Influence and enemies go hand in hand. I learned this lesson explicitly from Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to become Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and someone I admire greatly. In the summer of 2019, she invited me on a congressional delegation to Ghana. During the flight, she told me about her journey: from her first campaign in 1987 when she was elected to Congress to becoming the highest-ranking female elected official in United States history, not once but twice. Then she turned the conversation to me. "It is really moving to see the number of people who come out to support you," she said. "Yes, but every time I'm attacked, the attack seems to be amplified by the support," I replied, confiding in her because it might make more sense to her than to most. "Sometimes I wish I could shoo them all away and take the beating myself so that I don't continue to feed the craziness." She sighed and looked at me with a maternal gaze, one that had a lot of knowledge behind it. Nancy is the kind of person who, by the time we landed, knew Ghana's economy down to the percentage change in its cocoa bean exports over the last year but who also put a blanket around me when I fell asleep in my seat. "The amount of money that is spent on ads and anything else to try to take me down is mind-boggling," she said. "The truth is, it is a badge of honor to have many people invested in one's failure. If they weren't this afraid of your power, they wouldn't work so hard to erode it." To hear that message from the powerful being she is meant more than words can express.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Influence and enemies go hand in hand. I learned this lesson explicitly from Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to become Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and someone I admire greatly. In the summer of 2019, she invited me on a congressional delegation to Ghana. During the flight, she told me about her journey: from her first campaign in 1987 when she was elected to Congress to becoming the highest-ranking female elected official in United States history, not once but twice. Then she turned the conversation to me. "It is really moving to see the number of people who come out to support you," she said. "Yes, but every time I'm attacked, the attack seems to be amplified by the support," I replied, confiding in her because it might make more sense to her than to most. "Sometimes I wish I could shoo them all away and take the beating myself so that I don't continue to feed the craziness." She sighed and looked at me with a maternal gaze, one that had a lot of knowledge behind it. Nancy is the kind of person who, by the time we landed, knew Ghana's economy down to the percentage change in its cocoa bean exports over the last year but who also put a blanket around me when I fell asleep in my seat. "The amount of money that is spent on ads and anything else to try to take me down is mind-boggling," she said. "The truth is, it is a badge of honor to have many people invested in one's failure. If they weren't this afraid of your power, they wouldn't work so hard to erode it." To hear that message from the powerful being she is meant more than words can express." in the context of "Ilhan Omar This is What America Looks Like (2021)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.