Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani commemorated 250 years of American independence by painting a false picture of oppression, describing it as a “nation of contradictions” where “children go to sleep hungry” and “masked agents” terrorize the streets.
Mamdani offered a grim outlook of the America that paved the way for him to stand as the leader of New York City.
“250 years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together, both towards one another and towards ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation,” Mamdani began.
Apparently failing to see the irony of his own position, he said the “powerful” view America as an “arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.”
“America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes,” he said. “America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit. How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal.”
“At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics and the cheapest. But time and again, including 250 years ago, though those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress,” he said before offering, perhaps, the most divisive portion of his own speech by offering a long list of misinformation aimed to fan the flames of division — yet another great irony.
“As we mark 250 years, what do we see? We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more,” Mamdani said.
“We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections,” he continued before expressing his disgust in law enforcement removing criminal illegal aliens — those with criminal histories including rape and murder — off the streets to protect Americans.
“We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans,” he said. “We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with callous dirt streaked hands, those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone. And we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.”
Mamdani then tried to shift his tone, offering a rosier picture of what Americans may see in their everyday life:
Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all we see when we look for America. We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor. Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, but wakes before dawn to go to work, and still believes his country can do better by his family. Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors without asking how long they have lived here or what papers they have as ICE invades our neighborhoods. We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots. We see America each time working people demand more, not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans. There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain: love it or leave it, they say.
“But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent,” Mamdani claimed.
Notably, Mamdani made no mention of his city being so ill-managed that he is asking New Yorkers to set their thermostats high to save electricity, nor did he mention the fact that Con Edison shut off electricity in the Riverdale neighborhood in the Bronx to protect its equipment. Ironically, this occurred as preparations continued across the city for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s exorbitant wedding at Madison Square Garden.
