WHITHER THE DEMOCRATS?

JOE BIDEN’S “FIRSTS” ARE PUTTING AMERICA LAST

A few months ago Biden proudly proffered yet another “first” in the person of the first woman to head the US Navy, despite resistance from his own officials. This individual might well be qualified, but we’ll never know. For as with all such appointments, being selected in this way creates a lasting stigma. Due to blatant and unashamed policies being served up  based upon attributes rather than competence, any pretense of a merit system, fundamental to our way of life, no longer exists. 

But the consequences of this kind of policy are disastrous not just in performance of duties but in recruitment as well. There are good reasons why white men are not signing up for the military in ways they traditionally have.The message is clear to them, and it would be folly to join under this regime. Why does that matter?  War casualties and deaths have disproportionately been white. These tend to be people from small towns and suburbs still imbued with an older patriotism, who sign up for frontline duty and hazardous assignments in significantly higher numbers than any other group. If you don’t have frontline troops in sufficient numbers you can’t win a war, and pray that we don’t wind up in one under this government. 

THE TRANS DEMOCRATS

That may finally begin to change, as Joe Biden, Maker of Firsts, has really outdone himself this time. Incredibly, he has proclaimed this Sunday, Easter Sunday of all days, as “Trans Day of Visibility,” complete with color displays on national monuments. Buildings once adorned with crosses for Easter will instead now be adorned with this identity display. This tone deafness isn’t satire. It is real. Insanity is now official policy. 

Democrats are expert in demography. They are a transactional party, with the message being, vote for us and we’ll give you stuff. They create and combine interest groups into “coalitions” that can win elections. But what have they done here? Church attendance and formal religion may be in relative decline, but this is still a country that has an overwhelming Christian majority. Like others who aren’t very religious I find this highly offensive as well. Throwing Christians under the bus in favor of Trans people has to be one of the dumbest missteps of all time. This is what happens when radical ideologues control the institutions and set the agenda. 

Trans people, on the other hand, are a tiny minority the left is obsessed with. I recall an early Trump State of the Union speech in which he touted economic progress and things that matter to ordinary people. The Democratic response at that time was to put up a goofy Kennedy kid who began talking about the problems of trans children, and so forth. This left a lot of the audience scratching their heads and wondering what the hell he was talking about. 

Now however, having been subject to constant bombardment from the establishment, the public is more aware and not at all happy with it. How on earth can a party that stresses “women’s issues” be so bent on destroying women’s sports? This ideology represents no one, yet the rotten elite across the board are all in with it. Repression and fear are the tools that keep hapless institutional employees from expressing themselves, but many are chafing under this regime and may yet express it at the ballot box. That’s assuming, of course, that opposition has the presence of mind  to connect the Democratic Party directly with what they have wrought. Where are all the rational liberals, people who should know better but have allowed themselves to be steamrolled by radicals? 

I truly loathe dividing us into phony groups but that is what the Democrats have done with incessant identity politics. Yet despite the high level of unpopularity of “woke” policies, they have paid no price and gotten away with it. That is because most of the public has not connected all the weirdness directly to the Democrats. The left loves things like “consciousness raising,” and have done quite a job of it here, only not the way they intended. They have in fact primarily raised the consciousness of people who find these things objectionable and are reacting accordingly. If this carries over to the ballot box the Democrats are in big trouble, and deservedly so. 

AN EVENTFUL DAY IN WASHINGTON

Two events of this day in Washington will resonate for years to come. One was unexpectedly reassuring  for anyone concerned about the state of our political institutions. The other was, unfortunately, depressing and potentially disastrous.

Listening to the Supreme Court justices question the man trying to defend Colorado’s (and for that matter other states) arbitrary removal of a presidential candidate from the ballot was informative, even enlightening and inspiring. All of the justices asked cogent questions, and postulated “what-ifs” were this kind of action was to be allowed. Needless to say other states could then go their own way on balloting as well. 

