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Quote of the Day: On Entitlement and Gratitude
“I am not a Somali representative. I am not a Muslim representative. I am not a millennial representative. I am not a woman representative. I am a representative who happens to have all of these marginalized identities and can understand the intersectionality of all of them in a very unique way.” — Rep. Ilhan Omar
Ilhan Omar is a representative who was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 4, 1982, into a family of military leaders, government officials, civil servants, and educators. After fleeing her homeland, which had descended (again) into civil war, she and her family spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp, before qualifying for asylum and arriving in the United States in 1995, when she was 13 years old. She became a US citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.
She graduated from North Dakota State University (political science and international studies) in 2011, when she was 28 years old, and spent some time as a Policy Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey School of Business affairs. She subsequently worked as a community nutritional educator in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, and by 2012 (when she was 30) she was dabbling in politics, working as campaign manager for a state senate candidate.
The following year, she managed the campaign for Andrew Johnson, and after he was elected to Minneapolis City Council, she served as his Senior Policy Aide until 2015 (33 years old), when she became the Director of Policy Initiatives of the Women Organizing Women Network, an advocacy group for East African women encouraging them to enter political leadership roles. And in 2016 (34), she ran for, and was elected to, the House of Representatives, becoming the first Somali-American legislator in the country.
Pretty good (and fast) work for a poor refugee with all those intersecting marginalized identities. Was it always easy? I’m sure it was not. (She says it was not.) But I wonder where else in the world such a meteoric rise to the highest levels of power would be possible for a person such as she, one who has made so little effort to assimilate into and speak up for the country and culture that took her and her rather “complicated” family in when they had no place else to go, and which has–no doubt to a considerable extent at taxpayer expense–made such a rise possible.
She reminds me of a saying beloved by (and I think original to) the late Mr. She that “In a world of entitlement, the scarce resource is gratitude.”
What would it take, I wonder, for her to call herself “an American representative?”
Ilhan Omar turns 39 today–October 4, 2021.
*Most of the biographical information is from Wikipedia. The birth year in Wikipedia (1981) is contradicted by just about every other source, so I went with the majority opinion.
Published in General
That is a fine sentiment.
I look for the comedy, and here some is. If you don’t get past the first sentence, that’s still pretty good: Ilhan, like most successful politicians, has a brand, a look or sound or flavor that’s instantly identifiable and short-circuits further thinking. It is however fragile and requires constant defense or at least assertion. The supply of Ilhan quotes is not likely to run out.
VDH dissects Omar (along with other “Squad” members) quite thoroughly in this essay.
And it was so vital to become a citizen of a nation where she feels so marginalized that she allegedly married her own brother to obtain said citizenship, which would allow her to grift her way to wealth and power.
She is full of hate, ingratitude and bigotry. That aside, well . . .
Rep. Omar’s total lack of gratitude for what she gets to experience in the United States has long infuriated me. And then she compounds the situation by trying to tear down the very culture and systems that have allowed her such privilege, status, and money.
As I read, “I am not a Somali representative. I am not a Muslim representative. I am not a millennial representative. I am not a woman representative. ” I was actually expecting the next line to be “I am an American representative.” Guess I forgot who was speaking.
So much marginalized intersectionality (as I nod and pretend to know what that means) and yet she goes from a war torn country to serving in the US Congress. Either these marginalizers aren’t very good at what they do or perhaps, in a fair world Omar would be Queen of America by now.
I was expecting her to finish with, “I am the representative from MN-5”. She has committed tax fraud and immigration fraud, and should be in prison instead of Congress. She is anti-American and product of our post-Cold War education system. We need to put patriotism back into the classroom ASAP.
Yes. I thought that too. Probably for the same reason.
War is deception. I believe that quote comes from Mohammed himself. Jahiliya. Do not believe a single word she says. She is acting in deception as Muslims are allowed to do in jihad. She is not American, will never be American, and indeed hates America and western culture. She is part of the Islamist conquest of the west. Defeat her.
So she represents her completely unique self. The wonderful thing about being a Muslim-Somali-millennial-woman is that she’s the only one!
I wonder if she’s bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!
And since when were millennials marginalized? If anyone is marginalized, it’s we poor Gen Xers, sandwiched between the most self-indulgent and the most self-absorbed generations in history.
I don’t disagree with the “deceptive” aspect of Mohammedanism, as it can be used to infiltrate a different culture. However, I think she’s pretty open about her hatred for this country and for western values. So I don’t see her as a fifth columnist at all. For that reason, I think we should believe every word she says.
A green and black striped Tigger? Sure!
Sounds like an incipient post.
It is interesting that Ms. Omar comes from a failed nation, and then advocates for policies that come from the Marxist ideologies that have failed other nations creating Hell on Earth. I’ll be kind here and just call her a slow learner, which does not make her ideas any less dangerous to our nation.
And, “like it again.”
Makes you wonder about the district that voted her in.
I can’t even quantify how much I detest the word intersectionality. Garbage speak.
Maybe she’s marginalized because of a mediocre intellect that instinctively envies anyone who has more. She has no idea what it takes to have more because she has never produced anything of value. Where else do we see this attitude? Academia and politics, both because they do not produce, they absorb.
And if her family came out of Somalia with money, it wasn’t because they were designing satellite systems. So you see the immediate disrespect for the law, marrying her brother to get residence status, tax fraud, just like back home.
She might be a lot of things, but American certainly isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.
I understand that there is a saying in the Hawaiian indigenous religion: “A monster cannot survive in an atmosphere of gratitude.”
To which the corollary would be: Monsters thrive in an atmosphere of ingratitude.
Gratitude implies that something, somewhere is working well. Or at least not as badly as elsewhere. Gratitude would suggest patriotism. But grievance and the resulting demands for more are the currency of the times and are incompatible with grace or gratitude.
If you read between the lines. The print is bigger there anyway.
The word “marginalized” has some magic effect that bestows the unassailable virtue of victimhood, even if it is spoken from the floor of the House.
Her family didn’t suffer much at all. The upper class never live in Hell on Earth. That’s for the plebs to endure.
Clearly Minneapolis will have to remain with parts of NY and California when we leave the former Republic and form a new one.
She is open about her hatred, but the underlying assumption is she’s trying to improve the country. She is not. That’s the deception. She’s trying to bring the country down. That should be the underlying assumption.
I have said our country is now center left. This is another example of it.
I realized I used the wrong Islamic term in my original comment. The correct term is Taqiyya. You can read about it and how it’s applied here. I should not have gone by memory. They sound alike but something was nagging on me that it wasn’t right, so I checked.
Omar the Fomentmaker.