You are smarter than Peter! This is in deed more about a liberal brain virus injected by professors than housing. Are academics even lower humans than the media? It seems to me that the media are dumb, obedient servants. Academics on the other hand are the evil strategists.
I am no fan of Mamdani (and no longer live in NYC). But I am a center-left 45 year old male who has generally admired Bernie Sanders and hoped for the implementation of various socialist (or socialist-adjacent) policies which I believe would benefit everyone. This is nothing new; it didn't arise with, or form out of, wokeness. Ultimately, as much as I am loathe to defend Gen Z, I think this essay does them an injustice. Not everything can be boiled down to woke vs. non-woke culture wars. Believing that healthcare is far too expensive and that the income gap is astoundingly unjust, that a living wage in NYC or the west coast is almost impossible to find, that the wealthy use tax loopholes and various methods to not pay their fair share of taxes does not make someone useful woke idiot for evil communists. Again, I do not like Mamdani, would not have voted for him, and I've spoken strongly about this with people (ahem, my wife), who do admire him. We all want to see the worst in our opponents, and the echo chamber of social media fuels that, from Truth Social to Bluesky to the darkest corners of Reddit. But it's not helpful to resort to the most extreme caricature of our opponents, whether it's seeing fascism in anything even slightly to the right, or woke excess and coddling in anything even slightly to the left.
One of the best things you’ve written. What you’re talking about is not found merely among young people. I encounter it among those quite a bit older as well. On the one hand you have people who have clearly prospered under a capitalist economy who consistently vote for those who’d cripple it because they are
supporting “ good values”. And of course you also have those who simply resent others having more than them because it’s “ not fair “. Your Genealogy of Morals citation is right on point!
I'm thinking alot about this issue and plan to write a post about defining Manhattan elites. I find that writers (not you) throw around the word elite to mean anyone they don't like.
As for resentment by the young I think it's absolutely there because we live in a city and at a time when some Gen Z and Millennials are doing great. And those are the peers that cause the most resentment. But that resentment is embarrassing to admit so other labels are chosen as targets.
This is not about greed and resentment. You've said that people throw around the word "elite" for things they don't like, but it's also true that people throw around the word "woke" for things they don't like. NYC (and other cities in the US) is broken. It is unlivable for most "middle class" folks. I've lived there and I know. I'm not saying Mamdani will fix that (he almost certainly won't, and it's naive to believe he will), but just because people are angry about paying 3,000 a month for a shoebox in Queens doesn't make them resentful lazy bums.
I was with you until you said, "with the proper education, determination, and mindset, any American can realistically make their first million dollars." This simply isn't true. I will never make a million dollars (let alone a million pounds sterling here in Britain, which is significantly more). Between autism and mental health issues, it's just not going to happen, despite my elite higher education. It doesn't mean I'm lazy or lacking persistence.
I am not resentful. I count the very real blessings (financial and especially non-monetary) that I have. But I also know my limits and that some of them at least are inherent in my brain-wiring, not my character.
This isn't the fault of capitalism. I accept that there are winners and losers in the capitalist system, a system that produces innovation and wealth far beyond any other economic system, and if it has its caprices, those caprices are worth bearing for the sake of the benefits brought by the system as a whole. But, please, let's not pretend that the only losers in a capitalist system are those who were too lazy or badly educated to succeed. Some people are just unlucky and it's OK to acknowledge that.
Thiel is right because young people feel frustrated that they go to college and get good jobs but they do not make it economically. When earlier generations did this, they did in fact make it and that often included home ownership and doing better than their parents. I’m a boomer and I honestly feel that millennials and now gen z are not doing better. The Great Recession, the pandemic and other economic shocks clearly have caused frustration and this is expressed by support for candidates who want action that will reverse the trend of rising inequality . It’s not resentment of the rich per se but a system that has led to life becoming less affordable and obvious flaws in our ability to promise young people a good life like we used to. And socialists like Mamdani and Sanders seem more and more able to actually provide this. Forget about Nietzsche, I doubt if he has much influence anymore 🤨
If you are correct that Gen Z's support for socialism is based purely upon resentment over people having things they don't, then there is no satisifying or reasoning with them. No matter what you give them, there will always be someone who has something they don't. Resentment is a spiritual and cultural dead end.
