At the top of his first speech as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz turned to Vice President Kamala Harris and declared, “Thank you for bringing back the joy.” The next day, Harris took the theme a step further, branding the Democratic ticket “joyful warriors.”
Contrast that with former President Donald Trump, who opened a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida a few days later by saying, “We have a lot of bad things coming up,” and predicting the U.S. could fall into an economic depression unseen since the dark days of 1929 or even another world war.
“I think that our country is, right now, in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in, from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint,” Trump said Thursday.
I don’t know if Harris is pushing joy, but enthusiasm and relief on the part of supporters is palpable.
Trump? That’s the conservative MO. Everything is fear. Fear of immigrants, fear of government, fear of their own god, fear of anyone not resigning themselves to their station, fear of anything that questions their religion, fear of being questioned with actual logic, fear of LGBTQ, fear of anything that doesn’t conform to their selfish and myopic worldview… and that’s how they keep people in line. If you don’t conform to those fears, you’re out. Exclusion is another fear.