Cocnut Tree Army? KHive? brat? Whatever, I'm On Board!

      One week ago I, along with many of my fellow Americans, believed with a heavy heart that the United States was going down the same inevitable path that so many other societies have gone down throughout the course of history, away from democracy into autocracy. 

          But in the past week the universe has flipped several times:
          Five days ago President Joe Biden stepped down from running for another term. 

         Three days ago Kamala Harris garnered enough delegates to become the Democratic nominee for President

           Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, for the past two days, and for the first time since I can remember, Donald Trump's name was nowhere on the front page of the New York Times or the Columbus Dispatch. 

          Which has been a most welcome respite.
         But surely most amazing among all these remarkable happenings has been the enormous grass roots youth movement - or movements? - in support of Kamala Harris that have sprung up just in the past five days and taken off like wild fire across social media, news media, the whole mass mega meta media universe.
           There's the already ubiquitous Coconut Tree video-clip-seen-round-the-world of Kamala Harris telling the story of how her mother admonished her that she didn't fall out of a coconut tree, then Kamala punctuating the story with her big jolly laugh, 

       And while the internet cognoscenti have been discussing, dissecting, and digging for the true significance of  Kamala Harris's coconut tree anecdote, her legion of young fans aren't much concerned with the whys and wherefores of the story, but rather have recruited themselves into a Coconut Tree army, embracing the coconut and the coconut tree as their symbols. 

       For those five or ten people on the planet who haven't yet seen the "Coconut Tree" video clip, here's the link:       
                   https://www.youtube.com/shorts/br6EHiAWJ_M?feature=share
        And then there's the KHive (pronounced K-Hive). This is the original Kamala Harris online fan group that formed back in 2020 in support of Harris in her first presidential run.  Though the KHive quieted down during Harris's years as Vice-President, the group has buzzed back to life this week - as #KHive - all over X, TikTok and Instagram.
​          And then there's brat. In truth, though I've been scrolling around the 'net trying to figure exactly what brat is and exactly how it relates to Kamala Harris, I can't quite wrap my head around it. I'm starting to think that you have to have been born in this century or late in the last one to completely get what brat is. 
           In any case, I did make the effort to understand, and what I've come up with - I think - is that brat (with a small b) is the title of a music album with a lime green cover,

...by a British pop star named Charli XCX.

      Now, I don't know whether the word "brat" was already in the youth lexicon and Ms. XCX named her album after the word, or whether she coined the word and from there it became part of the Gen Z lingo. 
        In any case the word, according to what I read on Yahoo News, now refers to a movement called "brat summer" that "pretty much rejects the norm and embraces the unapologetic. Think edgy, imperfect, and confident."
       At some point over the past few days Charli XCX posted on social media that "Kamala is brat."  And then a Charli XCX fan and Kamala Harris supporter created this oh-so-appealing video of clips of Harris put to music from "brat" and posted it on X:
​            https://twitter.com/i/status/1808510079382982870
​          I can't say I'm surprised that the video has gone viral, as I for one can't stop watching it.  And though I've got almost half a century on the Gen Z crowd, I've gone and joined the Coconut Tree Army.
​         And my heart is now light as a feather and full of hope.