They all were clearly being detached and objective in their statements, and devoid of any political or ideological blinders. I was pleasantly surprised to see both the liberal and conservative justices mostly consonant in their queries, and treating the subject at hand as a matter of law and justice without regard to the particular political context. It certainly reassuring to see this level of professionalism in our justice system, at least at the highest level. There is clearly a lot more to be done to restore confidence in lower levels where power has been abused, or inconsistently applied. 

Attempts to alter or restructure the court because some people are upset about a particular decision, is ill-advised. You don’t upend the overall constitutional design because a case didn’t go your way. Now, more than ever, we can see the value of the wisdom of our founders in making these lifetime appointments. That is the only way to assure that personal interests or beliefs are set aside when external pressure manifests itself, because the justices cannot be easily threatened with a ruined career. That is what enables them to step back and see things from a broader, long-term standpoint.

This is clear in the way the court deliberates. They necessarily must see things from the position of how it effects the overall process, rather than the particulars of a case. For the pendulum often swings from one side to another. Even though a particular case outcome may be perceived to be detrimental to a particular heated stance, the justices know that things can change over time, so that the roles of the disputants can be completely reversed over time. 

Consider where this particular case positions each side. There is a clear ideological anomaly. The Democrats are essentially arguing for state’s rights vis a vis the federal government, which they usually oppose,  while Republicans are arguing for federal primacy in this instance, which is inconsistent with their usual position. Only the Supreme Court can be detached enough to see this in a broader, constitutional context. The court took a major step today in demonstrating how the system should work, and though a decision is still pending, the overall sentiment of the justices is fairly clear.

The other item, the report of the Special Counsel on President Biden’s handling of classified documents, is far more disturbing. It is not the particulars of the documents that is troubling, but rather the devastating conclusions regarding his mental health and competency.  It was only further compounded by his blustering press conference this evening. My own sense is that his handlers couldn’t control him this time because of how angry he was, so he ignored their advice and decided to storm out to the podium. But rather than setting the record straight the way he thought he would, his dismal performance  only made things worse by confirming the efficacy of the observations made in the report. 

It isn’t necessary to deliberate how precarious he has made things, not just for the USA, but for the entire world. It is compounded by the fact that we really don’t know who is running the country now, or perhaps even for much of his term. What he did do was enable what effectively has been a radical coup over the Democratic Party, with disastrous policy consequences that have seriously alienated a solid majority of the country. This is all on the leadership of that party for failing to address this problem, and especially on his selfish handlers, for hiding the truth and propping him up in order to maintain their own grip on power. 

There were already ample conditions based on his action or inaction in maintaining the territorial integrity of the country, but the votes aren’t there for impeachment. However, they should at least see this crisis as an opportunity to now deal with a very serious problem. If they instead go about attacking the prosecutor, (who was appointed by his own justice department) in an effort to delegitimize his report, or attempt to ride it out, relying on a pliable media to make it disappear, it won’t work. They will not only seriously erode their own prospects, but also make them culpable in this disaster. 

Even if you loathe Donald Trump, who by no means is empowered by these conditions, that is not the real choice that has to be made. Indeed it is conceivable, if not likely, that neither man will be on the ballot by November. The problem is more fundamental, and apolitical. We have a President who clearly lacks the cognitive competence to remain in office. We see him further deteriorating before our eyes, as does the entire world, including a number of powerful bad actors. They would be foolish not to seize the opportunity afforded them by a dysfunctional government, and worse, if they do act, we are not in a position to do a damn thing about it. We may further stumble into a war that no one wants, and which we are simply not prepared for. If this situation is not ameliorated soon, there are surely darker days ahead. 

THE PARTISAN PERSECUTION OF DONALD TRUMP

 It is now ludicrous to suggest that there is any longer an impartial system of justice in this country. It should be obvious to everyone in the partisan legal harassment of Donald Trump, especially in places like here in New York. In addition to the local Manhattan DA and state AG, he faced a ridiculous civil suit from a woman claiming he had in some way harmed her decades ago. The jury of ruled against him in short order to no one’s surprise. The question his whether there is any legitimacy at all to this legal system. 