I think you are likely correct about Gen Z supporters of Mamdani. I do not however think that the Gen Z of NYC are indicative of the rest of the country. Few things in NYC ever are. If your assessment is correct, then Mamdani is destined to fail and be more hated by his supporters than the people he designates as scapegoats. Nothing he does is going to satisfy them and he will inevitably be seen as a failure and worse a traitor by these sorts of supporters.
Similar to his clear model, Barack Obama. Although Obama refused to endorse Mamdani, the latter is a clear evolution of the former, just more empty and even more inevitably to disappoint his supporters. By exit polls, the latter largely consist of the downwardly mobile children of the upper-middle and upper classes, subject to expensive and toxic academic brainwashing.
Thiel's clear mistake is confusing mere conditions with aspirations. The lower-middle and working classss or the poor are worse off in the strictly economic sense than the Mamdani voters. But the latter have expectations and aspirations that they feel entitled to that the former lack. That feeling of entitlement is the key to understanding the younger upper middle class.
It's summed up in the concept of "elite overproduction," a central fact of our time and well-known to historians as a factor in revolutions. Mamdani himself has never had a significant job, even of a purely political kind. But he does feel entitled.
Israel is the recipient of more aid money than almost any other country.
They didn't make their own socialist system, they used chugging (charity mugging) at a large scale to afford for their population what the donors don't provide their own citizens.
This wasn't an essay, it was ego masturbation aimed at a flag.
This is actually untrue. But you know that, don't you? If you would like, I would be happy to share the numbers. In a nutshell, aid to Israel is overwhelmingly military, and it is designed to make possible the huge commitment of the US to making a profit by selling military wares to Arab countries that have been Israel's enemies. The economic component of aid to Israel has not been a factor for a very long time, and even then it was mostly designed to help Israel to pay interest on loans it had to take in order to purchase sufficient arms after 1967. While the aid is much appreciated, let's not pretend that it is in any way a charitable exercise.
You don't understand. Let me explain. America does not "support" Arab states. It sells them weapons. It sells them unimaginably huge amounts of weapons. What the Carter Administration understood in the 1970s, as it dealt with the Arab Oil Embargo, was that selling weapons was a great way to get money back from the huge transfer of assets to the Arab world that was accelerating at the time. The problem was that the Israelis could not match those purchases and probably still cannot. The Arabs had convinced the Americans that if they had weapons-superiority they would launch war on Israel. Such a war, especially if it succeeded, might well lead to vast harm to the international economy. Think of battles fought over the oil producing fields of Saudia and you get a sense of what concerned the Carter Administration. The "aid" given to Israel was largely military, in the form of actual armaments, but even the aid classified as "civilian" was largely devoted to helping the Israelis to pay the interest on loans that they had already been forced to take in order to purchase weapons to meet the threat of Arab armament. Those interest payments were paid in full, which is why the "civilian" component was allowed to lapse. In dollar terms, the calculation was that every dollar of aid to Israel would allow three dollars of arms purchases by Arab states at war with Israel (including from countries outside the US). As usual, US allies like France and Britain hitched a ride. If you look at the totals over the half century since then, US arms sales to the Arabs come to about $600 billion and aid to Israel comes to about $174 billion.
Two further points are important to grasp. First, the Israelis actually did better than the original estimates suggested, since French and British sales to those countries came to about $400 billion. That is without taking into account the mammoth Soviet transfers of weapons to countries of the region.
Second, this was not about foreign aid, but about American weapons firms doing business and making money. It was about preventing a world economic collapse that might result from destruction of the oil fields.
It's not a "socialist" phenomenon. GenZ spent our lives being told "Go to college, or you'll end up flipping burgers." When we do that, and get out into a job market that is completely ruined: "What, are you too good to work a fast food job?" Those of us who did what we were told have been completely screwed over, ask any CS grad from the past two years. The American Dream is unattainable for lany fo us, so we turn to extremist politics, either on the Left or Right.
While I largely agree with this perspective, it’s troubling to me that you seem to be holding Nietzsche up as the catalyst for a new moral revolution. When Nietzchean supermen have taken over, it hasn’t generally gone very well.
