Not Unburdened: Why You Gotta Be So Meme?

It’s like I just fell out of a coconut tree. I still don’t fully understand what Vice President Kamala Harris means by promoting “what can be, unburdened by what has been.” Please join me as I seek help through the not-so-ancient art of memesplaining.

Like all Americans who want to minimize misplaced emotions, misleading messages, and mysterious policy promises in the world of public affairs, “Phronesis in Pieces” enjoys discerning what our 2024 presidential candidates really say and mean.

Memesplaining, or using wisdom and wit to sort through trends in internet culture, ultimately boosts our insight into “we the people,” not politicians alone.

What’s New? And What’s Old?

This semantic scrutiny of the Kamal-axiom we’ll call “Unburdened” intends no ridicule toward a person or perspective. Interpreting Harris’s turn of phrase is a worthwhile effort because she’s addressing a serious duty we all face—to balance change and coherence, past and future, accountability and opportunity.

Voters and leaders must try to interpret each other. Our social-media dance comprises hyperbole, hypocrisy, and other brain gymnastics performed in a politics of shortcuts.

The conclusions we draw about candidates’ intentions and approaches become as weighty as the more focused, practical “issues” typical in old-school campaigning.

When Harris told CNN in her August 29 interview, “My values have not changed,” she was using a “macro” that left many supporters satisfied while other viewers demanded more specifics. Her comments criticizing or dismissing former President Donald Trump as untrustworthy and weird arguably said all she needed to say.

Rich Lowry, a journalist who favors Trump, set the scene for this in an August 26 New York Times guest essay. He predicted that issues in this race largely will be “proxies for character.”

Online assaults against the “Unburdened” axiom suggested Harris is a Karl Marx groupie. One wag, or many, also mocked the quote with a meme of Yoda speaking a Jedi word salad.

The references to Marxism, echoing Trump’s insults and hyperbole, came from voices such as conservative commentator James Lindsay. He disparaged Harris’s phrase as an example of class-struggle rhetoric. Marx, analyzing labor vs. capital, foresaw that humankind could “self-create” and the present could “dominate the past.”

Pundits imply Harris remains vague about how her past positions have changed so she can focus on impressions of the present. Trump impresses people with nostalgia for yesterday. But more crucial for American voters is each candidate’s vision of tomorrow.

The Sum Will Come Out Tomorrow

Harris seems predisposed toward making new policy. Her recent tinkering with economic plans may be a proxy to build fervor about cultural change. The plans entail “opportunity” and monitoring of big business.

In a 2023 “Fight for our Freedoms” presentation at the Reading (Pennsylvania) Area Community College, context showed her Kamal-axiom fits a culture of the new: “The point about progress is to have the ability to have a vision, and a belief, and some faith in what can be, unburdened by what has been.”

Her call for optimism and imagination reaches voters uninspired by Trump’s grumpiness. After all, it’s commonly said that “the people perish without a vision.”

One biblical caveat: A Catholic translation of that maxim is more conservative in tone. Proverbs 29:18 reads, “Without a vision, the people lose restraint; but happy is the one who follows instruction.”

The idea of having “faith in what can be” prompts one more caveat: While a group’s vision of future possibilities can be grounded in faith, it needs detailed, democratic bona fides before it gains status as an article of faith for all.

Progress isn’t a religion. Secular utopias we conjure might offer no safe space for pearls of great price we cherish. Christian writer G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) warned that “men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm because they are afraid to look back.”

In today’s cultural mash-up of relativism and moralism, a utopian pursuit without broad buy-in might only divide the public into “oppressed vs. oppressor.” A candidate’s embrace of tomorrow’s changes could be seen as defiance toward time-tested traditions, institutions, knowledge, and values.

‘When I Lay My Burdens Down’

Voters will do well to reflect on Harris’s keyword, “Unburdened.”

The Democratic National Convention liberated supporters to breathe the fresh air of “a new way forward.” But others might fear winds of change that once honored “creative destruction” in business. Facebook’s original motto, “Move fast and break things,” has been repealed, opponents might say.

No one’s calling Harris a nihilist, who paves a new path over a “scorched earth.” Think of another Kamal-axiom, “Coconut Tree.” An NPR report took us back to an event where she commented, “My mother … would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” Her mom, she explained, meant that “you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

In other words, Harris was well-taught that we should not take our identities lightly. We must be free to be who we are. US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy gave this idea wider berth in 1997: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence … and of the mystery of human life."

Many folks try to create their own identities in isolation, or sign on with pre-established groups. They may downplay all the forces, from God to family to everyday life, which shape their unique personhood in a broader context of connection.

One’s own history may be filled with pains and injustices—burdens which ache to be addressed, maybe redressed. Couldn’t we agree that generally it’s good to be freed from those things?

Well, we unburden ourselves in various ways—perhaps rationalizing different pieces of our puzzle; or healing a relationship through forgiveness; or pointing a finger of blame; or exacting a penalty to negotiate a new balance. Applied society-wide, the latter two approaches tend toward a “victim vs. victimizer” motif which polarizes us further.

We must unburden wisely. Many times, we have caused or contributed to our own pain through our emotions and behaviors. Or we carry the weight of guilt. These may be burdens we should set aside, but it helps to begin by better understanding what placed us in our current state. Individuals, and nations, must learn from our errors and correct them.

This often requires confronting uncomfortable realities—and seeking truth and forgiveness in relationships with God and neighbor. Religion offers healing for burdens of guilt. It’s refreshing to hear candidates, and ourselves, occasionally say, “I was wrong, I came up short, I’m sorry.”

