Mariella Gattini

From left to right, Second Gentleman, Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris, Governor Tim Walz, and his wife Gwen Whipple.
This picture was taken from the MSNBC broadcast of the 2024 Democratic Convention.

Kamala Harris is extraordinary for many reasons, but the most significant of her attributes is that she is a woman, a well-educated one. I say this with admiration and respect, knowing that being a woman has been considered, for thousands of years, a threat to the establishment. One of the most ancient symbols of this establishment is The Tree of Knowledge. Adam went to the extreme of telling Eve not to even touch it. And what was is it that Eve did? She not only ate the fruit, she got Adam to eat it as well. And snakes were called those who told Eve about the benefits of the knowledge of good and evil.

Since the first time this story was told, women have been accused of being the downfall of men. Do you see what I see? Or am I tempting you into thinking further?

From this angle, I notice that this was a narrative created with the purpose of keeping women in their subservient role as second-tier humans, always considering men their victims somehow.

This distortion is very much alive and well today, due to the fact that politicians use religion to manipulate the masses by reminding them of this particular belief, that says, women are not be trusted, they need to be second-guessed at every turn, and finally dismissed without a real reason, because there isn’t one.

Preachers, just like politicians, need herds, not people with working brains, because they can dismantle those preachers’ carefully curated one-sided, thin, blurry image of what they proclaim to be right or wrong.

The Tree of Knowledge was announced to be dangerous, because it was, for the ones behind this scare tactic. By declaring something sacred, you declare it untouchable, in other words, you are deemed a heretic by even thinking about it. That’s a very clever trick to keep people under subliminal control. “Don’t think about it, leave the thinking to me,” and you call the person who says that, God. By transference, that person in conservative politics is called a republican candidate for president.

This fundamental piece of Judeo-Christian belief has permeated politics, especially the Republican Party. For the longest time, they have counted on their constituencies’ ignorance to be able to manipulate them. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in this country there are 43 million people who don’t know how to read (called low literacy skills), do you think it’s a coincidence? Not in the least, it has been done systematically and by the book, literally.

Public education is in the hands of the individual states, so the education that kids receive in public schools depends on the local governments. Therefore, the more affluent school districts are, the more money they have to attract better qualified teachers and foster extracurricular activities, but even these teachers and programs are limited by the rules and regulations of the local governments. Low-income school districts cannot afford to hire highly-qualified talent or to implement programs that could benefit children in the immediate and long run, such as music, fine arts, or creative writing. And kids who fall behind in their literacy acumen are neglected due to schools’ lack of resources, underpaid, overworked teachers, and parents who need to have at least two jobs to make ends meet with little to no time to help their kids struggling with their homework. This especially happens in republican-controlled state governments, because republicans have no intention of helping these kids, their teachers, or their parents, since they are not in government to solve problems, they are there to protect the interests of their donors, the ones who actually fund their political careers. It benefits them to count on ignorant members in their constituencies, since these are potential future voters vulnerable to their scare tactics and misinformation.

That’s why republicans throw garbage at every newsroom in the country relentlessly, so people trying to process that junk are thrown even more junk on top in a never-ending succession of insults, lies, false narrative, and blunt hatred. And unfortunately, many newsrooms are constantly legitimizing all that garbage by simply broadcasting it and in some cases by even whitewashing it.

To win the 2024 Presidential Election, Kamala needs to remind people of the value of women, and the power we have. She also needs to remind them that knowledge is a good thing, starting by providing ideas, systems, and resources to be able to tackle this tremendous hole that it is illiteracy in this country, which affects Hispanic and White populations in equal proportions (35% each group).

Evaluating what is right and what is wrong in our personal and public lives is not only our right as human beings, it also is our duty. And the more we read, the more we know, the more we think, and as a consequence we not only become more intelligent, we also find that we have more things in common than we expected.

If you use your own head and think, you’ll realize that, as we speak, the only value republicans see in women is their wombs. These men are so primitive that they don’t see anything else in us, so if women don’t have one, or it’s not longer viable, or decide not to use it, women become useless entities to them. They don’t mind if some women die after giving birth, or in the process of giving birth, or after a miscarriage because, obviously, they become useless to these men, too. And even if a woman manages to survive child birth, she and her baby are automatically forgotten the minute the child is in her arms, becoming completely invisible, mother and child, especially if they are poor.

Today, repulsive, malicious, republican men are mansplaining who women are and how they should live their own lives. Men, who without the support of the republican establishment, amoral donors, media outlets, and all those who come out of the woodwork, would be completely ignored, since they are terribly uninteresting, unintelligent, under-educated, ill-intentioned, and with obviously compromised bank accounts. They can’t even fathom why older women want to protect the health rights of younger ones. This is in their heads simply because they have no idea what empathy is; their sociopathy is so deep that they don’t have empathy for their own wives, who probably are involved with these men in marriages of convenience, or inconvenience at this point. Women who probably are as materialistic, shallow, and malignant as their male counterparts.

On the sane and legitimate side of the political spectrum, we find Kamala, a brilliant, well-educated woman, who has made joy the centerpiece of her campaign, and rightly so. Because, as republicans are painfully realizing, you should never underestimate the power of intelligent women, and Kamala is one of us, who is obviously way out of Trump’s league. There are millions and millions of us everywhere supporting her, and we come in different sizes, colors, creeds, genders, ages, social standings, backgrounds, and political persuasions.

Leaving behind myths and prejudices is the first step to growing and entering a new dimension. This dimension incorporates everything we learn and our ability to appreciate the world that surrounds us, and protects us from falling for false narratives that are supported by ancient expressions of a world order that fosters misogyny and xenophobia.

Kamala is who we have in common right now and we should never take that fact for granted. She is a reminder of determination, self-actualization, and love. Love is always stronger, it yields this joy that gives us everything we need at every step. This imperceptible internal drive pushes us to dare to be happy and to leave behind everyone and everything that wants to take us down.

The closer we get to this November, the more garbage is thrown at us real women, the purpose is to desensitize us, demoralize us, and to distract us from republican candidates’ low IQs, tackiness, and corruption. Many republicans are hurrying to endorse Kamala to save face the last minute, “putting country before party,” as they say. If that’s true, it is commendable, but I’m going to take that intent with a grain of salt.

Nevertheless, the genuine love we feel for each other, for this country, and for every human being willing to share the road with us is still available and at the tip of everyone’s fingers. All that garbage thrown at us is going back to where it came from—those republican men whose sociopathy makes them terribly bitter, because they do not know what true love is, they have no way to know, and it is already too late for them.

Kamala, instead, was loved by her mother, by her sister, and by those around her when it most counted, and today she is loved not only by her family, she is also loved and respected by the rest of us, because she is open to take on this new and demanding job with intelligence, strength, joy, and determination.

Vice President and Democratic nominee for president in the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris, and former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Liz Cheney.
This picture was taken from an MSNBC broadcast of Liz Cheney's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president in Wisconsin the past October 2nd, 2024.