There was and remains zero chance that Trump could ever get a fair hearing from a Manhattan jury. That was my own experience  over two decades ago under another kind of political attack when I realized there was no way I could get a fair verdict in Manhattan and had to settle for an agreement. These are people with a visceral hatred of Donald Trump and incapable of fair judgement due to ideological blinders. They see all aspects of life as political and so have politicized everything, thereby ruining everything. 

Does anyone think the verdict would not be different almost anywhere else in the country, or even elsewhere in New York?  Manhattan is out of touch not only with the rest of the country but even the rest of the city and certainly the rest of the state.This was the only borough that voted for some obscure left-wing woman instead of Mayor Adams in the Democratic primary. There is not a single elected Republican official left in Manhattan at the city, state, or federal level (where once there was a congressman, state senator, and a couple of state assembly and city council representatives). The Manhattan GOP once exercised disproportionate influence. Now it basically no longer exists. Unfortunately Manhattan media also dominates communications in this country, in their parochial worldview, warping perceptions of who we really are as a people. 

I had for a time hoped that someone else might be the Republican nominee for President, only because they might possibly win with a larger margin and lower the temperature, but now given the constant harassment by a legal system that no longer has much legitimacy left Trump may be the only one who is stalwart enough to rectify the situation and clean house. It is indeed ironic that throughout his entire term of office he never once abused his power or used the government to pursue political enemies, while the Democrats have been doing so constantly thereby undermining the entire justice system. Trump may be the only one to set things right; the only other possibility would be Robert Kennedy Jr. who is equally loathed by the establishment that is doing its best to marginalize or ignore him because they know that he, like Trump is willing to take on the rotten elite that is ruining this country and bring about real reform.

 I don’t think that Trump should have participated in any of this political  litigation. He should have refused to recognize the legitimacy of it, thereby unmasking the partisan rot and leaving the left powerless to do anything about it. Had he remained in Florida Governor DeSantis would never have extradited him to a hostile jurisdiction. By cooperating to any degree Trump is confirming the legitimacy of a rotten system that no longer has any. But for once he took the more restrained option, probably to avoid a total break at this time, but if he is elected again there is no doubt that he will clean house this time around. 

By so blatantly persecuting Trump the left has strengthened him immeasurably. It is time that other potential candidates step back and save their fire for another day, unless something really does reduce his viability, which seems less and likely, but in that case they could always step in later. But given the serious injustices being perpetrated at this time there must be solidarity. There was a chance that he might have faded away, but by so grossly and unjustly overplaying their hand they have restored him to the center of everything and richly deserve whatever consequences result. 

IS NEW YORK OVER?

 Like many others, I’ve often thought about leaving New York due to deteriorating conditions that have steadily gotten worse following a long, continuous period of decline. I Indeed I even wrote a monograph called The Decline of the Empire State when I was the founding director of the NY State Republican Policy Committee, and generated some programs to reduce the burden on taxpayers the last time we held any power here. But that was over two decades ago, and for most of this century things have steadily gotten worse. Taxes are high, crime is rising, the quality of life is declining, and we have been hemorrhaging people for decades, mitigated slightly only by immigration. One can only wonder if there is any future left here now?

The decline is heartbreaking because it didn’t have to happen, and would not have happened had there been better stewardship, but the corrupt mismanagement and political rot runs so deep that the chances of ever reversing the trend grow dimmer. When I wrote of the decline in the past I was looking at the relative position of the state. Once it truly was the Empire State, the biggest and most dynamic in the nation. When I was a kid it seemed as though everything was here,  including the headquarters of most large corporations, many now long gone. New York was first in everything. But in the 1960s California passed it by, then Texas, and now even Florida has a greater population. But it is telling that the budget of the latter, despite a larger, growing population is half that of New York.