These generations of the educationally-indoctrinated do not understand the difference between equality and equity. They regard differences between people as primarily an effect of cultural and class-based exploitation. They gladly render themselves into confabulators of the most emotionally-manipulative, simple-minded interpretations of the socio-political scene. And they have such fun together, participating in hysterical demonstrations and memes, managing to be irrelevant and threatening at the same time. After all, one must demonstrate one’s bona fides.
No, this isn't correct. It's not about equity vs. equality. It's about large cities being unlivable due to cost of living. No one can look at NYC and think it's OK for rents to be what they are (and forget about buying!) Pointing this doesn't make someone a woke idiot. I don't think Mamdani will fix this (or that he even has the ability to), but it's understandable for young people in NYC to grab onto someone who says they can. Being angry about the state of things there (or any big city) isn't just demonstrating one's bona fides. It's showing that they are directly affected by the system, which is badly in need of repair.
Also, I don't see how you can be both irrelevant AND threatening. That makes no sense.
Hi Steven, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I hope you don't mind my making a lengthy answer.
I and you and most sensible people agree that large cities in the US— with a few exceptions— have become unaffordable to low and even medium-income households. The question is, "where are the answers to be found?"
Is the answer a socialist government?
Our current democratic government, at the Federal, state, and municipal level, already has many popular socialist features and innovations, such as social security, medicare, state universities, state healthcare programs, public transit, municipal housing authorities... ChatGPT gives me a long list when I ask it to show me current socialism-inflected policies. We do not live in an exclusively capitalist world. Most citizens want some measure of social safety net without choking off innovation, investment, opportunity, and wealth-creation. We fund programs and redistribute wealth through taxation, user fees, govt-run enterprises, municipal bonds, federal grants to states, public-private partnerships... thanks, ChatGPT. I'm abbreviating the supreme summarizer.
All of this is to say that there are many extant mechanisms in place for improving the affordability of housing, transportation, and childcare without instituting a revolution. Is our current system bogged down in competing interests, corruption, and hidebound regulations? Hell, yeah. Is it because of our inequitable society? Or is it something else? This is a major question which Mamdani claims to have the best answer for.
Some of Mamdani's platform sounds reasonable, some sounds fanciful, and some sounds outright jihadist. "Globalize the intifada," anyone? Ban Israeli businesses, and any business that does business with an Israeli business...? And this will help NYC, exactly, how?
I find it perfectly understandable that young people and the Marxist-leaning are drawn to him. Now he'll get his 4 years to FAFO. Reality is the best teacher of all, though it takes something extra to actually learn from it.
"Both irrelevant and threatening." I see throngs of young people chanting murderous slogans, preventing other people from going about their lives, breaking into buildings, and feeling so righteous that they can't tolerate a civil discussion with someone who might bring other facts and issues to bear. They demonstrate their ignorance about the history of the middle east and repeat demonstrably false claims while gleaning all of their information from social media clans and ideologically-indoctrinating "education." In general, the Pro-Palestine movement in the West is irrelevant for resolving conflicts in the Middle East, because they are uninformed and morally compromised. Save Sudan movement, anyone? An actual genocide? No? Too boring? The activists are uninterested in Sudan because that conflict isn't being promoted with flashy memes nor are protests funded by the deep pockets of oil-producing Islamic nations who compete among themselves to 1) distract their miserable populations, and 2) parade their own bona fides. A big topic that needs a deep dive.
Does Jihad threaten the trust and peace that we seek between diverse groups in society? Yes. The Pro-Pali movement which supports terrorism mirrors the rise of... you-know-what. Masses of the willing ignorant are mobilized by dark-money players who have certain objectives. They are irrelevant because they are ignorant, and at the same time they threaten to undermine liberal society, also because they are ignorant. When people ask, "How could educated Germans fall into that thing in the 1930's?" A great question. And this is what it looks like.
I understand, to an extent, what you mean by both threatening and irrelevant. I disagree, though, because the moment something becomes threatening it also becomes relevant. This doesn't mean it is bound to succeed, of course.
I still think this essay misses the mark. I don't think most (or many) leftists really want a socialist system, and are not Marxists, or even know exactly what those things mean. I also don't think it's about wokeness, in this case. Yes, it may very well be about becoming hoodwinked by a charlatan (and I suspect that's what Mamdani is), but I think it stems from naiveté far more than "I majored in feminist studies and can't find a job so gimme gimme." It makes a lot of sense that people people would not want Cuomo (although I'd have likely voted for him and then gone home and taken a long shower). I just don't think those reasons can be boiled down to being woke Marxist extremists.
