Letter To The Editor: American Exceptionalism

Congratulations to Manhasset resident Anthony Scaramucci, the newly appointed White House Communications Director.
My congratulations come both as a resident of Manhasset and as an alumna of Hillary Clinton’s alma mater Wellesley College, and as former president of the Wellesley Club of Long Island.
As a woman I’ve found it difficult relate to identity politics and the ideologies that seem plucked out of context, and out of thin air. But nothing exists in a vacuum, and no man an island—or woman.
Always missing. to me, was a sense of place, and the roots that ground us.
Roots that lead back to Place—to make a house, raise children, build a community, like Manhasset. A place to work and play, like Long Island. A place to do all these things and more, in the Empire State of New York.
Most of all, in the exceptional place of America.
But for all its strength and grace, America that hadn’t paired with the word “exceptional”—that is, until described that way by Mr. Scaramucci, upon seeking his entrepreneurial advice.
Entrepreneurship that often brings along with it the 10,000 mile-high view—including of planet Earth. From that vantage point, a new framework of history that began to emerge.
Not the familiar history writ in names, figures, dates. Instead, our geologic history as a planet. Terraformation and the movement of plates. Geologic shifts, volcanic upheavals and the billions of years that gave rise to earth and its changing lands, seas, air and climate.
And then, a tectonic convergence. And at the right place and the right time, a remarkable land that emerged, swirling in blue. Rising out of the ocean like providence itself—America, the largest island on Earth.
America therefore, that is a history of Place—and no man, no woman, an island.
The island view that highlights the most important entrepreneurial lesson of all: that America was not so much ideologically conceived, as it was physically built, from the ground up.
A land to build upon, because it’s our common ground. And with bare hands and hearts, the individuals of history who laid down one brick, one stone, one concrete bridge, tunnel and railroad track at a time, and our American roots along with it.
But roots we often forget. Our physical connection to physical place. America wrest out of bare hands, into ivory towers. Ideologies often disconnected from the very ground upon which they stand.
But when the connection is re-established, we realize something remarkable. That what we stand upon is more powerful than ideology alone: our common ground. America itself.
And like few who’ve stepped onto the national stage, Mr. Scaramucci has come to embody that fact. Someone to communicate a message not by way of abstraction, but by way of common ground, and roots in the ground.
And boots on the ground. The literal ground he walks upon in Manhasset, Long Island, New York.
And in America, the common ground to us all.
American Exceptionalism, therefore, that is no mere fortuitous event. Not an ivory tower abstraction, pulled out of reach.
Instead, as Mr. Scaramucci inspires us to see, a providence of an entirely different order. Destiny within our reach…and each of us, in the right place and right time. America, in the here and now.
So with hearts and hands and boots on the ground, the time to get to work again. To seize the moment and Make America Exceptional Again.
Thank you Mr. Scaramucci. You have given Manhasset, Long Island, New York and America a reason to be proud.
—Angela J. Min