French MEP says US should give back Statue of Liberty

I could legitimately see this happening, by now. Fox News builds it up for a week, then Trump/Musk make a big spectacle of sending it back and replacing it with a giant statue of Trump.
- Don't bring that thought into reality.
  
  You can picture it, can't you. The entire thing covered in shitty gold spray paint. My God, it's becoming so clear now...
  Edit: Fun fact, Grok wouldn't create the same image featuring Kamala Harris.
- replacing it with a giant statue of Trump.
  Made of plastic, made in China
- They'd probably melt it down instead, just to avoid giving it back.
- A giant dump would also fit to the current timeline.
  
  They're the same picture.

This is pretty funny tbh.
- Until they replace it with a Trump statue

wtf I love the French now.
- Love you too bro. Now riot
  
  Not just yet... we're waiting for checks notes the government to individually wrong every last one of us directly while not hurting our enemies in any way
  I mean not me, My pitchfork is fresh, but I'm not going out until there's a crowd :) Murderbots will be hunting me down in the street.
  My real worry is that instead of calling on the military to quell violence, they'll call the military industrial complex who will send in the murder drones.
  
  I'm Canadian, I hope they do...
- I mean, they're the country we probably owe the most to.
- I love to hate on the French but in reality they are far more based than other European powers.
  Let’s not forget the Napoleonic code

He is not wrong.

"Welcoming huddled masses" is no longer US policy. Statue of Liberty is "woke propaganda", and US should now welcome getting rid of it. No horribly inappropriate/misplaced Ukraine warmongering justification needed.
- The Chinese Exclusion Act actually predates that poem being added to the statue. So, status is quo.
- Hasn't been since before ww2

has the us ever truly stood for the values the statue is said to represent?
- Depends on what you think it represents.
  It's traditionally a symbol of opportunity, or new start style liberty.
  America has, for a long time, been a place of hope or opportunity for immigrants. Not necessarily welcome, kindness, or prosperity, but hope.
  With the visibly growing xenophobia this has tragically waned, but even still we have some of the highest immigration rates in the world.
  
  The poem at the base of the statue, The New Colossus, makes its meaning pretty clear.
  Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
  With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
  Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
  A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
  Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
  Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
  Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
  The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
  “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
  With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
  The US never lived up to the promise the statue made.
- My family came to the US via Ellis Island as poor Jewish immigrants escaping pogroms of Eastern Europe.
  Yes, the US once was a land of opportunity that did help the lives of many poor & oppressed families.
  They slammed the door shut shortly before ww2. So the statue had meaning for like 30-40 good years.

Someone's been keeping tabs on the price of copper.
- At today's market price that'd be $305,000. Not as much as I was expecting. Google says there's approximately 62,000LBS of copper in the statue.
  
  That's only according to the National Parks Service. Others say potentially as much as 200,000 lbs, or about $1 million USD worth
  Source: https://copper.org/consumers/arts/2008/february/Statue_of_Liberty.php
  It's hard to say for sure since it was made so long ago, was restored in the 80s, and is big as hell, haha

- welcome to Lemmy btw :)

To whom? Macron, who refuses to respect the will of the voters, and continues to elevate the far right in France?
- Thank you; people keep getting excited whenever France makes moves towards forms of leadership these days but I can't help but suspect that Macron doesn't want to eradicate the global hegemony America had held through recent history but put France in its place.
  Demanding back a gift given in celebration of America's abolition of slavery solely on the basis that France was the one to gift it (i.e. ownership) is too on-the-nose, even if you tried.
  
  You don’t need to suspect. He’s confirmed it plenty of times. He will shut the country down before allowing the left to seize power.
- Yeah. Macron is extremely bad with domestic politics which is why the French far-right keeps gaining ground. I tell the so-called blue MAGA that if Americans could articulate their thoughts away from the cringey false dichotomy of "blue, liberal Democrats" versus "red, conservative Republicans", the Democratic party is at best a neoliberal centre-right party who still value private property and free market, however socially progressive they are. Hence, as Macron and the Democratic party demonstrated, liberals will always side with fascists when it comes to it, instead of actually curb stomping the far-right for good.
  But since we are talking about how awful Macron's domestic policies are, the opposite side is Macron being inversely good in foreign policies. He had been proven correct searching for strategic autonomy, and able to stand up to the bullying tactics of both Trump and Putin. Someone in Reddit mentioned Macron is probably easily bored with local politics. I have to agree and I am exactly the same. I prefer international news and politics over local; because the latter is like keeping up with school gossip with too many white noise. And the details of the story change every damn time. Meanwhile, international politics typically settles over a bit quickly and you get the fuller picture as a result. Besides, I think if you follow international news and politics more, you see the entire forest than just a tree and thus you could easily see solutions to local problems by applying what other nations are doing right.
  
  Occam’s Razor: It’s not that Macron is a domestic right winger who happens to be correct on international politics. It’s that your beliefs are left domestically, but you’re supporting right-wing foreign policy.

What's the opposite of eating the onion? I saw this elsewhere this morning and though haha, that's obviously satire.
- Throwing up an onion

I think we should if they pay us for the shipping charges in French-made guillotines. We need a lot of those in the US right now.

Oh hey, look at the meme I made and posted 6 years ago on Reddit, the last time this xenophobic moron was in office. It’s almost like we could have predicted this shit.
But no, I was ‘hyperbolic’ and ‘alarmist’ at the time.
(Sorry for the Reddit link, it was this:)
Title: I’m sure Macron would be very happy to work out travel arrangements.

That's rich coming from a party which saved the (partially) far right government from dissolution.
- There's a big difference from the far right and full blown nazis
  
  Yeah, that difference is about 8 years.

Y'all can come take it, I'm not gonna stop you but I'm also not going to pay for it
- Well, no, it would be us paying for it. Taxes aren't yours, they're ours.
  
  No I mean it I'm not paying taxes again. why should I pay money for the Government to send it's armed goons after me? I already expected the alien act that Trump activated over the weekend. The same shit they used to take everything from Japanese Americans during ww2 and leave them in dirt. Explain to me why I should pay for that?

Thought that this was a joke originally.

THAAAAAT'S THE SPIRIT

While I tend to agree, I would be afraid of giving the orange turd any ideas of erecting a golden statue of himself in its stead.

We should. You should demand we do. Am American, and I fully support this.

They can buy it from us
- Two dosen eggs, handdriven air delivery. okay?
  
  Maybe trade it for all of Canada

Give it back to you? How about you pay repairations to Haiti or Algeria or any of your other former colonies before you act like you're worthy of the Mother of Exiles?
- Yeah, give it to Russia or China who have never used military expansion for their own self serving purposes.
- This should be the new “OK boomer”
- Oh fuck off.
  
  Did France not forever debilitate Haiti's economy by enslaving it and then requiring Haiti to compensate France for the monetary loss of its liberation before being willing to recognize it as a legitimate country?
- Your post is exactly the type of cancer that you are referring to, whether or not you have the ability to understand it.