Donald Trump is the President of the United States and Zohran Mamdani is the Mayor of New York. One, a raging madman that has re-defined conservatism around his cult of personality, hatred towards those he perceives of enemies, and the destruction of both our federal government and the existing world order since World War II. The other, a self-described socialist that won’t say “the Intifada” is bad, wants to open city owned grocery stores, and ran on a platform of giving away a lot of free stuff to city residents that he will need Albany to come in and foot the bill for. If you read my blog regularly, you know that I have no use for either one. In fact, I think the election of both is a sign of a society in decline.

As is true with all things though, Mamdani’s first day was a mixed bag, even if it was almost all bad. He did decide to keep the city’s office that fights antisemitism, even if he weakened it a bit, which is a good thing. He also is showing signs that he is willing to cut through some bureaucratic red tape in the government to help build more housing fast. Other than those two things, his first day in office was a hellscape of terrible. You know it’s bad when the speeches by AOC and Bernie were as much about criticizing Democrats as the Trump Administration, but they were nothing compared to Mamdani’s. One line, in particular, has received almost all of the attention- “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” If Mao or Stalin himself had said this, we would have zero shock. The speech was literally a call to return to at least “big government liberalism,” if not an outright socialist battle cry altogether. As Putin critic and former Soviet citizen Gary Kasparov put it on Twitter, “The “warmth of collectivism” is to freeze while those with heated dachas tell you how noble your sacrifice is.” Mamdani, a man born of economic and academic privilege, is what happens when limousine liberalism gets put on steroids and hyper-charged. There is a reason China rejected Mao, the Soviet Union failed, Cuba is a failure, Venezuela is now a living hell, and no one wants to go to North Korea. This kind of rhetoric leads to failure, because the underlying system of socialism has no grounding in practical reality, it cannot be run in a functional way. Mamdani’s solution is to get the city involved in things the city probably can’t do very well, like run a grocery store. His solution to expensive transit is to make it free. His solution to some crimes is to legalize them. What he doesn’t get is that someone has to pay for it all. Politicians in Albany aren’t going to be excited to raise taxes to pay for his programs, and they probably will just refuse to do it for the most part. To the extent he’s even allowed, he may try to pin that bill on the wealthy in New York City. At least some of them will just leave. No city, not even the greatest city, can survive with no taxpayer base.

My guess is Mamdani will mostly fail to deliver, and that’s my hope. If he succeeds, it will have long lasting impacts on the city, and a few will be good, but the net will be bad. How do you get to Mamdani though? You get there through electing a Trump. How do you get a Trump? You get there by a government that the public doesn’t think meets it’s needs. A world where more people live out of debt, work more hours, and get ahead less. In short, it is a collective failure that gets you to Mamdani. Oh, the irony.