"I started to feel guilty, in reacting on social media to New York City Democratic nominee Zohran Kwame Mamdani: to this immediate legacy-media darling, this Uganda-born, collectivization-advocating, smugly smiling, beautifully beard-groomed Bowdoin graduate, whose expensive, cleverly packaged Mayoral race launched him into our collective consciousness a few months ago, out of thin air. I try never to be personal, in my political assessments, and I feel guilty because my reaction to Mamdani is so personally aversive.
It is aversive because of the lie-and-deception factor.
Mamdani, as I will reveal, is a nepo son dressed as a communist — but a communist takeover of NYC is not what really motivates this man, not what is really behind this campaign.
Apart from the full-spectrum communist agenda which Mamdani superficially offers, one reason for my sense of personal queasiness when I consider this candidate in various settings is because I know guys like this. Though I am of another generation, some things do not change.
I went to school with guys like this. They are Jaspers. Let’s call that archetypal guy, Jasper.
Here is Jasper with the classic graphic Marxist raised fists and the Chinese communist graphic sun rays:“The people! United! Will never be defeated!” That’s for the march on the campus green. Then — let’s all go have a latte at the dining club.
This cosplay lasts just so long, before they go back to scooping up the vast privileges of their perches on the better-paid edges of the visual arts, or of filmmaking, as they let the interest in their trust funds compound.
In my experience, when it comes down to their personal wellbeing and comfort, I have learned that Jaspers will, right-on pronouncements or no, personally sacrifice nothing.
That’s why I was not surprised when the news broke that Zohran Mamdani lives in a rent-stabilized $2300 a month one-bedroom apartment in Queens. His supporters flocked to defend this situation, stating that there are no income caps for rent-stabilized apartments. That is true now, but was not true from 2011 to 2019; if Mamdani’s $142,000 plus salary, in addition to any other income he had, rose above the cap of $200,000 a year, or if his now-wife or another household member was living with him then, and earning income over $58,000, Mamdani would have been in violation of the program regulations, which were obviously designed to help struggling middle- and working-class New Yorkers: “Between July 1, 2011, and June 13, 2019: [the limit for rent-stabilized housing was] household income above $200,000 for two consecutive years, with the rent at or above $2,500 initially, then adjusted to $2,700 and increasing annually.”
Why am I nitpicking about this? It matters.
One reason is economic unfairness. The average Queens market rate one-bedroom is $4216 a month. So if Mamdani is now living in a rent-stabilized apartment he secured in violation of the pre-2019 rules, he is saving $1916 a month, or $22,992 a year. Now, imagine that you are a trust fund kid and don’t need those savings to live on. Watch it compound. Watch your money, in contrast, — if you need it to live on from month to month — not compound.
Mamdani’s privileged smarminess in taking up an apartment, in violation of the regulations or not, that was clearly intended to benefit people who can’t afford to pay more — and then his defending that decision by hairsplitting — is typical of how these rich young men behave. The Jaspers are always letting others pick up the check. They are always finding the loophole, the tax write-off, the way around the rules, that does not apply to the boring, hardworking rest of us. And their hypocrisy in doing so, even while presenting themselves as champions of the downtrodden, is never, ever evident to them.
I saw the same character pattern when it came to Mamdani’s application to Columbia University. Now, all of us overachievers heading to elite universities, at 19, desperately tried to see if there were ways to get an advantage in the application process. There is nothing unusual about that. But Mamdani’s Columbia University application is a kind of Mobius Strip of wokeness, twisting in upon itself and ending up on an indeterminate plane: Mamdani’s father was a Columbia University professor, so already his application would have garnered favorable attention not available to non-faculty kids. So he is already privileged as a “legacy.” Plus he descends from wealthy parents, which counts, as Ivies are expensive. But no! He sought to compound his actual double privilege with purported double victimization/oppression. So he checked “Black or African American” and “Asian” on his application, and wrote in “Ugandan.” ...
He is neither Black nor African American.
But no. ...
Leaving aside the issue of why there is so much murkiness (two purchase dates, huge valuation) around these four mystery unimproved acres of Ugandan land, and of what all that may mean in entrusting Mamdani, who was a rapper before he was an Assemblyman, who has had almost no jobs (one was for his mom), who has no business background at all, — a man who passed only three bills as an Assembly member and who was absent half of the time, with the highest absentee rate in the Assembly - with the management of the most valuable real estate infrastructure in America, and with a $2.1 trillion dollar economy, the largest metropolitan economy on earth —
Why are almost all of this candidates’ assets still located in a foreign country?
Mamdani became a naturalized citizen only in 2018, the year before he ran for office. Indeed, he is not solely an American citizen. He is a dual citizen.
His marriage is offshore, his land is offshore.
Why would you come to America at 7 and only become a naturalized citizen decades later, just before you run for office in America? ...
Zohran Mamdani is like a socially acceptable drug for guilty affluent white people.
I remember when I first saw his campaign material. It seemed so lulling and seductive — like a hunk of excellent hashish wrapped up in the trappings of a political campaign. But when you drill into it, it really amounts to: free everything." .......
The spiritual reason for the Islamo-Commie Madmani -attack on NYC and not, say, DC, is Covenant:
Washington’s First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789:
“…I shall take my present leave; but not without resorting once more to the benign parent of the human race, in humble supplication that since he has been pleased to favour the American people, with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquility, and dispositions for deciding with unparellelled unanimity on a form of Government, for the security of their Union, and the advancement of their happiness; so his divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend.”‘–President George Washington places America in covenant with Almighty God in New York City, 1789
We bind the straw-man strongman, Lord, and declare You keep Your Covenants, Amen!
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