Candidates for the Presidency 2020 - Kamala Overboard

None of the individuals in the large field of candidates running for President this year are very inspiring. They are all starting from pretty much the same premises and are proposing pretty much the same programs. All that distinguishes one from the other are slight differences in the way each would tweak tax rates to pay for these programs. However, some of the candidates have distinguished themselves by some specific lapse of logic they’ve demonstrated in the course of their campaigns.

For Kamala Harris, this lapse occurred when she reacted to Jussie Smollett’s claim of having been the target of a racist, homophobic attack. Harris jumped on Smollett’s report as evidence of widespread prejudice loose in the land. There was actually a note of satisfaction in her voice, a note of triumphant “I told you so!” as she waved the presumed attack as a flag of proof that vicious prejudice was ubiquitous. The attack provided her with a platform from which she could demonstrate the superiority of her indignation. As she ringingly declared that the attack was nothing short of a “modern day lynching,” she raised herself head and shoulders above all those lesser beings who didn’t perceive the profound seriousness of the threat.

The only problem was – it should have been obvious to anyone who logically considered Smollett’s claim for a moment, that it was all a hoax. I laughed it off and presumed everyone else would immediately do the same. I was shocked when I saw how seriously the police and politicians such as Harris were taking Smollett’s claims.

There were a couple of reasons why I immediately wrote-off Smollett’s report as just so much self-dramatizing fiction. First of all, it reminded me of the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. I’m old enough to vividly remember the nation-wide uproar that occurred in the wake of then 15-year-old Tawana Brawley’s claim that she had been raped by a gang of white racists, including policemen and an attorney, near her New York State home of Wappinger Falls. After being missing for four days, Brawley was found, seemingly in a daze, in a wooded area. She was stuffed in a large bag of feces. Her clothing had been partially torn off and some of the feces had been used to smear her body with racial epithets.

At the time, I thought it sounded rather unlikely that there would be a gang of would-be Klansmen wilding their way through rural New York, singling out a passing black schoolgirl on whom to perpetrate such a bizarre attack. Primarily I wondered how and why any group of men would be carrying a large bag filled with feces. Or, if they hadn’t been carrying the bag in preparation for a planned assault, where would they have found pounds of feces on short notice for an impulse attack?

Besides, I didn’t think that true racists, animated by a seething hatred of black people, operated that way. I thought of the tragic death of Emmett Till who’d been beaten and dragged to death after allegedly whistling at a white woman. I thought of the deaths of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, the civil rights activists who’d been overtaken in their car at night along a lonely Mississippi road and beaten, shot, and crudely buried. The racist attacks on those individuals had been stark and brutal. There had been none of the juvenile elaboration that characterized Brawley’s alleged attack. In contrast to real racist attacks, Brawley’s attack seemed to be a highly exaggerated form of a swirly or a wedgie cruelly delivered by a bullying gang of teens in a locker room. It just didn’t seem as if white supremacists would pause to include such confounding humiliations in their generally raw attacks.

However, so many people used the occasion of Brawley’s report as proof of the ongoing undertow of savage racism in our country, that their vehemence had me half-convinced. When I heard people ranging from Al Sharpton to Bill Cosby rallying to make the Brawley case a cause célèbre and to defend her during the long succession of court cases that ensued – I began to doubt my own sense of something amiss in her testimony.

However, something amiss there was. Although to this day, Brawley maintains the validity of her account and although she still has a few supporters, it is now generally accepted that her report was fabricated. All the evidence pointed away from there having been any rape or indeed any assault of any kind. There were no wilding racists and the feces might have been supplied by Brawley’s own dog. Many believe that Brawley was indeed a victim, but not a victim of white racism. It seems likelier that she was the victim of her stepfather’s abuse. She was so afraid of the beating he’d give her when she came home late after partying with some boys, that (possibly with her mother’s help), she concocted the dramatic predicament in which she was found.

After almost a year, even Al Sharpton had to somewhat back off his efforts to make Brawley a symbolic victim of white racism. A general skepticism arose when it came to any such claims involving twisty attacks. But time has passed, and most people now seem to have forgotten the cautionary lessons taught by the Brawley case. When Smollett advanced his claim, even Al Sharpton charged once more into the fray in full battle regalia.

It seemed to me though that it shouldn’t take familiarity with the Brawley case to make people skeptical about Smollett’s accusation. There was a much more obvious problem with his charge. Simple logic should have alerted police and politicians alike to the sheer phoniness of it, before squads of personnel were diverted from more urgent duties in order to investigate Smollett’s claims which, even if true, would have represented a relatively bland confrontation. Having a rope hung mockingly around his neck and having some harmless, watery liquid splashed on him could hardly be counted in the same category as the searing racism that had been faced by Till, Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman.

The underlying failure of logic in the Smollett case becomes apparent when you consider - either the presumed attack was premeditated, or else it was spontaneous. If it was premeditated, that meant that the attackers would have had to walk back and forth, night after cold night (the attack occurred in the winter), along a desolate Chicago underpass, waiting to intercept Smollett. Smollett didn’t make a habit of going out to get a late snack from that nearby convenience store, so the attackers, armed with their paraphernalia, would have had to haunt that stretch near Smollett’s apartment – in the hopes that they could catch him sometime or other. It would be a very improbable duo of attackers indeed who would take so much time and trouble over the perpetration of such a trivial attack.

On the other hand, if the attack was spontaneous, that would have been a remarkable coincidence. The attackers would have to have been standing around with a rope and bleach in hand at just the moment that someone they could identify as a gay black man walked by. Then they had to have immediately thought up the symbolic threat they could lumber the man with, referencing old Klan tactics. Why would men even be standing around with newly purchased rope and a bottle of bleach/acid/water late at night in the first place? None of it makes sense.

So either premeditated or spontaneous – the attack doesn’t hold water. I would expect someone running for President to have the sense to recognize that. Yes, this actor’s allegation is a minor matter in the larger scheme of things. But if someone like Kamala Harris exercises such poor judgement in the face of a minor hoax, how can she be expected to exercise good judgment when it comes to major international threat? If countries inimical to the U.S. start to rattle their sabers (as will almost certainly happen) - could she be counted on to distinguish an obvious hoax, an empty threat – from a real threat? Or would she continue to put political correctness and a desire to showcase a pandering support of beleaguered minorities ahead of logical appraisal?

Based on her over-the-top reaction to Smollett, I don’t think Kamala Harris could be counted on to make such crucial distinctions. There has to be a better alternative candidate out there.