Mamdani: There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it: American exceptionalism.
American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West, is why children in far away lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here.
And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional.
For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshipping the wrong Gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants for whom power was something someone else had.
We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else.
The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence-that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all.
It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel— the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too.
Listen carefully to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The desperation is dripping from every word.
Watching him appeal to the UN is rich, considering his own administration branded it irrelevant, undermined it, and slashed its funding.
There is a lesson to be learned:
Do not start wars you can not win.
And if you do, stop whining about it.
Own the consequences.....
@RealAlexJones 2/2
Intentionally want to keep it difficult. They want the low wage underground worker and too keep the average American thinking an immigrant is the problem. As long as we are looking at the farm worker we won't notice the Epstein class rigging the system. TRUTH
@RealAlexJones Information you can use. 14.28% of the signers to the declaration of Independence were foreign born. Today 15.8% of the population in the United States is foreign born.
..............1776.........…..The only reason we have an immigration problem is the Epstein class 1/2
This is the message. Right here.
“So now we get a chance to put things together on different terms.”
You don’t get my vote if you don’t understand we are not going back to how it was.
🔥🔥 @IAmPoliticsGirl ate @NoahCRothman up
“Can you let me speak for 1 frickin’ second, bro? - $50 billion, thousands of civilians, 13 🇺🇸 soldiers… People hate us now. He said we'd destroy an entire civilization. That doesn’t make you a good negotiator. It makes you psychotic.”
Right then.
Let me explain something very slowly, because it appears some basic logic has gone missing somewhere over the Atlantic.
No serious nation in the history of warfare has spent fourteen months insulting its allies, threatening to annex their territory, siding with their common enemy, and then knocked on their door expecting them to come running to rescue a catastrophe of its own making. That is not how alliances work. That is not how anything works.
You abused the UK. You threatened Canada. You tried to grab Greenland. You called the EU an adversary. You praised Putin, the one man every serious NATO ally has spent decades preparing to fight. You hosted Kremlin officials in the Capitol. You undermined European elections. You abandoned Ukraine. You imposed tariffs on your closest partners. You did all of this loudly, proudly, and on camera.
And now you are surprised that nobody is returning your calls.
Here is a question worth sitting with. Why do you think that is? Is it possible, just possible, that when you treat your allies like enemies for over a year while cuddling up to their actual enemy, those allies might update their opinion of you? Is that concept too complicated? Does that require more working memory than is currently available?
You did not plan this war with your allies. You did not consult them. You did not build a coalition. You started a conflict, watched it go sideways, and then got on your knees asking for help from people you spent fourteen months calling weak, corrupt and irrelevant.
NATO is not what it was. Not because Europe changed. Because Washington made crystal clear which side it is on. And it is not ours.
You want European boots on the ground? Start by explaining why America is more aligned with Moscow than with Brussels. Take your time. We will wait.
Gandalv / @Microinteracti1
Anonymous
My 13-year-old son just said, “Mum, I think I have a good idea. The people in America protesting ICE should call themselves LAVA — Local And Very Angry. And lava melts ice. You should post that and see if it's a good idea"
We’re about as far away from the United States as you can get, here in Perth, Western Australia. But I hope the people over there know that even a young boy on the other side of the world can see when something isn’t right.
#BREAKING: Velshi: “…Trump is saying that the government can’t afford to support American families, saying that he needs all that money for his war. This is the peace president who didn’t want to get us into wars. And here’s the thing, Trump’s own family seems to be CASHING IN on the war…it isn’t just Jared Kushner that might be profiting off of this war. Last night the AP reported that a drone company backed by Trump’s adult sons Eric and Don Jr is actively trying to sell their drones to Gulf countries that are under attack from #Iran, countries that need the support of the military of which Eric and Don Jr’s dad just so happens to be the commander in chief.”🤦♀️