Some people are wringing their hands over the prospect of a communist becoming the next mayor of New York City. It is not an unreasonable concern, as the city has gone from an ungovernable mess to a modern metropolis for the rich and powerful. New York has become quietly intolerant since the 1970’s and that intolerance has made the city a better place. The citizens, especially the rich ones, decided enough was enough and elected politicians willing to clean up the crime, urban blight and dysfunctional public sector.
It was not entirely by design. Rudy Giuliani won because he had a rep as a crime fighter and he had the right accent. He cleaned up the tourist areas and public parks. He also reformed the police department. Bloomberg won promising to leave things in place and he convinced liberal New Yorkers that it was OK to be tough on crime. He also showed how they could avert their gaze from the realities of gentrification, which is a fancy word fro chasing off the non-whites by jacking up rents.
Now it appears the radicals have figured out how to get back in power. Civilization is about not accepting a wide range of human behavior. Laws against violence, rape, sex acts and so forth are what allows civilization to flower. To be a liberal means not understanding this basic truth of the human condition, which seems to be the case with the next mayor. That probably means he will attempt to roll back that which has worked and replace it with polices that have failed everywhere they have been tried.
New York could go one of two ways. Right now it is following down the path of San Francisco. Economics and subtle racism have made San Fran a NAM free zone. The city is 5% black and 15% Hispanic. The rest is Asian and White. New York is getting less black and more white. Part of it is due to the economy of the city. Part of it is due to gentrification. Part is due to those police tactics to chase NAM males out of the city if they were inclined to dress like extras from a Jay-Z video.
How much of each is responsible for the transformation of the city is unknown, but the smart bet is the latter is a declining factor. That may be why the super-rich who run the city are not all that worried about having a communist mayor. The danger is gone so they can go back to indulging their weird political fantasies. It is reminiscent of the movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Once the tough guy does his job, he can be replaced by the soft guy who does not startle the ladies.
There’s also the fact that turning back the clock and restoring 1970’s era New York is not possible, given real estate prices. Radicals were able to turn the city into a sewer by unleashing non-white criminals onto the working class neighborhoods. The working class is gone and so are the criminals that displaced them. Today, the Bronx is full of hipsters and homosexuals paying outlandish rents. There’s no way to unleash non-white criminals on hipsterville, so the city is safe from that tactic.
Then there is the fact that New York is the hub of the global financial system. In the 60’s and 70’s, global finance occupied a much smaller part of western life, so it occupied a smaller part of the city. Today, the global financial elite consume most of the economic space and have enormous inflection over New York City. If the communist mayor becomes too much of a problem, the new robber barons will simply back his opponent and that will be the end of the communist mayor.
Still, it does suggest something about whites people, at least in this age. or perhaps it is something about whites in a democratic system. Two tough on crime and corruption mayors changed New York in ways no thought were possible. That should be the lesson of the last twenty years. instead, voters and the political operators feel compelled to return to ideas that were absolute failures. It’s like white people have some sort of suicide wish that causes them to vote for what is sure to fail.