Finally, I don't get the fear about jihad at all. I think that's very knee jerk and alarmist. I'm married to a fairly secular Muslim (ok, so I'm biased, I get it), and her interest in Mamdani has nothing to do with religion. I think the vast majority of his supporters are the same. The man himself is so woke and liberal that he'd never be able to mesh with religious extremists. The dangers he represents are much more mundane.
Sorry, this was very rambling, so apologies if I missed the mark.
Thank you Steven for your reply. These days I shudder with apprehension when I get a reply, but you pass my “real human being” Turing test! I appreciate that most Muslims are moderates who aren’t trying to get to heaven by killing infidels, but it is the Jihadis who create a heap of trouble. In the West we discount such notions because we prefer to understand conflict in terms of the Haves and the Have-Nots and this makes us blind to other ways of seeing. I also appreciate your perspective on why people voted for Mamjani.
Yes, AI is a constant terror in these areas. It's why I rarely engage with brief, boiler plate comments. You just never know. I like your point about our view of conflicts as between "haves and have nots." I don't know if I agree, but you may be right. I had not thought along those lines before. Zealotry is definitely rare in the West. Still, despite Mamdani's stupid "globalize the intifada" claim, I think he's very far removed from the reality of extremism. I think he likes it as a slogan, as do his followers, just like they love "from the river to the sea." All talk, ultimately. But who knows; I've been wrong many times.
People are upset Cuomo for his handling of the covid pandemic, a fact you overlooked. Also, to think that his voters are just some well educated person roleplaying as socialists is an incredibly gross statement. I don't think you understand new yorkers are seeing the failures of capitalism, how cold the free market is to the average citizen, especially towards the younger ones and minorities and how especially, israel is comitting a genocide. To be frank, Mamdani is quite soft when it comes to his policies and seems comitted to democracy. If anything, the thing that might happen to him is another Allende case
As long as I am here I have read Circe but not Shield of Achilles so maybe Madeline Miller managed it better than me. Also I am biased by some Straussian commentaries on Plato that say that he is against Achilles as a great hero. BUT I do not see how the world of the Illiad benefits women in general. (Some patriarchal societies offer women some benefits such as security for their families in order to gain their consent.) The entire story is put in motion by women as a thing to fight over and when Hector and Andromache are together we see what Hector has sacrificed but human women as opposed to goddesses are not actors in the particular part of the Trojan War story that Homer has told here. This is a story about the kind of heroism and valor that Achilles had and what it means.
You would need the intersection of younger people and people with incomes under $30,000 probably. NYT had a hilarious story about the contrast between the apartment where Mamdani lives in Astoria and how it was advertised (it has a window!) and Gracie Mansion. The idea that you have to live in a city like NYT or San Francisco to pursue big dreams and possibly in the place you came from you would be very rich but you are hustling only to make rent on an apartment like this can be very powerful.
I just had this idea this minute so I haven't done the analysis but you could look at the Mamdani vote by neighborhood and see what the average rent is. Those people making under $30,000 may be in the last vestiges of rent controlled apartments :)
There is a weird presentation here of the data surrounding income. It's true that, according to the CNN exit polls you linked to, people earning under 30k do have a slight preference for Cuomo (47% for Cuomo to Mumdani's 41%), but in the very same article, it mentions that Mumdani wins the next bracket up, the 30k-50k crowd by a margin of 51%-40 % in favor of Mamdani. The final result for folks making under 50k a year ends with Mumdani beating Cuomo 47% - 44%. It's weird to so blatantly misrepresent the data you linked yourself, and makes you look like as much of an ideological hack as those you are arguing against. Harold Bloom did this shit way better like 30 years ago.
You are smarter than Peter! This is in deed more about a liberal brain virus injected by professors than housing. Are academics even lower humans than the media? It seems to me that the media are dumb, obedient servants. Academics on the other hand are the evil strategists.
This is a great description of how luxury beliefs arise, and what happens when they begin to dominate the election cycle.
