Like ships passing on the night shift, I wonder if I was one of Vice President Kamala Harris's customers when she worked at a McDonald's in the 1980s. As with many of the thirteen percent of Americans who have worked at McDonald's, she made money as a college student by not exactly serving cheeseburgers in paradise. (Eat too often at the golden arches, and you may soon see the pearly gates, as the health food saying goes.) However, even Snopes says it has found no proof of when, where, and with whom Harris worked.
But maybe Harris should have worked at Burger King, given that her campaign treats her less as a political candidate than a queen in waiting. Albeit in America, the queen only wears a cardboard crown and serves pre-grilled patties.
So let's see how Queen Harris would compare to, say, the late Queen Elizabeth II. While the whole pants-suit thing was not Queen Elizabeth's style, her staying out of the public eye and addressing her subjects on the rarest of occasions was. And the queen never spoke off the cuff. As a constitutional monarch, a team at Parliament had to sift her words before she was allowed to speak them. Only after someone else had approved and often written her remarks could she be unleashed on the public for anything more serious than a ribbon cutting at a refurbished palace or a wave at the racecourse.
In the English-speaking world, a queen is to be seen and not heard. She is to be revered and not criticized. She is, in other words, a figurehead. Whether it is the vast machine of state in England or the deep state in America, it is all the same. On the ship of state, the figurehead may be prominently outlined in wood. The figurehead may be garishly painted and then placed on the prow of the ship as it sails the choppy seas. But the ship is being steered by an unseen captain in the wheelhouse. The rudder is in the hands of another. The crew climbs the mast and sets the sails. He is not at the command of the wooden figurehead on the prow.
Alas, to the chagrin of Democrats, the wooden image on the prow, as appealing as it is, must remain mute. It can't cackle. It can't say one thing in Washington in December and say the opposite in Wisconsin in May. When people go to the videotape, as they say in sports, one remains constant. The other may be a manic depressive split personality for all the inconsistency each new handler imprints on the changeling's image. While neither the wooden figurehead nor the candidate may have a living conscience, alas, one has a mouth.
And what a mouth. The comedians may do imitations, and the pundits on the right may shake their heads in disbelief that anyone can take such a speaker seriously. Yet through the magic of breaking glass ceilings (something only those on the left can shatter) and the thrill of diversity, equity, and inclusion, those on the left curtsy, scrape, and bow.
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Here, we see a video clip of actress Sigourney Weaver getting all teary-eyed about the possibility of Harris becoming president.
Will Vice President Harris become queen for a day or for the next four years? That is up to the voters. But if she does get this gig, unlike her still mysterious employment at McDonald's, what will America be served? One fears that the powers behind the throne, like those behind our current King Lear, will stay the course. The national credit card balance will grow. The deep state cry of "give war a chance" will continue to carry the day.
Will all be right with the world? William Shakespeare knew a few things about kings and queens. Alas, he wrote in "Henry V," “But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place...'"
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