Despite the abysmal degree of chronic incompetence and corruption, for the longest time I have been reluctant to seriously consider leaving places I know so intimately and such great detail, and if you’re from the city, everywhere else seems slow. So I think this has always been my home and I should stay and fight for it. While Democrats have a big advantage in party registration in New York, it is in no way as “progressive” as many people think. It has little of the far out lunacy of places on the west coast, and there is still a significant segment of conservative Democrats who stay registered as such so as to be able to vote in the primary elections, especially in New York City.  

But if Lee Zeldin can’t win this election then no Republican ever can, and we are doomed to unfettered one party rule. There will be no check on the irresponsible legislature, no barrier to the ever-expanding state with ever diminishing resources as the most productive taxpayers and enterprises accelerate their departure. This will inevitably lead to insolvency- and yes, New York State can and will go bankrupt, crime will continue to increase, and day to day life will become ever more miserable for most people remaining here. 

That is why the upcoming election is the most critical in the history of the state. It is our last chance to stop, and even reverse the decline, and truly begin a new era of renewal and reform. Many Democrats know this as well, but it is going to require that they abandon the party regime responsible for the awful situation we find ourselves in, and vote this time around for Lee Zeldin. He is appealing on so many levels, facing a weak candidate and unusually favorable prospects based on objective conditions. He is an outstanding candidate who is poised to save our state from the disastrous prospects awaiting us. 

Things don’t have to be the way they are now.  We can become so much better. New York is a vast and beautiful state with abundant resources and great historic places, and extraordinary, untapped potential. With competent leadership  it would still have a good chance of recovery and renewal. Electing Lee Zeldin as Governor is the only way forward now, and voting this Election Day is critical for all our futures. 

AN UNMITIGATED CATASTROPHE

No one voted for Joe Biden; they voted against Donald Trump, who only lost the election due mostly to his lack of self-control and inability to keep his mouth shut, in spite of a record of considerable accomplishment. Like most people I was prepared to accept what promised to be a bland, gray, moderate administration. It was obvious he would be the dumbest president since Gerald Ford, but otherwise relatively harmless. So after many decades of struggle I looked forward to turning my attention to long-delayed more satisfying pursuits, leaving it to younger people to carry on. 

Instead we found ourselves in the unusual position of having a government to the left of all of our allies. From the outset  there has been an ever-accelerating disaster unfolding along with the loss of everything we fought for, everything we achieved over many decades of effort with a great loss of blood and treasure that I never dreamed would ever happen. 

–From day one Biden began his reign with a series of boxes to be filled by every conceivable minority regardless of merit, to the point where supposedly “under-represented” groups are now over-represented! He wanted to be able to announce as many irrelevant “firsts” as possible while implementing blatantly anti-white policies across the board, creating yet more division. The result has been most mediocre, incompetent cabinet in American history. 

-He empowered the radical left that hardly any one supports to run rampant across our institutions with offensive, insane “woke” policies. 

-With his blessing they knowingly and deliberately ruined our economy by sabotaging our oil and gas industries in the name of a phony “climate crisis” without any remotely feasible alternative. This was a precipitous attack on the lifeblood of the world economy and along with incredibly massive, unnecessary, and wasteful spending they  instigated the inflation that we are now experiencing, while spreading misery around the world due to their fanatical ideological blindness.

-They managed to ruin our standing in the world via weak fecklessness. Sadly the horribly bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan is fading in memory, even though he basically handed the country over to the Taliban, left them billions of prime military hardware, ignored our allies, and royally screwed a lot of people who had cooperated with us. 

-If not for Joe Biden the Russians would not have invaded Ukraine, which he blithely dismissed as just a small incursion initially, and effectively gave the go-ahead for that disaster. 

-The ascendance of the radical left has resulted in a sharp increase in crime in all of our large cities while undermining and demoralizing the police and allowing criminals to rampage with little fear of punishment.