I am no fan of Mamdani (and no longer live in NYC). But I am a center-left 45 year old male who has generally admired Bernie Sanders and hoped for the implementation of various socialist (or socialist-adjacent) policies which I believe would benefit everyone. This is nothing new; it didn't arise with, or form out of, wokeness. Ultimately, as much as I am loathe to defend Gen Z, I think this essay does them an injustice. Not everything can be boiled down to woke vs. non-woke culture wars. Believing that healthcare is far too expensive and that the income gap is astoundingly unjust, that a living wage in NYC or the west coast is almost impossible to find, that the wealthy use tax loopholes and various methods to not pay their fair share of taxes does not make someone useful woke idiot for evil communists. Again, I do not like Mamdani, would not have voted for him, and I've spoken strongly about this with people (ahem, my wife), who do admire him. We all want to see the worst in our opponents, and the echo chamber of social media fuels that, from Truth Social to Bluesky to the darkest corners of Reddit. But it's not helpful to resort to the most extreme caricature of our opponents, whether it's seeing fascism in anything even slightly to the right, or woke excess and coddling in anything even slightly to the left.
One of the best things you’ve written. What you’re talking about is not found merely among young people. I encounter it among those quite a bit older as well. On the one hand you have people who have clearly prospered under a capitalist economy who consistently vote for those who’d cripple it because they are
supporting “ good values”. And of course you also have those who simply resent others having more than them because it’s “ not fair “. Your Genealogy of Morals citation is right on point!
Hi Liza,
I'm thinking alot about this issue and plan to write a post about defining Manhattan elites. I find that writers (not you) throw around the word elite to mean anyone they don't like.
As for resentment by the young I think it's absolutely there because we live in a city and at a time when some Gen Z and Millennials are doing great. And those are the peers that cause the most resentment. But that resentment is embarrassing to admit so other labels are chosen as targets.
This is not about greed and resentment. You've said that people throw around the word "elite" for things they don't like, but it's also true that people throw around the word "woke" for things they don't like. NYC (and other cities in the US) is broken. It is unlivable for most "middle class" folks. I've lived there and I know. I'm not saying Mamdani will fix that (he almost certainly won't, and it's naive to believe he will), but just because people are angry about paying 3,000 a month for a shoebox in Queens doesn't make them resentful lazy bums.
I was with you until you said, "with the proper education, determination, and mindset, any American can realistically make their first million dollars." This simply isn't true. I will never make a million dollars (let alone a million pounds sterling here in Britain, which is significantly more). Between autism and mental health issues, it's just not going to happen, despite my elite higher education. It doesn't mean I'm lazy or lacking persistence.
I am not resentful. I count the very real blessings (financial and especially non-monetary) that I have. But I also know my limits and that some of them at least are inherent in my brain-wiring, not my character.
This isn't the fault of capitalism. I accept that there are winners and losers in the capitalist system, a system that produces innovation and wealth far beyond any other economic system, and if it has its caprices, those caprices are worth bearing for the sake of the benefits brought by the system as a whole. But, please, let's not pretend that the only losers in a capitalist system are those who were too lazy or badly educated to succeed. Some people are just unlucky and it's OK to acknowledge that.
Thiel is right because young people feel frustrated that they go to college and get good jobs but they do not make it economically. When earlier generations did this, they did in fact make it and that often included home ownership and doing better than their parents. I’m a boomer and I honestly feel that millennials and now gen z are not doing better. The Great Recession, the pandemic and other economic shocks clearly have caused frustration and this is expressed by support for candidates who want action that will reverse the trend of rising inequality . It’s not resentment of the rich per se but a system that has led to life becoming less affordable and obvious flaws in our ability to promise young people a good life like we used to. And socialists like Mamdani and Sanders seem more and more able to actually provide this. Forget about Nietzsche, I doubt if he has much influence anymore 🤨
If you are correct that Gen Z's support for socialism is based purely upon resentment over people having things they don't, then there is no satisifying or reasoning with them. No matter what you give them, there will always be someone who has something they don't. Resentment is a spiritual and cultural dead end.
I think you are likely correct about Gen Z supporters of Mamdani. I do not however think that the Gen Z of NYC are indicative of the rest of the country. Few things in NYC ever are. If your assessment is correct, then Mamdani is destined to fail and be more hated by his supporters than the people he designates as scapegoats. Nothing he does is going to satisfy them and he will inevitably be seen as a failure and worse a traitor by these sorts of supporters.
