Sometimes you just have to shake your head and mumble “What the hell” when politicians with too much time on their hands and too few brains in their heads decide to speak.
The recent proposal to turn off all “non-essential” business and residential lighting throughout New York City between the hours of 11pm and 5am to (ostensibly) protect migrating birds is yet another sign the inmates are running the asylum in Democrat-run cities and states that seem preoccupied with matters unrelated to those that deserve their laser focus: restoring fiscal discipline, improving public safety, reversing the catastrophic declines of their public schools, repairing critical infrastructure, and reducing the noxious and expensive footprint of government busybodies in citizens’ daily lives. The sad fact Americans trapped in urban hellholes across our nation now must endure the unendurable raises a pertinent question: Why is this problem never remedied?
First of all, we must recognize there is a huge difference between governing responsibly and maintaining power, and this helps to explain a good part of the dysfunction that now reigns in places such as Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore—among other cities. Given that money and other resources are inherently limited, elected leaders should not simply hand out cash and other favors to everyone that asks. However, precisely this self-destructive strategy has been a fundamental operating principle of the political and cultural Left for many decades: that no expressed need, no matter how pointless and silly it might be, should be denied tax dollars and a lovely bureaucracy of its very own. Validating every fringe group and idea buys votes, creates government employees who are beholden to supporting all manner of publicly-financed inanity, and creates new “rights” that typically involve trampling on both plain good sense and the traditional values that carried our nation to the pinnacle of world power and economic success.
Having largely abandoned any notion of individual responsibility and personal restraint so as to reverse the many oppressions apparently imposed by courtesy, modesty, and frugality, the governance of our urban centers would seem both unrecognizable and shocking to a time traveler jumping forward from 75 years ago. It matters not at all to the Poobahs of today’s Democrat Party that average Americans are now routinely victimized by those whom we are supposed to believe are victims of historical injustices that excuse their anti-social and anti-American behaviors. Our protected classes of the delusional and incompetent must not be disabused of their fantasies or denied their cushy government handouts.
Of course, today’s liberal elite believes they are serving a higher moral purpose by promoting behavior that is, at best, problematic and, at worst, perverse. It is human nature to want to be a hero—or pretend to be—so it is no surprise that self-indulgent self-congratulation is now the jet fuel of the self-justifying base of the Democrat Party.
Whether they are celebrating the questionable virtues of illegal immigrants, working to ensure that a dude in a dress can use a public restroom while a ten year-old girl is inside, cheering for the slaughter of Jews worldwide, or demanding that desperately confused adolescents have access to hormonal treatments and surgeries without their parents’ knowledge or consent, Democrats are convinced they are the Party of righteousness. Appalled that anyone would disagree with their quest to normalize cultural and sexual ideas that flout any sense of decency or justice, the automatic response of the American Left is to accuse, besmirch, and deflect while whining about the tyranny of those who choose principled disagreement and refuse to submit to mass psychosis.
It is natural that many Americans choose to blame those who continue to vote Democrat decade after decade despite the decay and decline they see everywhere they look. Considering the dismal lives led by so many of those in our largest cities, it does seem a puzzle that the same failed Socialist solutions, championed by an interchangeable cast of nitwits and knuckleheads who are driving population declines and job losses throughout our Bluest cities and states, should continue to win the votes of beleaguered citizens.
However, it must be remembered that irresponsible government that spends money foolishly is the best friend of the irresponsible and foolish among us who know they need free-spending Democrats in charge to hand out money to the indolent and create loads of well-paid, low-skill government jobs to employ the unemployable. Moreover, having convinced themselves that their extremism is actually a form of moral purity because they are protecting the vulnerable from lower taxes, safer streets, better schools, improved public facilities, and less government regulation, the liberal voter recoils at the idea their policies could be both wrong and wrongheaded, so their only choice is to continue to keep re-electing the Visigoths who are sacking their cities and states.
New Yorkers, who might soon be dodging knife-wielding sociopaths if they dare be caught outside at night because the deep shadows of a lightless city will conceal their attackers (but possibly make migrating birds very happy), will likely convince themselves that huddling inside their dark homes is a small price to pay to save a single sparrow. Saying aloud they have put stupid people in charge of their safety would probably break their Socialist souls. Moreover, admitting to themselves they have been bamboozled by those who see government service as a path to wealth and power for themselves—and have shockingly little interest in the needs of the sheeple—would require a degree of courage and honesty that has been squandered during a lifetime of obeisance to their duplicitous Marxist god.
Speaking as a former New Yorker, I feel for those who have to endure dystopian social schemes, widespread criminality, daily degradation, and the omnipresent fear that they are just a couple of paychecks away from household economic disaster. Grim years of “Mamdanism” lay ahead, and it is likely that the worst is yet to come.