-Worst of all he not only dismantled our southern border, but allowed, encouraged, and even provided to support for millions of people to flagrantly break our laws and illegally enter the country.  He has handed effective control of the border to Mexican cartels, who now profitably traffic in humans as well as narcotics, including the flood of Chinese produced fentanyl, resulting in the death of over 100,000 Americans in a single year.  

The deliberate failure to maintain our territorial integrity alone is clearly grounds for the impeachment of both Biden and Harris, and this is on the Democrats for failing to do so themselves, or invoking the 25th amendment.* They have been consistently wrong about everything. Now, most people know how incompetent this regime is, and the radical left cannot now distance themselves from the monstrous disaster they themselves have engineered. Biden only facilitated their power grab, but the suffering now being experienced is primarily due to their unbound ideological lunacy, and they must be held accountable and never be allowed anywhere near power again. 

All this without even getting into the politicizing of “justice,” Hunter Biden’s antics, or a host of other infractions. When a government is this incompetent, it no longer has any legitimacy. Nor should anyone feel sorry for Biden’s cognitive decline, because he has proven himself to be little more than a nasty old grouch without any redeeming qualities. Unfortunately we aren’t even half way through this term, and unless we find a way to mitigate this catastrophe, more, and probably worse, is yet to come. 

*Regarding removing a president via the 25th amendment, it has to be seriously reconsidered. I don’t think anyone anticipated a situation where the President, the Vice-President, and the third in line Speaker of the house would all be unsuitable. If at least the congress changes hands then we might stand a chance with Kevin McCarthy instead of Pelosi but that’s the best we could hope for. 

THINGS ARE GOING TO GET WORSE

Things are going to get worse before they get better. Over a year ago some of us were predicting we were headed towards the present economic meltdown, but unfortunately there is yet more trouble, hardship, and uncertainty ahead. We saw it in the 1970s, with sky high interest rates, gas lines, record oil prices, and soaring inflation, wage and price controls, etc but the underlying conditions this time around are even worse, given the way trillions of dollars we didn’t have were profligately tossed away with very little to show for it, along with the government-induced sabotage of the economy. 

None of this had to be. There were no trends, “underlying causes,” things beyond our control, etc. This is a totally man-made disaster created by the execrable  Biden administration, which for purely ideological reasons based on fantasies about energy, deliberately sabotaged our domestic oil and gas production, and continues to do so to this day despite all of the damage and the human cost, while at the same time going begging to dictators and enemies around the world to produce more oil that is far more polluting than anything we produce here. This along with other “progressive” policies which have completely failed across the board, continue to make things worse. 

They and their collaborators in the media and woke corporations must pay for the damage they have done, but even if and when there is a change in congress in the next election and the Republicans gain control, we will still have two more years of the most feckless, incompetent, and venal administration in our history.  They will continue to have control over the levers of power unless they are removed from office. There are ample grounds for impeachment already, and the Democrats have been doubly derelict in their duty by failing to act on their own on this. But unless there are enough sane ones left, without some Democratic votes this will be difficult to realize, so there can be little in the way of immediate relief. The only other possibility may be for the congress to in effect set up a sort of shadow government, and drive this rotten regime into irrelevance. 

But fixing this mess is going to take time, which means that you can look forward to higher inflation across the board with continuously rising prices and high interest rates, a stock market in further decline, and outright recession, and resulting  stagflation. Because they profligately threw away trillions on nothing there is also little leeway left for government to come to the rescue now because they already spent the money, which leaves only an even worse alternative, namely inflating the currency even more to the point where it becomes worthless. 

This does not mean that things are hopeless. They will eventually get better, but not as long as the people who caused all of this in the first place and who continue to make it worse with everything they try are anywhere near power. There are things the next congress can and will do to ameliorate the situation, but unless and until profligate spending ends, oil and gas production resumes at full throttle, and decisions are again based on reality, not “progressive”ideological fantasies, economic improvement will be slow in coming. 