Similar to his clear model, Barack Obama. Although Obama refused to endorse Mamdani, the latter is a clear evolution of the former, just more empty and even more inevitably to disappoint his supporters. By exit polls, the latter largely consist of the downwardly mobile children of the upper-middle and upper classes, subject to expensive and toxic academic brainwashing.
Thiel's clear mistake is confusing mere conditions with aspirations. The lower-middle and working classss or the poor are worse off in the strictly economic sense than the Mamdani voters. But the latter have expectations and aspirations that they feel entitled to that the former lack. That feeling of entitlement is the key to understanding the younger upper middle class.
It's summed up in the concept of "elite overproduction," a central fact of our time and well-known to historians as a factor in revolutions. Mamdani himself has never had a significant job, even of a purely political kind. But he does feel entitled.
"prefers renting over buying"?
"Israel did it in 70 years"?
Israel is the recipient of more aid money than almost any other country.
They didn't make their own socialist system, they used chugging (charity mugging) at a large scale to afford for their population what the donors don't provide their own citizens.
This wasn't an essay, it was ego masturbation aimed at a flag.
This is actually untrue. But you know that, don't you? If you would like, I would be happy to share the numbers. In a nutshell, aid to Israel is overwhelmingly military, and it is designed to make possible the huge commitment of the US to making a profit by selling military wares to Arab countries that have been Israel's enemies. The economic component of aid to Israel has not been a factor for a very long time, and even then it was mostly designed to help Israel to pay interest on loans it had to take in order to purchase sufficient arms after 1967. While the aid is much appreciated, let's not pretend that it is in any way a charitable exercise.
Your politics doesn't enhance your judgement, nor your character.
What I wrote wasn't an opinion, but rather a very soft take on the absurd rogue state that is Israel.
And the idea that the US supports Arab states before Israel is such provable fiction I'm afraid prevents you from being taken at all seriously.
But you know that, don't you?
You don't understand. Let me explain. America does not "support" Arab states. It sells them weapons. It sells them unimaginably huge amounts of weapons. What the Carter Administration understood in the 1970s, as it dealt with the Arab Oil Embargo, was that selling weapons was a great way to get money back from the huge transfer of assets to the Arab world that was accelerating at the time. The problem was that the Israelis could not match those purchases and probably still cannot. The Arabs had convinced the Americans that if they had weapons-superiority they would launch war on Israel. Such a war, especially if it succeeded, might well lead to vast harm to the international economy. Think of battles fought over the oil producing fields of Saudia and you get a sense of what concerned the Carter Administration. The "aid" given to Israel was largely military, in the form of actual armaments, but even the aid classified as "civilian" was largely devoted to helping the Israelis to pay the interest on loans that they had already been forced to take in order to purchase weapons to meet the threat of Arab armament. Those interest payments were paid in full, which is why the "civilian" component was allowed to lapse. In dollar terms, the calculation was that every dollar of aid to Israel would allow three dollars of arms purchases by Arab states at war with Israel (including from countries outside the US). As usual, US allies like France and Britain hitched a ride. If you look at the totals over the half century since then, US arms sales to the Arabs come to about $600 billion and aid to Israel comes to about $174 billion.
Two further points are important to grasp. First, the Israelis actually did better than the original estimates suggested, since French and British sales to those countries came to about $400 billion. That is without taking into account the mammoth Soviet transfers of weapons to countries of the region.
Second, this was not about foreign aid, but about American weapons firms doing business and making money. It was about preventing a world economic collapse that might result from destruction of the oil fields.
To date, the strategy seems to have worked.
You’re an absolute fucking idiot.
If all you have is insults without holding a position, it's a sign of an absence of conviction.
Arguing with idiots is a waste of time.
Ironic projection from the guy arguing with strangers online, who's do smart he can't come up with any ideas
It's not a "socialist" phenomenon. GenZ spent our lives being told "Go to college, or you'll end up flipping burgers." When we do that, and get out into a job market that is completely ruined: "What, are you too good to work a fast food job?" Those of us who did what we were told have been completely screwed over, ask any CS grad from the past two years. The American Dream is unattainable for lany fo us, so we turn to extremist politics, either on the Left or Right.
While I largely agree with this perspective, it’s troubling to me that you seem to be holding Nietzsche up as the catalyst for a new moral revolution. When Nietzchean supermen have taken over, it hasn’t generally gone very well.
