Omar’s short time on the public scene has been filled with one controversy after another. Whether it’s her consistent habit of delving into antisemitism, the evidence she committed marriage fraud, or just the general way she conducts herself as a lawmaker, Omar has managed to find herself in the news over and over and rarely for positive reasons.
Despite plenty of issues at play, because she’s a Democrat, that means she gets puff pieces in The Washington Post. This latest one caught my eye.
Ilhan Omar’s complicated American story: The U.S. is the country that saved her and the country that has too often disappointed her.
Via @smekhennet and me.https://t.co/Xg1kCQplh8— Greg Jaffe (@GregJaffe) July 6, 2019
We’ve all disappointed her, guys.
There’s a certain arrogance to Omar’s time in the United States that tends to rub people the wrong way and that’s on full display as The Washington Post dives into one of the fluffier pieces you’ll read about a D.C. politician. Take this anecdote for example.
Five years earlier, Omar told the students, she was working for a Minneapolis city councilman who asked her to report back on problems with the courts. There, she recalled encountering a “sweet, old . . . African American lady” who had been arrested for stealing a $2 loaf of bread to feed her “starving 5-year-old granddaughter.”
After spending the weekend in jail, the woman was led into the courtroom and fined $80 — a penalty she couldn’t pay. “I couldn’t control my emotions,” Omar continued, “because I couldn’t understand how a roomful of educated adults could do something so unjust.”
“Bulls—!” she recalled yelling in the courtroom.
Omar, perhaps because of her lack of background with American ideals, seems to not understand that prosecution for criminal activity, even supposed “crimes of desperation,” are what help hold society together. It’s a short walk from arbitrary decriminalization to the anarchy of her home country of Somalia. There’s also the fact that the story she told, much like her entire career, is likely complete nonsense.
Omar’s story echoed the plot of “Les Miserables.” If true, it is also probably embellished. City officials said that police aren’t allowed to arrest people for shoplifting unless there’s a likelihood of violence or further crime. Typically, shoplifters are sentenced to attend a three-hour class.
In an interview, Omar said she may have flubbed some facts. “She might have had a prior [arrest],” Omar said. “I’m not sure. . . . The details might not have all matched, but that’s what I remember.”
Much like we witnessed with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s slanderous claims about Border Patrol last week, this new generation of leftist politicians rely on exaggeration and falsehood to push their narratives. It doesn’t matter if what they say is actually true, only that it paints a moralistic picture they feel can advance their goals.
Omar goes on to call America a “broken promise.”
In Omar’s immigrant story, America wasn’t a “city on a hill,” a haven for grateful masses fleeing war and oppression. Rather, it was a broken promise. “I arrived at the age of 12 and learned that I was the extreme other,” she often said. “I was black. I was Muslim. I also learned I was extremely poor and that the classless America that my father talked about didn’t exist.”
While I can sympathize with the idea that her expectations may have been unrealistic, perhaps not being in a war-torn country, being offered government assistance, and being part of a society that allows a refugee to become a Congressional member should count for something. No one actually promised Omar utopia. What America has always been is a promise of opportunity and she, even though she’ll never admit it, proved the inclusiveness of that promise by attaining her current position.
One particularly jarring passage from the piece involved Omar giving this description of U.S. military combat veterans.
At times, she struggled to see the humanity in her opponents, dismissing a paralyzed Gulf War veteran’s suggestion that the presence in Congress of more combat veterans, who have experienced the costs of war, might produce a more cautious foreign policy and improve veteran care.
“I’ve been in rooms with people who have served who say the most horrendous things, who have complete disregard for life,” she said. “I would love for that statement to be true, but it isn’t in most cases.”
The article keeps going from there, but the essential point is that America has failed to live up to Omar’s demands throughout her time here.
In Omar’s version, America wasn’t the bighearted country that saved her from a brutal war and a bleak refugee camp. It wasn’t a meritocracy that helped her attend college or vaulted her into Congress. Instead, it was the country that had failed to live up to its founding ideals, a place that had disappointed her and so many immigrants, refugees and minorities like her.
I’ll give the author credit for tacitly countering some of her claims, i.e. him pointing out above that this country helped pay for her to go to college and gave her the pathway to attain almost anything, including becoming a U.S. House member. Still, if the United States has been such a grave disappointment to refugees and immigrants, there’s always the option to not come here. The truth is, the United States, while not perfect, is still the greatest country on earth. Some semblance of gratitude from Omar would go a long way, yet she chooses to show absolutely none.
Yes, we know she pretends America is terrible while holding us to a standard she doesn’t apply to anyone else (except Israel).
Also, can any mainstream reporters cover Omar without extensively downplaying her bigotry and corruption?
— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) July 6, 2019
Of course, the writer stops short of any real push back, instead choosing to tell “her story” mostly uncritically. Nowhere in the article is there mention of the evidence that has mounted that she committed marriage fraud. There’s no mention of the proven campaign finance violations she committed. Most egregiously, The Washington Post doesn’t bring up her bouts of antisemitism while in Congress at all. You’d think that would be relevant. Would the Post write an article about a Republican without laying bare every questionable aspect of his or her past? We all know the answer to that.
While the article mostly focuses on her past, Omar’s graceless treatment of the country that saved her continues apace. We see it in her political rantings, defending terrorist regimes like Iran and the Palestinian Authority while outright lying about the actions of Israel. The presence of Muslim fundamentalism in her worldview, even though we aren’t supposed to talk about those things, clearly influences her to defend the indefensible while attacking those who have outstretched their hand to her.
Omar manages to find time to defend ISIS terrorists and ask for radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood to be released, but she trashes American veterans of the Battle of Mogadishu as “Satan.” We’ve seen her laugh about Al Qaeda with anti-Semitic figures, defend tyrants like Nicolas Maduro, and laud literal terrorists like Angela Davis. But one thing always eludes Omar’s lips, that being any praise for the country that took her in and gave her everything.
It’s all completely bizarre and I don’t believe just how bizarre is lost on most of the American voters who are watching this from afar. The reason Omar remains relatively unscathed is simply because of the culture of that inter-sectionalism has propagated in the country. People are afraid to speak the obvious about her actions and worldview for fear of retribution.
At some point though, the truth has to outweigh fear of the mob. Omar has no business being in Congress. While the Congresswoman may constantly focus on her disappointment in America, we all have far more reason to be disappointed in her.
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