Sadly, this is only one element of the disaster we find ourselves in. We still have to deal with a disintegrating society, perverted culture, rising crime, millions of illegals flooding our country (who have been encouraged to think they have some sort of right to violate our laws and have no real attachment to this country the way legal immigrants do), record drug overdose deaths from fentanyl crossing a border that has been handed over to Mexican drug cartels and deliberately supplied by the Chinese Communists, along with a rotten elite deeply in bed with the latter, which is still below the surface because so many of them are compromised, as well as precarious international relations caused by the base weakness of the regime, etc. etc. The next congress will have a very full plate to contend with, and the question now is whether any group of people can possibly possess enough civic virtue to clean up this mess. 

More Funny Money

The government is going to be sending out another round of “stimulus” checks to some, but no all people that will be exceedingly generous. I’m not miffed because I’m not eligible to get anything, but because there is no rational basis whatsoever for this action at this time. This money, or should I say “funny money” is either created out of thin air by printing it, which means that the money you have is worth less (i.e. inflation), or it will be based on yet more debt that coming generations will have to pay, or out of higher taxes for those that can still pay. This Covid bonus is illegitimate and ill conceived. It should have been targeted only to those who have actually been hurt by government policies, i.e. the restaurant industry, at a far lower cost. The future of this country is being squandered by an incredibly wasteful array of ill-conceived spending, and this really tops it off. The spoils may be shared broadly but the cost will be born narrowly.

Furthermore this is a terrible precedent we are now, apparently getting used to. It does nothing but encourage dependency with a nod from your friendly Democratic Party representative. More and more the message from the Biden administration is clear: do what we tell you to do and we will take care of you. It is clearly a case of trying to entrap more people into dependency, and therefore into Democrat voters. It is a brilliantly insidious maneuver. Who is going to say no to free money?

The problem is that free money becomes funny money and the inflation we are seeing now will only get worse until the whole system collapses, unless we reverse course, which is going to be harder and harder to do. This kind of spending will only usher in 1970s level inflation, and nobody wants that.  

THE CHRONIC CAMPAIGN, ENDLESS EMAILS, AND MONEY ALL THE TIME

I am absolutely furious with the people running the Republican campaign organizations and the annoying WinRed that does the charges.  My mailbox is perpetually flooded with email several times a day. There are literally a dozen or more from Donald Trump alone. Then there is everyone else running for office because the congressional campaign committees gave out my email.  

I of course I  finally took steps to stop this by telling them remove me from their lists but then they simply shifted over to another mailing list and were back again. This goes on continuously even though the next election is still almost a year away, due to the permanent campaign we have to endure. Worse, some of the wording is downright offensive for failing to respond. They have also cried wolf too many times, always falsely claiming they are behind in fundraising. 

As a result I sometimes miss important mail like notices and bills, etc. because of the nonstop flood. What I am going to have to do is make a new mailbox just for bills and other important things. Mind you it’s no secret I have been a lifelong conservative, but I have had it with this. I just don’t know what they think they are accomplishing by annoying people this way. 

I’m even getting mail from the Democrats now due to a publication giving out my address! A good part of the reason for all of this is tunnel vision, that is more and more ubiquitous across the board in today’s society. By that I mean the organizations are now so laser-focused on particular objectives that the staff pull out all the stops to try and achieve them without any consideration of anything else. The campaign people want to raise as much money as they can and nothing else much matters. 

The larger problem, of course, is money and the endless quest for it. Politicians spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising, and most of them hate it. Yet even those who most fervently claim to want campaign finance reform alway make sure to leave loopholes for themselves in any legislation that passes. The reality is it is almost impossible to get money out of the process as everyone is in on it, i.e. the pious media certainly does not want to lose all the money they collect in advertising. 

But what we can do, and what we desperately need to bring about is election reform. A good part of the problem would be mitigated if we limited the amount of time that campaigns can occur in, which would certainly spare us a lot of the cacophony of the endless campaign. Furthermore we need to get rid of primaries, which simply inordinately increase the resources needed to run for office. The idea that they are somehow more “democratic” is a delusion, given that few people vote in them, and those who do tend to be activists which simply pulls the parties to the extremes. The truth is the “party” is really comprised of the elected officials identifying with it, and they are the ones who should be nominating candidates. (I’ve written on this before with regard to the presidency but the idea hasn’t gotten any traction yet).

It does not, however, completely resolve the problem of money. It is not so much that it gives advantage to “the rich” since they are as varied in outlook as the rest of the population and the notion that they form a cohesive “class” is simply not reflected in reality. But there are wealthy individuals who, on a personal level, do get more access than they deserve because politicians are generally easily impressed by big money. So they get to hang around and mostly feed each others’ egos, go to Epstein’s island, etc. Then when it sometimes blows up they have to scramble to disassociate themselves from people they were intimately associated with. 

I will never forget how, years ago, I did a lot of work for a candidate for a top executive position because I took him seriously in his commitment to principle.  At the same time, from the opposite side, a billionaire I had some acquaintance with was doing everything possible to defeat this candidate, organizing and pouring funds into the incumbent’s campaign. My candidate won. But I cannot overstate the shock I felt when barely a few weeks into his term he had dinner with the same billionaire who had just worked against him so strongly. I have never trusted any of them since then and it wasn’t long before I completely walked away from all of that. Money trumps principle, and just about everything else, and these people are never going to change. Thus the only thing to do is to eliminate as much of the need for funds as possible starting with what I have outlined above. 

NEW YORK ISN’T DEAD, YET

Eric Adams, the Mayor-elect of New York City, is ludicrously being assailed by the left for planning to reimpose some policing measures they consider to be “racist,” never mind that he himself is black. He correctly points out that the now-discredited BLM is just a fringe group, and encouragingly is standing his ground instead caving, the way liberals always do, to the radical left. The reality is that his election was the least racially-tinged election in the history of the city, having been chosen by a majority of both black, white and every other middle and working class constituencies in the city. But the left continues to perceive everything through a racial lens, primarIly because it is composed mostly of self-hating white people. 

If Adams continues to resist the prevailing positions of the dominant elite, who otherwise don’t represent anyone, the prospects for a NYC recovery have brightened considerably after the terrible diBlasio administration. I believe that will likely be true in the state as well with prospect that Lee Zeldin will become our next Governor. Like many I have considered leaving, but having lived here all my life I’ve decided I’m not going to abandon my homeland without a fight, and these prospects indicate there is at least one last chance of turning things around after years of corrupt, dysfunctional government. The challenge is still daunting but it may just come about, despite the still-dominant rotten elite. 

For it has never been true that New York is especially “liberal,” and certainly not “left.” It has little in common with some of the loonier places on the west coast. That is a myth that basically ends at the borders of Manhattan and a few other shore points facing it. Most of the city consists of a myriad of vibrant, fairly conservative residential neighborhoods. It is worth noting that Manhattan was the only place Adams didn’t carry in the Democratic Party primary, which simply indicates the extent to which the elite who dominate Manhattan are not only out of touch with the country, but the rest of the city as well. It is only monotonous control of the media that creates that impression.

But even there exceptions exist, like the oldest newspaper in America- the New York Post, founded by Alexander Hamilton 220 years ago. For despite pages of frivolous “celebrity” nonsense, it is much more than a feisty tabloid and has arguably become the leading, and often lone, voice pursuing the truth and exposing scandals that the rest of the media ignores or suppresses outright for ideological reasons, like the Hunter Biden story they censored during the last election campaign or the Cuomo nursing home catastrophe. But they won’t get Pulitzers, which nowadays are just prizes liberals like to give themselves, along with so many other once-prestigious awards, (and we really need to start delegitimizing them as such). 