These generations of the educationally-indoctrinated do not understand the difference between equality and equity. They regard differences between people as primarily an effect of cultural and class-based exploitation. They gladly render themselves into confabulators of the most emotionally-manipulative, simple-minded interpretations of the socio-political scene. And they have such fun together, participating in hysterical demonstrations and memes, managing to be irrelevant and threatening at the same time. After all, one must demonstrate one’s bona fides.
Spot on! I agree. “both threatening and irrelevant”.
I wrote recently that Gen Zyklon (Gen Z) is more likely to offer me free euthanasia than pay my earned Social Security.
Kind of the same spirit, no?
No, this isn't correct. It's not about equity vs. equality. It's about large cities being unlivable due to cost of living. No one can look at NYC and think it's OK for rents to be what they are (and forget about buying!) Pointing this doesn't make someone a woke idiot. I don't think Mamdani will fix this (or that he even has the ability to), but it's understandable for young people in NYC to grab onto someone who says they can. Being angry about the state of things there (or any big city) isn't just demonstrating one's bona fides. It's showing that they are directly affected by the system, which is badly in need of repair.
Also, I don't see how you can be both irrelevant AND threatening. That makes no sense.
Hi Steven, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I hope you don't mind my making a lengthy answer.
I and you and most sensible people agree that large cities in the US— with a few exceptions— have become unaffordable to low and even medium-income households. The question is, "where are the answers to be found?"
Is the answer a socialist government?
Our current democratic government, at the Federal, state, and municipal level, already has many popular socialist features and innovations, such as social security, medicare, state universities, state healthcare programs, public transit, municipal housing authorities... ChatGPT gives me a long list when I ask it to show me current socialism-inflected policies. We do not live in an exclusively capitalist world. Most citizens want some measure of social safety net without choking off innovation, investment, opportunity, and wealth-creation. We fund programs and redistribute wealth through taxation, user fees, govt-run enterprises, municipal bonds, federal grants to states, public-private partnerships... thanks, ChatGPT. I'm abbreviating the supreme summarizer.
All of this is to say that there are many extant mechanisms in place for improving the affordability of housing, transportation, and childcare without instituting a revolution. Is our current system bogged down in competing interests, corruption, and hidebound regulations? Hell, yeah. Is it because of our inequitable society? Or is it something else? This is a major question which Mamdani claims to have the best answer for.
Some of Mamdani's platform sounds reasonable, some sounds fanciful, and some sounds outright jihadist. "Globalize the intifada," anyone? Ban Israeli businesses, and any business that does business with an Israeli business...? And this will help NYC, exactly, how?
I find it perfectly understandable that young people and the Marxist-leaning are drawn to him. Now he'll get his 4 years to FAFO. Reality is the best teacher of all, though it takes something extra to actually learn from it.
"Both irrelevant and threatening." I see throngs of young people chanting murderous slogans, preventing other people from going about their lives, breaking into buildings, and feeling so righteous that they can't tolerate a civil discussion with someone who might bring other facts and issues to bear. They demonstrate their ignorance about the history of the middle east and repeat demonstrably false claims while gleaning all of their information from social media clans and ideologically-indoctrinating "education." In general, the Pro-Palestine movement in the West is irrelevant for resolving conflicts in the Middle East, because they are uninformed and morally compromised. Save Sudan movement, anyone? An actual genocide? No? Too boring? The activists are uninterested in Sudan because that conflict isn't being promoted with flashy memes nor are protests funded by the deep pockets of oil-producing Islamic nations who compete among themselves to 1) distract their miserable populations, and 2) parade their own bona fides. A big topic that needs a deep dive.
Does Jihad threaten the trust and peace that we seek between diverse groups in society? Yes. The Pro-Pali movement which supports terrorism mirrors the rise of... you-know-what. Masses of the willing ignorant are mobilized by dark-money players who have certain objectives. They are irrelevant because they are ignorant, and at the same time they threaten to undermine liberal society, also because they are ignorant. When people ask, "How could educated Germans fall into that thing in the 1930's?" A great question. And this is what it looks like.
That's what I see.
I understand, to an extent, what you mean by both threatening and irrelevant. I disagree, though, because the moment something becomes threatening it also becomes relevant. This doesn't mean it is bound to succeed, of course.
