Kamala Harris Loves ‘The Chronicles of Narnia.’ Is That a Spark of Hope?
What is one of Kamala’ Harris’s five favorite books? No, not The Communist Manifesto.
The vice president loves the C.S. Lewis classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I know, because she told Oprah.
This is remarkable for a couple different reasons. There’s an obvious parallel here between Harris and Jadis the Witch, the villain in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Janis has frozen over the land of Narnia in an all-consuming quest for power. Those around her live in fear of her anger and viciousness.
That sounds like the leadership style of the VP. According to Politico, Harris runs an office that is “tense and at times dour.” Staffers “are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment, It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated.”
Harris and I “Meet Cute”
Yet there is also a second interpretation. Does Wardrobe point Harris back to a more humane version of herself, one focused on fighting for truth and on Jesus, represented in Narnia by Aslan the lion? When the vice president was young and first read the book, was she more like Lucy, the brave and compassionate girl warrior in Narnia? Was she righteous before ambition and politics closed off her heart?
It’s a dramatic question that a screenwriter and myself are asking. For the past couple of years a high school friend and I have been working on an adaptation of my book The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi. The book recounts the nightmare of 2018, when leftist criminals and oppo researchers tried everything from extortion to a honey trap to get me to prevent my friend Brett Kavanaugh from getting on the Supreme Court. One of my main assailants at the time was Kamala Harris, who was being feed oppo research and threw vicious tantrums when I wouldn’t knuckle under her criminal plot.
In our screenplay, we have an imaginary scene where Harris and I meet as young college students. (Harris and I were born just one month apart in 1964, which means that in 1985 we were both 21-year-olds.) It’s 1985, and Harris is an undergrad at Howard University. I’m a student right down the road at Catholic U. It would dramatize a moment where I encounter a person who would try and destroy me three decades later.
We run into each other late at night at Ben’s Chili Bowl, a famous D.C. eatery. We briefly connect over the love of a book: The Lion, the Witch an the Wardrobe. I’ve always thought Kamala Harris is beautiful, and even wondered what could have been if our paths ever crossed in the 80s when we were both undergrads. Was she at one time a warm person, before she became a Stasi officer for the New New American Left?
Before We Were Enemies
So, the scene: it’s Ben’s Chili Bowl, the iconic restaurant on U Street in D.C. It’s 1985 and late at night, after the bars have let out. Harris is at the counter with a friend enjoying a chili dog. She has two books out on the counter: a biography of Thurgood Marshall, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. We have a brief conversation. We are two people from completely different spheres of life. I’m from the East Coast, Irish-Catholic and white, she’s Indian and black, the child of elite academics in California. Although Washington is a small city it’s still de facto segregated, except for a few spots like Ben’s.
Of course, the meeting will also foreshadow the events of the Kavanaugh battle. I’m getting something to eat after clubbing. She’s doing the same after studying her law books. Kamala is at the counter. I see the Lewis book there and mention that it’s a great book. We talk about our favorite characters and Aslan, the lion king.
We’re both taken back to our childhood … yet also transported to a spiritual realm where Aslan will meet us after our lives are over. There is also a reference to Jadis the White Witch — the one who, as one reviewer noted, “abolished any judicial system, merely punishing all of her political enemies by turning them into stone, and decorating their statuesque figures in her palace courtyard.” Harris would try to do that to me and to Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
More Than Children’s Stories
As Leonard DeLorenzo notes in his recent book Chronicles of Transformation: A Spiritual Journey with C. S. Lewis, the Narnia books are “more than children’s stories.” They are for any readers of any age who are open to seeing the world through the eyes of a child.
“This includes adults who have been weighed down by life,” writes DeLorenzo, “and those who have become intellectually ‘puffed up’ or too spiritually sophisticated to immerse themselves easily in chronicles like these.” DeLorenzo hopes these stories “will soften our defenses and open up space within our hearts and minds for welcoming the joy of Christ, in whom the drama of all life bursts forth.”
This is a good prescription for Harris. Despite her goofy laugh, she seems as cold and closed off as the witch. The girl who loved Narnia has become “puffed-up” with power. In the scene in The Devil’s Triangle movie, Harris and I have shared moment as two young Christians. We will clash in battles decades later, but not that 1985 night.
For us, the words of Leonard DeLorenzo give pause and insight: “In the chronicles, Lewis summons us to pass through our world into Narnia, then to pass through Narnia into the deeper country, which is our true home. Suppose — just suppose — a story carved in the hard stone of fairy tale …could facilitate such an expedition. That would be worth reading again. And carefully.”
Mark Judge is a writer and filmmaker in Washington, D.C. His new book is The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi.