The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

They’ve Forgotten How Bad It Could Be

Posted on | December 9, 2025 | No Comments

Why did people vote for Zohran Mamdani? It’s as if the people of Gotham City elected the Joker as mayor — a nihilistic appetite for destruction as the motivation of a political movement. If one were in a generous mood, it might be stipulated that Mamdani’s votes came largely from younger voters, who can be forgiven for not knowing how bad life was in New York City during the mayoralty of David Dinkins (1990-1993), the previous rock-bottom of misgovernance in Manhattan.

Permitting ignorance as an excuse for error, however, relieves citizens of their duty to inform themselves before making their choices at the ballot box, and that is a formula for irresponsibility. There was a time when no one avowing themselves to be a socialist could have gotten elected to any position of influence in this country, because Americans viewed socialism for what it is — an immoral philosophy, the justification of theft on a grand scale — and we had seen enough of its failures to know that whatever your problem is, socialism is not the solution.

Yet the voters of New York City have made their choice, and now we get to watch them learn their lesson:

Last week, New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced that he would end his predecessor’s policy of clearing homeless encampments in the city. On social media, this announcement was greeted by strong language which would not bear repeating here, but reminded me of H.L. Mencken’s timeless aphorism: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Never has anyone more deserved this kind of democracy, gooder and harder than do the voters of New York City. Life in the city is already very bad — it’s been a steady downhill slide since Rudy Giuliani left the mayor’s office in December 2001 — but the decline has accelerated in recent years, and many observers are interpreting Mamdani’s election as the omen of an impending apocalypse. Maybe the best explanation of what’s gone wrong in the Big Apple is simply hubris. Figuring that their city has somehow managed to survive the blunderings of Mike Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio, and Eric Adams, perhaps New York voters looked at Mamdani’s avowed radicalism and thought, “Why not? How could it possibly get worse?” (Snake Plissken could not be reached for comment.) . . .

Read the rest of my latest column in The American Spectator.



 

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Category: American Spectator, New York

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