I still think this essay misses the mark. I don't think most (or many) leftists really want a socialist system, and are not Marxists, or even know exactly what those things mean. I also don't think it's about wokeness, in this case. Yes, it may very well be about becoming hoodwinked by a charlatan (and I suspect that's what Mamdani is), but I think it stems from naiveté far more than "I majored in feminist studies and can't find a job so gimme gimme." It makes a lot of sense that people people would not want Cuomo (although I'd have likely voted for him and then gone home and taken a long shower). I just don't think those reasons can be boiled down to being woke Marxist extremists.
Finally, I don't get the fear about jihad at all. I think that's very knee jerk and alarmist. I'm married to a fairly secular Muslim (ok, so I'm biased, I get it), and her interest in Mamdani has nothing to do with religion. I think the vast majority of his supporters are the same. The man himself is so woke and liberal that he'd never be able to mesh with religious extremists. The dangers he represents are much more mundane.
Sorry, this was very rambling, so apologies if I missed the mark.
Thank you Steven for your reply. These days I shudder with apprehension when I get a reply, but you pass my “real human being” Turing test! I appreciate that most Muslims are moderates who aren’t trying to get to heaven by killing infidels, but it is the Jihadis who create a heap of trouble. In the West we discount such notions because we prefer to understand conflict in terms of the Haves and the Have-Nots and this makes us blind to other ways of seeing. I also appreciate your perspective on why people voted for Mamjani.
Yes, AI is a constant terror in these areas. It's why I rarely engage with brief, boiler plate comments. You just never know. I like your point about our view of conflicts as between "haves and have nots." I don't know if I agree, but you may be right. I had not thought along those lines before. Zealotry is definitely rare in the West. Still, despite Mamdani's stupid "globalize the intifada" claim, I think he's very far removed from the reality of extremism. I think he likes it as a slogan, as do his followers, just like they love "from the river to the sea." All talk, ultimately. But who knows; I've been wrong many times.
People are upset Cuomo for his handling of the covid pandemic, a fact you overlooked. Also, to think that his voters are just some well educated person roleplaying as socialists is an incredibly gross statement. I don't think you understand new yorkers are seeing the failures of capitalism, how cold the free market is to the average citizen, especially towards the younger ones and minorities and how especially, israel is comitting a genocide. To be frank, Mamdani is quite soft when it comes to his policies and seems comitted to democracy. If anything, the thing that might happen to him is another Allende case
As long as I am here I have read Circe but not Shield of Achilles so maybe Madeline Miller managed it better than me. Also I am biased by some Straussian commentaries on Plato that say that he is against Achilles as a great hero. BUT I do not see how the world of the Illiad benefits women in general. (Some patriarchal societies offer women some benefits such as security for their families in order to gain their consent.) The entire story is put in motion by women as a thing to fight over and when Hector and Andromache are together we see what Hector has sacrificed but human women as opposed to goddesses are not actors in the particular part of the Trojan War story that Homer has told here. This is a story about the kind of heroism and valor that Achilles had and what it means.
Nice interview with Republic of Letters.
You would need the intersection of younger people and people with incomes under $30,000 probably. NYT had a hilarious story about the contrast between the apartment where Mamdani lives in Astoria and how it was advertised (it has a window!) and Gracie Mansion. The idea that you have to live in a city like NYT or San Francisco to pursue big dreams and possibly in the place you came from you would be very rich but you are hustling only to make rent on an apartment like this can be very powerful.
I just had this idea this minute so I haven't done the analysis but you could look at the Mamdani vote by neighborhood and see what the average rent is. Those people making under $30,000 may be in the last vestiges of rent controlled apartments :)
There is a weird presentation here of the data surrounding income. It's true that, according to the CNN exit polls you linked to, people earning under 30k do have a slight preference for Cuomo (47% for Cuomo to Mumdani's 41%), but in the very same article, it mentions that Mumdani wins the next bracket up, the 30k-50k crowd by a margin of 51%-40 % in favor of Mamdani. The final result for folks making under 50k a year ends with Mumdani beating Cuomo 47% - 44%. It's weird to so blatantly misrepresent the data you linked yourself, and makes you look like as much of an ideological hack as those you are arguing against. Harold Bloom did this shit way better like 30 years ago.