If you ever want to know if a person is uneducated, uninformed or simply brainwashed by the myth of American exceptionalism, there’s a simple, six-word statement that will, without fail, expose a person’s intellectual curiosity (or lack thereof).
“This is not who we are.”
Even if you are patriotic and filled with love of one’s country, it is impossible to utter this phrase if you have a rudimentary understanding of politics, history or global events. Anyone with a scintilla of national self-awareness knows that America is capable of anything. This country’s founders didn’t just participate in rape, human trafficking, genocide and labor theft, but they enshrined this inhuman, race-based system of violence and theft in the foundational document of this country in order to protect it. But this country also fought the bloodiest war in its history against traitors who believed in the founders’ dream. We used violence to enforce a tyrannical system of racial apartheid, and we fought a world war against a tyrant who used violence, land theft and genocide to build an empire that was based on America’s system of racial apartheid. We fought for democracy while refusing to become one. We are a constitutional republic that withheld constitutional rights from the republic’s Black citizens.
There is nothing that falls beneath America’s standards. We are every evil, racist or corrupt thing that ever was.
And we are dumb.
Thank you, Natasha K., Dr. Mary M. Marshall, SammyD, Cort Gross, Donna Smith, and many others for tuning in to The Wake-Up Call Live. Join us next Friday for our next live conversation.
Today’s Reading List:
Young Hoes Cook Everything On High Heat by Zoe Cummings
Gullible, Cynical America by Adam Serwer
Black Twitter Explodes With Rumors of Resurrection by Michael Harriot
