Zohran Mamdani stood in front of a Bronx mosque and talked about something real: a Muslim woman — his aunt — who stopped riding the subway after 9/11 because she suddenly feared for her safety in her own city. A hijab turned her from “New Yorker” to “target” in a single news cycle. That fear wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t theoretical. It was lived, daily, in public, on the train, in the street, in the eyes of strangers who now read her scarf as suspicion, threat, or enemy.
That is America’s story too — the part we rarely tell, because it forces us to confront the uglier half of our national reflexes.
And then along comes JD Vance — Vice President, Instagram patriot, cosplay-courage enthusiast, and dollar-store demagogue — who decides the appropriate response to this story is mockery. Not reflection. Not empathy. Not even silence. Mockery.
“According to Zohran, the real victim of 9/11 was his aunt who got some (allegedly) bad looks.”
That’s Vance’s contribution to the national discourse: a middle-school-level taunt aimed at a Muslim woman describing fear.
That’s not strength.
That’s not patriotism.
That’s a man so terrified of empathy that he treats it like a contagion.
THIS IS WHAT COWARDICE LOOKS LIKE IN 2025
The right loves to screech about “snowflakes,” but the most fragile men in America are the ones who hear a story about a Muslim woman in a hijab and react like someone just threatened their oxygen supply. These dudes melt into a puddle of insecurity at the mere suggestion that someone else — especially a Muslim — might have pain worth acknowledging.
To them, compassion is an existential threat.
Because if Muslims can be victims, then Muslims might be human.
And if Muslims are human, the entire fear-fueled political machine the GOP has ridden since 2001 loses one of its favorite chew toys. The right needs the Muslim “other.” It needs the hijab as symbol — not of faith or identity, but of foreignness, irreconcilability, and permanent suspicion. It is the costume onto which they project their terror, their ignorance, and their shallow mythologies about who deserves to belong.
JD Vance knows this. He’s not confused.
He’s feeding the beast.
THE HIJAB BOTHERS THEM BECAUSE IT BREAKS THEIR DELUSION
The hijab’s existence on American streets is living proof that the GOP’s fantasy of a white, Christian, monolithic America is dead. Not dying. Dead. The world moved on. Demographics moved on. Cities moved on. Technology moved on. Pluralism isn’t coming — it’s already here.
And some men simply cannot handle it.
So instead of confronting reality like adults, they point at a scarf and say, “SEE? THIS IS THE PROBLEM.” They collapse a global faith, a billion people, and centuries of culture into a single piece of fabric — and treat that fabric like a threat to the republic.
That isn’t patriotism.
That’s untreated insecurity wearing an eagle lapel pin.
MAMDANI SPOKE ABOUT FEAR. VANCE SPOKE ABOUT HIMSELF.
Mamdani’s message was simple: Muslims should be treated as equal citizens, not suspects. That’s it. That’s the whole terrifying “radical agenda.”
Vance’s response wasn’t about Mamdani’s aunt. It was about protecting the conservative movement’s most sacred idol: the monopoly on American victimhood.
The right has spent more than two decades fighting for permanent intellectual custody of 9/11—not for remembrance, but for weaponry. They’ve invoked its memory to justify endless war, eroded civil liberties, turn Islamophobia into a public pastime, normalize surveillance states, impose loyalty tests, and even push outright Muslim bans.
If Mamdani says, “My aunt was scared,” and Americans say, “Yeah, that makes sense, a lot of Muslims were scared then” — suddenly the mythology cracks.
And men like JD Vance cannot survive cracked mythology.
FAKE TOUGH GUYS DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH EMPATHY
Real toughness means absorbing another person’s story — even when it complicates your worldview — and sitting with it. Fake toughness means laughing it off, mocking it, or reducing it to a joke so you don’t have to feel a fucking thing.
JD Vance chose the fake version because that’s what his politics require: emotional illiteracy, moral amnesia, and a cartoon version of patriotism where pain only counts when the right people feel it.
He can stand on a stage and bloviate about “strength,” but strength isn’t mocking a woman’s fear. Strength is confronting the systems and biases that created that fear — even when that means you might have to admit your own side has done harm.
He doesn’t have that gear.
He never will.
THE BOTTOM LINE
This wasn’t “just a joke.”
This wasn’t “just politics.”
This was the Vice President of the United States telling millions of Muslim Americans:
“Your fear doesn’t matter. Your story doesn’t matter. Your pain isn’t real. You’re not part of the national ‘we’ — you’re an accessory to someone else’s trauma narrative, and you should shut up when we’re talking.”
That’s why it’s bigger than Mamdani’s aunt.
It’s about who is allowed to be human in America — and who is told to sit quietly and take the hint.
CONCLUSION: THE HIJAB ISN’T THE THREAT. THE COWARDICE IS.
Mamdani talked about humanity. Vance talked about hierarchy.
Mamdani talked about fear. Vance talked about dominance.
Mamdani honored a memory. Vance fed a mob.
History will remember the difference.
And no amount of aggressive flag-waving, “real victim” mockery, or Fox News chest-thumping will change this simple fact:
If your masculinity, your patriotism, or your identity as an American is threatened by a woman in a hijab telling the truth about her fear, then you are not a defender of this country — you are a symptom of its sickness.
If you’re done with watered-down punditry and want reporting with teeth, spine, and a pulse, subscribe. This publication doesn’t both-sides fascism, doesn’t tiptoe around bigots, and doesn’t apologize for calling bullshit. Hit the button. Be part of a community that would rather confront reality than be comforted by propaganda.
This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.