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Is Rep. Omar the Problem or a Reflection? [1]

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Date: 2023-02-03  

Is Marge in Charge?

With visions of AR-15 tracer fire dancing in her head, Marjorie Taylor Greene and the GOP House majority voted Rep. Ilhan Omar off of a committee. Some would call Omar the epitome of the American Dream. She is the only African-born American in Congress who also has practical experience with the ravages of a war-torn nation. Fighting back a combination of anger, tears, and resignation over the decision-making of Republicans, she told the story of how she hid under a bed as a child waiting for the bullets to stop. Omar was then removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Unlike most Americans who have never left its shores, Ms. Omar has seen the world and its callouses and has a valuable perspective on healing its wounded heart.

Representative Omar is not the problem but the reflection of Republicans not having an agenda. The party that ran on fighting inflation and crime is distracting us with issues that cause fear, outrage, and anger. The GOP tells us every day, and with every lack of legislative moves, that if you are not rich, Cis-gendered, heterosexual, or a white Christian, you do not belong. One of the first measures Republicans took was removing the metal detectors you pass through to enter the House chambers.

“I am Muslim; I am an immigrant, and interestingly from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted,” said Omar in her defense. As expected, Democratic objections fell on[the] deaf ears of the GOP members who clutched their hypocrisy pearls and looked for the nearest racist fainting couch. Sitting in their caucus is Rep. Greene, who claimed space lasers funded by Jews, started wildfires in California. She [Greene] spoke recently at a white supremacist meeting. This past December, she told the attendees at a gathering of the New York Young Republicans Club had she and Steve Bannon been in charge of the insurrection, they would have won. Exactly what were they winning; the destruction of American democracy?

Voting against Omar was a member [George or Anthony or Kitara- Santos or Devolder or Ravache] who made two claims about his imagined heritage. One that his grandparents fled the holocaust and, despite denials, claimed during his campaign and in his literature that he is “a proud American Jew,” or is it Jew-ish? The party still headed by Donald Trump, a racist, xenophobic, political neophyte, is weighing in on the qualifications of a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee as if people like Rep. Paul Gosar have intellectual depth and heft.

Representative Ilhan Omar has paid her penance for using Jewish tropes in the past. She has either apologized, been admonished by her leadership, or both. The question is, how long does her punishment last? Years ago, on one of my first trips to Chicago, I was told to go to Jew Town to get an excellent Polish hotdog. The term is an anti-Semitic phrase deriving from “Jew you down” or bargain, an obvious reference to Jews and money. I was appalled by the words and expressed it to my friends, I thought, righteously. My friends tried to convince me it was okay because “everyone says it.” I would not relent; now that my friends know better, they do better, and the ones who refuse to do better are not my friends.

Continue to Vote for Change

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/3/2150919/-Is-Rep-Omar-the-Problem-or-a-Reflection

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