A Contranymic Candidacy
Sometimes a word or an action can have two meanings, or none at all.
A couple of decades ago, I learned about contranyms.
A contranym is a word that has two diametrically opposed meanings. For example, the word "dust" can mean the removal or application of dust (as in dust with powdered sugar), or "fast" which can mean speedy or stationary (to make fast a line on a sailboat).
Democrats are playing that game this election season. They always play it, but this time it is not for advantage, it is by necessity - and it has put their installed nominee in a tough spot.
I sort of get Kamala's situation.
I do not sympathize with her, but I do get it.
People wonder what she is doing now that Scranton Joe has taken to his beach lounger at his dacha on the Jersey Shore – but she cannot operate in her official capacity as Vice President because that would mean she would have to execute policies she now opposes. That would link her to the Biden Administration, one that she contronymically defines as both successful and not successful at the same time depending, of course, what she needs to highlight or hide from.
Of course, the rest of us see it all as lies and fabrications, denials of reality, but as George Costanza told Jerry, “It’s not a lie if you believe it” – and they do believe, boy howdy do they believe.
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll wrote:
When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.“
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”
People are also on her about her lack of transparency, her fear of press conferences, and the paucity of information about what she is running on - and some in the media are beginning to get nervous and are asking the same questions.
In all honesty, she can't come out with anything substantive because nobody in the Democrat power circle has told her what she is running on yet. In true San Fran Nan fashion, she is going to have to have a national convention first before she can see what she believes.
She has taken some baby steps.
Of course, she is for the standard Democrat stuff - a national abortion mandate, price controls for "greedy corporations, and "equity" are high on the list.
Nothing else so far, at least nothing new. They have spent a lot of time claiming Project 2025 and other conservative statements and actions are something other than what they are and cutting video out of context to claim the exact opposite of what the full context shows.
Rather than take a chance to say something that would tie her down, she is just saying nothing – other than her canned, poll tested, repetitive stump speech, of which she apparently only has one.
Of course, Tampon Timmy Walz is playing the tough guy to distract form the nothingness of the ticket, using a few curse words to prove just how f*cking damned serious he is when he says their policy is “Mind your own damn business!” I don’t know if a phrase can be a contranym, I assume it can, because the history of the Walz governorship certainly seems to indicate “Mind your own damn business” means “We are going to mind your business for you because your business is really our business”, a prime example being the Covid snitch line he set up for Locked Down Karens to use to tattle on kids playing in a park.
If Obama were a self-described "blank screen" on which his supporters could project their own wants, needs, and desires, Kamala Harris is a synthetic human, a Westworld style cyborg, waiting for a program to be downloaded with whatever the Democrat Party wants.
Humpty was right, the question is to be the master, that is all.
I read my then apolitical wife, she isn’t now, Obama’s ‘Yes we can’ speech. Which turned out not to be his words anyway. This would have been at least a year before he was elected. I said ‘this guy just got elected President’. My wife, ‘was there an election?’ ‘No. But this speech alone will win him the Presidency, and the fact he is half black.’ She loved it and said he sounds amazing. I said, ‘Okay. Let me read you the first sentence.’ Explain it. She explained it to me. ‘Okay, here is the second sentence. Explain that one.’ She did, but hesitantly as they were both vague statements which could mean anything. After the third she said ‘he actually isn’t saying anything is he?’ All evocative fluff which one could apply twenty different meanings to. Later that evening we were at some (now ex) friends for dinner. Obama came up as his speech had been printed in our paper. First, why? A pre nomination stump speech from an unknown politician in the US running on its own page on a Canadian daily? Second, why was he suddenly a big star? Out of nowhere? At any rate the hostess, a hard core lefty was so into him it was weird. I said his speech meant nothing. And I said ‘I am in business. I know when smoke is being blown up my butt. The speech is misleading, which means he is a liar.’ I conceded it was possible he did the speech as an attention getter and would then fill in details as he runs for the nomination. Which is fair enough. I said ‘I will wait and see but at this point he has lost my trust and has to earn it back.’ She ripped me apart. Very rudely. Now, this might seem obvious such a thing would happen. But this was 2006 or so. US politics was followed in Canada, but it wasn’t a blood sport then. It was ho hum news. Half the time most people might know one of the people running for each party’s nomination. And that would be all. Certainly not obscure names not heard before. I was called a racist! ‘Own it, William. You’re a racist. Fine. But at least admit it.’ We subsequently had a few more dinner parties. Each one more stridently political. We went on some 10 k walks together. But I was done with her. The Lib husband was okay. But she dominated more and more our times together. My wife remained friends with her as they hiked regularly together. COVID changed all that. She of course became a COVID Karen. My wife was not. Sort of worried about it. But I laid out why she needn’t fear anything. Within a year of COVID and their friendship was pretty much over. When Liz refused to be vaxed, that fully ended it.
It all changed with Obama. I am not saying it wasn’t all politics all the time. And lefties and righties could be friends. Not now.