Changing Your Mind in Public

Likewise, we might hinder dialogue and wisdom with the mantra, “My values have not changed.” Judeo-Christian values call for a personal penitence which looks backward and forward. The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, means “to turn around,” or change one’s mind.

If we fail to admit our own responsibility, we add to the burdens of others. Families and governments can pander to us, but someone’s got to pay for it.

Strategic promises of joy and “good vibes” are a growing political tactic in our emotion-driven age. This unburdening is cruel if leaders merely promote escapism to win elections or build group loyalties. It’s doubly cruel if they trade in schadenfreude, making an audience feel happier by blaming or maltreating the strawman du jour.

We must face facts. In many cases, people and societies simply must grapple with their burdens, not shed them. There is a long, sad list of problems against which American leaders has failed to marshal forces.

“Feel-good” politicians must courageously resist unburdening themselves and others from a nation’s enduring responsibilities. These include defending the U.S. Constitution; respecting human dignity and inalienable rights; and promoting ever-greater justice, especially for those on the margins.

Pertinent to our concern about the present dominating the past, we do well to remember everyone’s burden to support righteous customs and structures which have anchored generations. Our debt to history and civilization was described eloquently by Chesterton:

“Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” He went on, “Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”

Today’s leaders and voters should also extend the promise of our democracy to those not yet born. Any “new way forward” logically must care for our children and safeguard the world’s future.

Please Come Up to Receive Your Burdens

This deep exploration of the Kamal-axiom has attempted to model the kind of serious assessment Americans should conduct regarding their candidates for U.S. president. If our marketplace of ideas supplies us mostly with shallow knowledge and meme-talk, we must make the best of our raw material.

But it’s only a cognitive game unless we connect current events and real experiences, personal and societal, to each candidate’s professed awareness of life’s profound burdens.

To help us plan our own ways forward, we must viscerally grasp responsibilities we have heard both Harris and Trump acknowledge in different ways: holding tight to our values, being open to change, seeing ourselves in a historical context, and envisioning “what can be, unburdened by what has been.”

Then we must dig even deeper. Plentiful sources of information and inspiration can help us appreciate our call  to duty. Look at our fellow citizens—neighbors, heroes, the elites, the homeless. We can add another politician, whose comments have also fallen victim to memes.

Senator J.D. Vance, vice-presidential nominee on the Trump ticket, has hit bumpy rhetorical roads while trying to take our republic and his role seriously.

The New York Times published an in-depth piece on August 25 identifying Vance’s 2019 conversion to the Catholic faith as evidence of “some core values at the heart of his personal and political philosophy and their potential impact on the country.”

Vance “absorbed the lived Christianity of his grandmother” when he was raised as an evangelical, as described in his own book, Hillbilly Elegy.

Elizabeth Dias wrote in The Times that Christianity provided structure and “moral pressure” for Vance during his difficult childhood. She quoted him as saying, “That feeling—whether it’s real or entirely fake—that there’s something divine helping you and directing your mind and body, is extraordinarily powerful.”

Catholicism later gave Vance a way “to counter what he saw as elite values, especially secularism,” Dias wrote. “He was drawn not just to the Church’s theological ideas, but also to its teachings on family and social order and its desire to instill virtue in modern society.”

This meshed with his concerns about America, including “what he saw as the abandonment of workers to the unhappiness of childless cat ladies,” Dias reported.  Vance now “seeks to advance a family-oriented, socially conservative future through economic populism and by standing with abortion opponents.”

She continued, “Much has been made of Mr. Vance’s very public conversion to Trumpism and his seemingly mutable political stances,” but he found clear ways to express his personal philosophy.

The treatise City of God, by St. Augustine (354-430) with its rebuttal of Rome’s hedonistic ruling class, impressed Vance as “the best criticism of our modern age I’d ever read.”

That’s one example of living beyond our memes. Many other people, historical or contemporary, have compelling stories about the responsibilities they choose to bear and the burdens they have laid down.

Finding the Golden Meme

The best way to practice memesplaining as part of our preparation for voting is to listen to candidates, to assume the best about them, despite  mushy, messy, or mean statements.

They reflect “we the people.” We can then “turn around” to examine the visions we have formed through the years.

This pastime brings us into vicarious dialogue with the electorate and its vast resources for discernment. After all, the word “meme,” besides being a form of amusement on social media, is defined as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within our culture.” There’s plenty of potential for constructive content, and discontent.

Our candidates—and our presidents—become thought-leaders whether or not they emerge as wise and true “leaders.” If we diligently inquire into the context of this race, especially if we rise above the party games played on our screens, we become the leaders needed for tomorrow.

We might discover new guidance from God, who’s always in the chat room offering truths which are indeed hard to express. One way or another, we’ll strengthen the philosophical sinews of democracy.

I will continue grappling with Kamal-axioms like “Unburdened.” Harris has a way of opening our eyes, getting us talking, arising from the “same old” political funk of recent years. In equal and opposite measure, Trump is pointing us toward principles to bear in mind, to make new again.

The need for meaningful memesplaining—expanding beyond mundane messages, distractions, and emotions—has never been greater.

If the 2024 campaign is indeed giving us a clear choice about the future, that’s a burden we should propagate mimetically throughout the electorate, encouraging more reflection and engagement.

It’s time to ask: “Seriously, what can be? What should be?” Now that we’ve fallen out of the coconut tree, we can return to Yoda, demanding a clearer translation.

Image from meme posted by Leor Sapir, included in Know Your Meme article published July 2024.

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