Why I’m Horrified by Mamdani

~ Clarissa

Kharkiv, the city where I grew up, gets bombed every night with actual bombs. But it’s more livable, looks prettier, and has more life in it than St Louis. It doesn’t look like this:

Mind you, these images are not from the site hit by the recent tornado. This is how parts of St Louis always look.

In Kharkiv, people come out after every bombing to clear out the rubble, plant flowers, repaint. They dress prettily, they beautify their spaces.

In St Louis, it’s neighborhood upon neighborhood of this complete despondency. Precious Victorian buildings crumbling down. Abandoned churches. What was done to these people that they are more hopeless and have less will to live than people in an actual war of invasion?

Downtown St Louis is dead. On weekends, it’s completely empty save for the drug-addled homeless. You can hear the sound of your own footsteps anywhere in the downtown area on a Sunday. No cars, no tourists. Even the parts that aren’t bombed out ruins are empty. The roads in the center of the city are catastrophically bad. The whole feel of the city is dead, decaying, miserable. There are a couple of wealthy neighborhoods that look very pretty but they are enclaves in a sea of decay.

Now imagine New York given over to this malignant force that sucks life out of cities. Folks, it will be literally less destructive to invite Putin to bomb it for a year. These Mamdanis are that dangerous. They don’t just kill the buildings and the roads. They kill the spirit of a place. Putin invaded Ukraine against the will of Ukrainians. Are we going to give ourselves willingly to destruction when we don’t even have to?

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Published by Clarissa

30 thoughts on “Why I’m Horrified by Mamdani”

    1. And somehow none of this is part of the national conversation when tons of ridiculous things are. This is a terrible plight. We need to talk about it as much as possible.

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  2. It’s a primary. Won’t he be running against Adams, if Adams is no longer the D candidate?

    I don’t have a good sense of how popular Adams is, or isn’t. But he does seem more tuned into his constituency than his party of origin, which is a good sign.

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    1. Right now, everybody else needs to drop out and endorse Adams. Who is very imperfect but enormously better than Mamdani. Ackerman should donate whatever he can to the Adams campaign. It should be all hands on deck because this is a true emergency.

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    2. I have a friend here in town who is very left-wing. She endlessly berates white people for not wanting to live in St Louis for racist reasons. And she supports every far-left candidate in St Louis.

      Of course, she also is white and doesn’t want to live in St Louis but her reasons are, of course, not racist. All of the rest of the white people who don’t want to live there are racist. But she isn’t because she has respectable reasons. This is a mega educated person, a professor. The absolute absence of any logic or reason boggles the mind.

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      1. Well of course. Smart People want to live around other Smart People. It’s only the white proles who should want to live in St. Louis. They don’t deserve any better because they’re racist you know.

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  4. I explicitly wrote Kharkiv in my earlier message but I see now that autocorrect changes it to Kharkov automatically and you have to pay attention and redo it manually.

    I don’t understand, I thought the international name of the city was – as it should be – the Ukrainian version. Who’s in charge of autocorrect these days on Google?

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  5. I hate to prove my buddy Stringer Bell right about anything, but his recent post on my blase’ attitude on most things (“Dreidel is so nonchalant on this blog about everything. Most of his comments are in the vein of ‘Clarissa you worry so much, we’ll be fine.'”) applies in this situation.

    Relax, Clarissa! New York is an old, tough city, and no 33-year-old nutcase mayor with no political experience is going to get anyway when it comes to fundamentally altering its character.

    Dreidel

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    1. Haha I actually agree with you on this, mostly. We already have commie mayors in LA and Chicago. This sucks but it’s not the end of the world.

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      1. Exactly my point. They’re not really communist, that’s just a label thrown around same as the word Nazi. And yes, these cities are fine.

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        2. No these cities aren’t “fine” by any stretch of imagination. They’re not completely destroyed, that was my point. Jesus christ.

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    2. In what way is NYC tougher than all the cities that have been destroyed? I’ve seen all sorts of arguments, including that New Yorkers have some special personality that will prevent the city from becoming another St Louis. But this all sounds like wishful thinking that’s not grounded in anything real.

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      1. This whole “New York Strong” or “Boston Strong” sloganeering is a psyop to convince people to gleefully accept a lower quality of life in the name of so-called “toughness.”

        Concerned about getting mugged in the street late at night, or getting masturbated on by some schitzo on the subway?

        “What a pussy! I guess someone couldn’t hack it in DA CITY. Go back to your flyover town, you rube!”

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        1. This is a very standard neoliberal trick of privatizing socially begotten problems. If you are bothered by the lowering of the standard of living, it’s because you are at fault. You haven’t developed the individual qualities that would help you not notice what’s happening. You are a faulty manager of your life. It’s all about personality. People keep falling for it because it makes them feel good, invincible.

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              2. This is really on point because the Ukrainian journalist who always invites me on his show calls his army of viewers honey badgers. 😁😁

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      2. NYC has Wall Street and one of the biggest natural harbors in the world. It’s not going to collapse, although bad government might make life uncomfortable for its residents.

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          1. Yeah, the US has a lot of great harbors. This is a huge national advantage, even if not so much for individual cities.

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  6. The hollowing out of the American industrial base that led to this was done by neoliberal capitalist, not scary socialists. I thought you knew that.

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    1. Yes, that was decades ago. Governors, mayors and DAs in blue states continue to play a huge role in the rise of crime, open drug use, and homelessness RIGHT FUCKING NOW. You’re such a fucking moron.

      https://www.governing.com/community/chicago-sues-car-manufacturers-over-skyrocketing-auto-theft

      The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Cook County Circuit Court, cites a “car theft crisis” driven in large part by Kia and Hyundai’s “unlawful and reckless actions” in lagging other automakers that have installed the technology, which prevents hot-wiring by requiring a chip-enabled smart key to start the vehicle.

      This is where we are. Blaming the car manufacturers for making cars easy to steal.

      California’s Prop 47 reclassified most nonviolent theft under $950 as a misdemeanor instead of a felony, effectively eliminating felony charges for shoplifting and petty theft below that threshold. Leading directly to fucking toothpaste in places like CVS under lock and key and massive theft gangs that would operate throughout the state.

      This cannot be blamed on “hollowing out of the American industrial base” you cunt. This is direct action that serves no purpose other than to terrify the general population, in order to hold on to their vote base. Which is violent criminals or do-gooder libtards like you. A match made in fucking heaven.

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