud'. 

And so it was in that one epiphanic moment that Kamala Harris found her destiny.  History would repeat itself, and she and her reign would be no less grand and glorious than her ancient ancestor. 

It wasn't so much reincarnation - that notion of her mother's had been put to rest ages ago when the old woman said that she had in a former life been a courtesan at the court of Emperor Shah Jahan, had had to serve out her penance returning as barnyard animals, Africans, and jugglers, her soul finally coming to rest in Santa Barbara. 

'Foolish idolatry', said the Vice President as she thought of her mother's pujas and ceremonial nonsense; and although she paid lip service to her Asian roots, privately she wanted no part of that caste-bound, patriarchal, claptrap.  There was something to be said for the Ashokan and Mauryan courts, a certain royal splendor that appealed to her, but they were just Indians after all, not the mighty Empresses of Egypt. 

No, her conviction that she was history come 'round, was based on a warped interpretation of George Santayana's famous adage, 'Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it'. While correct - leaders seem to never learn from the past and therefore history is the same, predictable, slog of familiar events over and over again - Kamala had the idea that greatness also comes this way twice, a concentric inner circle of marvelous events. 

Now, Kamala was not known as a quick wit, so those that got wind of her theory of historical destiny, dismissed it as total nonsense, part of the woman's devilishly peevish personality and nothing more. 

Others who had heard of her preposterous fancies were not so generous.  The woman was nothing more than a vixenish harridan who had made her way to prominence on the flimsiest of pretentions - or, better said, a woman who put up her sails just as the wind of race, gender, and ethnicity started blowing hardest.  She was a fraud, an empty suit, a brainless comer whose channeling of Cleopatra was not surprising in the least. 

'I will have a hard row to hoe', she said to herself on contemplating the Presidency.  Twenty-first century America was certainly not imperial Egypt, and as much power as she would have as Chief Executive, it was nothing compared to that of Cleopatra.  In these moments of vanity, she allowed herself to think of how far America had fallen from the great civilizations from which it was descended.  

 

Although she would never admit it, reigns and regimes which acknowledged the primacy of noble birth, the legitimacy of regal rule, and the divine right of kings, should be the model for the new America, brought back to life by her and her alone. 

'What have I done?', she asked herself, post-mirror epiphany, as she looked over the group of associates, advisors, and inner circle confidants she had assembled for her run to the White House.  What a ragtag, smelly lot, she thought, picked up from the ghetto, gay bars, and across the border in nasty bits.  'Can't have that', she said. 

The damage, however, had been done.  This progressive thang that had been her meal ticket for so long was now part of the First Class dining room - it was the be-all and end-all of political philosophy, the meme of the campaign, the very icon of the America that she and the old fool she replaced had hawked and flogged for years. 

'Nature abhors a vacuum' noted Aristotle and Spinoza, but it is still surprising to see what absolute dreck can fill an empty head. 'There is no end to the stupidity of that woman', said one critic who shuddered at the thought of this tarted-up cipher actually being elected president and told his readers to think twice before pulling her lever on election day. 

'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' is another familiar adage trotted out intermittently when presidents get too uppity; but the critic mused that an absolutely empty head could be filled with every discredited idea that ever came down the pike, rattle around in there until it was mixed into a witches' brew of newts and toads, and spewed out as intelligence. 

Kamala's mother once told her that if she was not careful, she would end up like 'the lady with wilted flowers in the back row', the dismal failure of life's round of reincarnations - a woman who has neither the brains nor the gumption to resist the pull of karma. 'Life's a journey in a third class compartment on the Calcutta Mail', she said, remembering her own past trips looking out shit-smeared windows on foul-smelling Indian trains. 

Kamala quickly shook that ugly memory from her head and looked again in the mirror.  No, she thought, nothing poorly reincarnated about me. 

So the lady banged on about black this, black that, gay pride, transgender righteousness, the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginalized; fat cat capitalists, environmental predators, and gun totin', bass boat fishin' Georgia crackers without a coherent notion in her head.  She was Cleopatra on her barge after all, speaking ex cathedra, ex regalia, and high above the rest who listened.  As in her mother's beloved India, it was the duty of some to speak, the duty of others to listen.  If any knowledge was shared, so much the better, but don't count on it. 

The election is but a few weeks away (10/17/24), and the polls are close; so the lady's marvelous chicanery must be working.  Her fol-de-rol and black female persona have done the trick, and the finish line is just up ahead; but at least half the electorate wants no part of her and her posturing, so with any luck she will be that lady with wilted flowers in the back row.