Chaos Creeps in on Little Cat's Feet
"Great cities fall to the sound of cheering crowds." Ami Kozak on "X"
The Democratic Party put another bullet in its head this week with the election of the charming, affable jihadi communist Zohran Mamdani. Is “communist” too harsh a label? (He styles himself, softly, a “socialist.”) Yet his campaign platform looks like a template from the venerable Soviet Council of Ministers circa 1957: Free Everything: housing, buses and subways, college, child-care, government food stores. . . with a cherry-on-top of replacing police with social workers in high crime areas — because rapists and car-jackers would quit their rowdy ways if only they could talk about their feelings.
If you believe the news reports emanating from Woke Central, Zohran received major support from the folks who predominate the Upper West Side, where he was raised-up by his Columbia prof Dad and film-maker Mom. That is, voted in by the same high-income demographic that flocks to Zabar’s Deli on Sunday mornings for smoked sturgeon and babka — a curious alliance. I guess this solves the old riddle of why Europe’s Jews walked so placidly into Auschwitz.
“Life imitates art,” old Oscar Wilde liked to say, and with so many self-administered bullets in its head now, the Democratic Party looks more and more like The Walking Dead, a necromantic tribute to its erstwhile mascot, “Joe Biden,” the Phantom of the White House. Fortunately, the Latinx bombshell, AOC, America’s answer to Eva Peron, has stepped up to the leadership role, flanked by the foxy Jasmine Crockett, with their mentor, Bernie Sanders close at hand (on a leash, really) barking validation for the Party’s death trip.
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It’s a wonder of our time (and its playful zeitgeist) that New Yorkers might choose a mayor even worse than the brain-dead colossus, Bill de Blasio, but there it is, in plain sight for all to behold. The Big Apple and its various services will now go from their currently merely broke-ass condition, to the complete collapse of infrastructure, transit, housing, revenue, business, and public safety, in other words, to true Third World authenticity! Serious people, who run viable businesses, support families, and pay whopping taxes, are in a panic, all a’chatter about moving elsewhere.
That chatter is not idle, especially among the class that owns major real estate, of which New York City has a frightening and increasingly obsolete inventory — hundreds of office skyscrapers running at fifty percent (or less) occupancy, which cannot cover their mortgages, maintenance, or taxes. What will become of them? I’ll tell you: some will be foreclosed-on, sold for dimes on the dollar (and fail again under new ownership,) and quite few will stand empty waiting for acanthus tree seeds to sprout on their empty windowsills.
Or, they will turn into “squats,” like the towers in the abandoned city center of Johannesburg that I saw visiting there ten years ago. Those giant office buildings were not converted into “residential,” you understand; folks were simply camping-out there, even with the electricity and water turned off. This is exactly what happens when you run the prosperous people, whom you hate, out of town, which is what happened in that sad-sack nation. How many demonstration projects like that are needed to prove that communism with a racist frosting on top is a mug’s game.
Of course, we’re not there yet. Zohran hasn’t been sworn in, though the victory celebration just now looks like it’s fait accompli. You can only imagine the frantic conversation running between the old party poohbahs out in the cold: Chuck Schumer, Hakim, Nadler, Obama, even the loser, Cuomo, plus the non-elected party apparatchiks: Axelrod, Podesta, Carville, Plouffe, Emmanuel. . . . They’re not saying, but I bet many are silently wondering: Is there some way we can just disappear the guy? Make him go away? X him out? Cancel his ass? (Someone, for Godsake, find a couple of girls who will say he groped them in an elevator!)
Or maybe some electoral work-around? Maybe put what remains of the party’s dwindling financial mojo back behind Eric Adams — yes, he’s still Mayor — who supposedly quit the party (after they tried and failed to stuff him in prison) and is running for mayor now as an independent. . . but who will surely welcome whatever support and moolah they can bring to his cause. Adams’s two great virtues as a political figure: he’s not Bill de Blasio and he’s not Zohran Mamdani.
New York might go down the drain anyway. At least for a while. That broken business model for skyscrapers is not going away anytime soon, and neither is the greatly augmented Third World population funneled across the open border into New York City by “Joe Biden’s” shadowy minders. Will New York turn into that fairytale town whose economy subsisted on people simply taking in each other’s laundry?
Well, the city will always have its geographical assets, like, the best goshdarn ocean harbor in the whole east coast. Something will be there. . . some human agglomeration. But what? And over all of that, like the uncanny eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg in Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, looming above the ash-heaps of Queens County on the road to West Egg, lately rises the stern visage of Donald J. Trump, New York real estate mogul superbus, and now President of this sore-beset nation, watching events roll out.
Gallery 16 is UP! Paintings from the 2024 season
The Falls of Northumberland at Clark’s Mills, NY
JHK’s World Made By Hand four-book novel cycle. A small town in the remnant of the USA in the not-distant future. The community struggles to carry on. . . .
"I started my blog, Clusterfuck Nation, almost twenty years ago to chronicle the week-by-week process of our collapsing civilization… What I had not anticipated in The Long Emergency was how badly the process of collapse would disorder the minds of the whole American population and, with that, the consensus about reality." —James Howard Kunstler, CrazyLand
New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Three once-great World class cities that are now each better called a word that begins with ‘S’ and ends with ‘Hole’. All thanks to demented governance and faux leaders who abandon common sense and good purpose in favor of collective delusionalism.
But of course, none of those who are leading their cities into dark oblivion could rule without the people of their captured region voting them in. And why do The People do such a thing? Because they themselves have become morally bankrupt and mentally deluded. They do not want to live good lives of purpose and agency. They want a Mommy-Daddy government to do everything for them and take care of them forever.
The citizens of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles do not want to grow up and one day grab a set of car-keys and get married. They want to wear diapers for the rest of their lives and sit in their high-chairs with their mouths wide open waiting for Daddy Government to put blended fruit mush into their mouths with a great big spoon.
Are New York, Los Angeles and Chicago the future of the entirety of America? Maybe yes, maybe no. But a body loses its Heart... the rest of the body cannot expect to have a good future.
NYC died in the 70's when liberals like Koch turned her into a Charles Bronson script machine. The decline of the white population from roughly 75% in 1970 to a shade over 50% in the early 80's and falling since, is a doom loop. Sure the banks stayed, but companies like Pepsi and Texaco decamped to Westchester. And now you can cosplay Wall Street from anywhere, so good luck with that. The good news is that Pliskin is warming up in the bullpen.