It Just Gets Crazier In The Big Apple

    In 1993, President Bill Clinton appeared before a joint session of Congress to deliver a high-stakes address on healthcare. When he got to the podium, he discovered that the wrong speech, an old State of the Union address, had been loaded into the teleprompter. For seven minutes he half-winged, half-read from a print copy. 

    For his aides, that was a long seven minutes. A young, extremely dismayed George Stephanopoulous muttered to Mike Feldman, an Al Gore aid, “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened.”

    “I dunno,” Feldman replied, “the Holocaust was pretty bad.”

    That’s sort of how I feel about the reaction among many of my friends to the other day’s election results in New York City. It is really bad, I mean, unless you are a communist or socialist. But as with all things, you have to ask, “Compared to what?”

    Several Democratic Socialist candidates, one or two who might have replied to Feldman, “No, this is worse,” won their congressional primaries, which means it is all but assured they will win in the general election, because that’s just how New York City works. 

    Now, the worst of these nitwits is Darializa Avila Chevalier. She is a 32-year-old doctoral student in sociology. I assume she’s going to be ABD for a while (That’s “all but dissertation” for those of you who may not know as many students for life as I do.) Avila Chevalier is the kind of caricature-made-flesh that Fox News producers, GOP consultants, and Leninists dream about. I really don’t mean that as an insult to the producers, consultants, and Leninists, because they have every right to crow. She’s not a straw man. You can quote her directly without fear of being accurately accused of exaggeration. The things she has said or endorsed on social media would fit perfectly in a Trump rally speech (and spare me the “retweets don’t equal endorsement” crap).

    She is for abolishing all prisons, eliminating the police, erasing the border, legalizing prostitution, controlling prices to deal with inflation, and nationalizing vast swaths of the economy, including seizing property from landlords. When repeatedly pressed on the question of whether murderers, lawfully convicted by a jury of their peers, should be sent to jail, she didn’t come anywhere close to saying “Yes.” Instead, she lamented how prison traumatizes murderers and denies them an opportunity to “reflect” on the harm they caused to their community, which is why she would like to see the murderers returned to that community. You know, to better reflect on stuff. 

    Oh, and of course, she hates Israel with a blinding passion (she thinks Bernie Sanders is too Zionist), believing it has no right to exist. When Hamas launched its pogrom of rape and murder, she was one of those people who immediately attended the pro-Hamas rally the very next day, while the raping and murdering had yet to end. Oh, yeah. She also thinks “America is a fucking disgrace.”

    I know, I know…she may be a wonderful friend and colleague, a terrific cook, and if she has cats and/or dogs, they may love her dearly. But if we can judge politicians by their publicly stated views (and if we can’t…what are we doing here?), I think she’s a piece of shit human being. 

    Which brings us to the big picture. I am sure all of you have heard the phrase, “copycat crimes.” I am not positive about this, but to a certain degree I think there might be such a thing as copycat politics. The concern is, or might be, that people of a certain ideology look at New York and say to themselves, “Hey, those idiots elected one of us in the Big Apple. Why can't we do that here in  _____?” (Feel free to submit your favorite big city name in the blank.) You see what I mean? They are signing up now in places like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Now, some of you may be okay with that style of ideological leadership. But for those of you that actually know a little history, and realize that socialism / communism has NEVER worked, and where it is still in practice, the people are suffering immensely, under awful economic/political conditions. And if that is not bad enough...those same people are looking down the barrel of a gun.  

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com