I used to believe racism in the United States was overstated.
Sure, it existed. But it's not something widespread. Common. The claim americans are racists is ridiculous.
Well...I was wrong.
"Zohran Mamdani is a terrorist"
"Mamdani supports ISIS and HAMAS"
"New York City faces sharia law"
"Mamdani wants to MURDER jews"
The amount of shit published about this guy is absolutely insane.
He recently attended the 9/11 memorial ceremony.
At some point, he greeted congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and smiled for 5 seconds.
Immediatly, politicians went wild
Senator Ted Cruz:
Congresswoman Mary Miller :
Speaker Mike Johnson:
Here is the video. You can clearly see that he was stoic. He hugged her. Then he immediatly went back to being stoic.
Dude smiled 5 SECONDS in a 5 hour ceremony and they accuse him of celebrating 9/11
At the same ceremony, JD Vance and Howard Lutnick laughed and joked.
No one cares. They are white.
The US is more racist than I ever imagined.
Oh yeah, I'm with you on the critique of capitalism.
But I often wonder how much native culture is new, pretending(or wrongly believing) to be old. I have found that some cultures believe they have very old traditional practices and foods, which turn out to have modern origins. I think a lot of cultures pigeonhole themselves into this mindset of "we've always done it this way, therefor it's sacred and inviolable".
An example is fry bread. Fry bread is often treated as a wonderful part of native heritage, not only in the US but across the world. But in almost every case, it is a food brought about by colonialism.
I am reminded of an experience I had as a small child watching a Native American dance with all the feathers and such and at first I was fascinated but as I started thinking about it I felt sad because it looked to me that these people were dancing for the whites. And it all could have been bullshit made up 300 years ago to sooth the invaders. A common theme I see among colonized people is using religious belief as a way to shield oneself from further incursions. Because that's one thing most people will respect and back off from. "Oh you have deeply held religious rituals about X, well we should probably relax a little bit".
All cultures change and grow, I strongly believe that insisting a given culture has been unchanged for millennia is a foolish proposition, especially if there is no written record. But even with one. It's like saying species don't evolve over time because you haven't seen any changes in your lifetime or your grandparents lifetime. It is a common human mistake to make.
Thank you for being so generous with your time and thoughts.