Many years ago, during a disastrous NYC newspaper strike that many never recovered from, Eric Sevareid, then a nightly commentator on the CBS Evening News, worried that the strike might take down the New York Times, which he pompously declared was our “nation’s most necessary newspaper,” which was laughable even then. But today there is a paper that does fit that description, one of the few that has kept the notion of a free and independent press alive, and which virtually alone did not bury the truth but exposed it, the New York Post. 

No one knows what the fate of city it covers will be, and things could still get worse from external factors even if the state is finally well-governed again, nor am I even predicting a certain turnaround, but now there is at least a chance that abysmal mismanagement will no longer be a leading cause of decline. 

ROBERT E. LEE AND SOUTHERN MONUMENTS

During his lifetime and through most of subsequent American history, Robert E. Lee was universally admired in both the north and the south.  To understand why we need to look at the whole historical record. In the formative years of the 19th century, only decades after independence most people still identified primarily with their states and communities rather than the US as a whole. Indeed when Lee attended West Point it was then customary for cadets to swear allegiance to their home state, not the USA (which did not occur until the Civil War). When the Civil War broke out there was no more distinguished soldier in America than Lee, and and so it was natural that he be called upon to lead the Union army by President Lincoln. Lee was conflicted and refused, not because he favored secession or slavery but because he could not bring himself to attack his beloved home state of Virginia.

True he did subsequently take command of Confederate forces and wound up on the wrong side of history, but that is not the end of the story as ignorant people would have you believe. It is what he did at the end of the war and after that secured his place among great Americans. First Lee surrendered gracefully and called on his forces to lay down their arms and second spent the rest of his life devoted to reconciliation. That is why he was universally admired. You cannot judge a man solely on part of his life when

A lesser man might have refused to surrender, or at the very least called for continued resistance and guerrilla warfare, which could have resulted in years more of continued bloodshed and instability. But Lee instead devoted himself to peaceful reconciliation. Lee then stood not as a symbol of southern resistance and intransigence but of reunion. He backed the wrong cause, but then made a substantial contribution to strengthening his country. Through all the subsequent years no one questioned honoring Lee, at least until historical amnesia, ignorance, and political malice arose in recent times. Lee is simply the wrong figure to attack or displace in American history, never mind Virginia history. For politicians in Virginia to now turn on Lee is nothing less than obscene, given all that Lee gave and sacrificed for the state. It also flies in the face of the sentiment of a solid majority in this country.

Now I’m from Brooklyn and don’t have any particular stake in this controversy. I did have an aunt that once owned the Robert E. Lee hotel in Jackson, Mississippi, but there is a closer connection of sorts right here in Brooklyn. When I was growing up I belonged to a Boy Scout troop based at an Episcopal church across the street from Fort Hamilton army base. It was a wonderful storybook community and was largely where my American identity was formed.  It was widely known as the “church of the generals,” one of whom was Robert E. Lee, who once planted a tree there in the 1840s, and to which plaque dedicated to Lee was attached and remained until yesterday, when the rump of what is left of the Episcopal diocese decided to remove it. Never mind that the church is now closed because the they could not maintain the parish, not least because of their political radicalism. This was once a thriving congregation, but in the 1960s the priest decided it was his moral duty to actively and loudly oppose the Viet Nam war, thereby splitting the congregation, which over time dwindled. The Boy Scouts left, and the Episcopal church imploded into irrelevancy as it became more interested on progressive politics than Christianity. The removal of Lee’s plaque from a shuttered church that is now for sale is just a sad coda to this idiocy.

This is all happening without any significant support among a majority of Americans of all races, and is largely a project of loathsome left-wing white radicals. Is there any more breathtaking hypocrisy than the Pelosi Democrats now clamoring to remove statues, erected by their own party, that they never once uttered a peep about during the years they had the power to do so and through the entire Obama presidency? Nevertheless there may be some monuments to less noble figures in the South that might be questionable, but the historical record shows that Robert E. Lee is not one of them.