If you want to wreck things in a spectacularly absurd way, just put Zohran Mamdani in charge. He has now launched a campaign against the rich that essentially treats them as suspects in every imaginable crime simply for being wealthy. His attacks on Ken Griffin are a good example. The CEO of Citadel is a billionaire whose professional achievements are recognized worldwide. What can we say about Mamdani? He’s a politician. Nothing more. Even in his only known line of work, he devoted himself entirely to politics until he realized he could dedicate himself fully to politics without working at all. He has never earned a cent on his own, nor created jobs for anyone outside politics — which is itself a rather parasitic way of providing employment. Today, he is simply a mayor who should never have become one. Perhaps someone should remind him that he is not Napoleon or anything of the sort. I’m afraid he is in no position to lecture Griffin about much of anything. (RELATED: Billionaires to California’s Rescue)
Last week, I was highly critical here of the newly rich who become idiots, as if burdened by guilt, turning into half-woke, half-green caricatures. But my criticism has nothing to do with the mayor’s. Mamdani wants wealth itself to become suspect; suspect of corruption. He wants us to hate the rich. And he wants to patch the holes created by his own mismanagement by taking money from millionaires. In other words, he wants to force the rich to finance his incompetence. That is the exact opposite of what one expects from one of the most important cities in the world, a city that ought to stand as an example of freedom and prosperity rather than an economic black hole where the people who have achieved the most in life are forced to bankroll the festivities of the dumbest kind of political parasitism. (RELATED: The New Billionaires Believe They Can Survive Anything If Their Bunker Is Deep Enough)
As a Spaniard, one of the things I most admire about the United States is its culture of meritocracy. That is how great, prosperous, and free nations are built. Meritocracy means that if you work hard, are intelligent, have a bit of luck, and make the most of your talents, you will attain a far more comfortable position in life while also helping to make the world a better place and improving the lives and opportunities of many others. Only a fool would try to crush those elites who have earned their wealth through hard work. A fool… or Mamdani.
Someday, we will talk about how the Democrats’ true superpower is breaking things — cities, institutions, even entire countries.
The mayor wants a gray country, a dependent country, a country where bureaucracy and public money matter more than personal initiative, private effort, talent, and individual freedom. Mamdani’s recipe is one of ruin and chaos. We have known this since only a few months after he took office. But instead of correcting his failed policies, he keeps digging the cesspool deeper, widening the wound. Someday, we will talk about how the Democrats’ true superpower is breaking things — cities, institutions, even entire countries. It must be admitted that they do it with remarkable skill. (RELATED: The Wealth Tax Endgame)
I find it difficult to take Mamdani seriously. His style of politics embodies everything I detest. I suspect he is the least qualified person imaginable for the office he holds. It is like Wile E. Coyote trying to teach the Road Runner a lesson in road safety. I think a fragment of one of Ivanka Trump’s fake fingernails would make a better mayor of New York City than Mamdani. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: A Quite Cranky 5QT)
And yet, he is a very dangerous man. His rhetoric is pure far-left populism, something the United States was largely immune to for years until Barack Obama came along and quietly gave socialist discourse free rein. Then came the “woke” movement, which created the perfect breeding ground for steering public opinion in virtually any deranged direction. And today, on fertile ground, Mamdani’s demagogic rhetoric can take root and flourish among a significant portion of the population, conveniently indoctrinated. That is why education matters so much, why it is so important to repeat again and again that socialism is a failed formula, one that has never improved anyone’s life except that of socialist leaders themselves. The best antidote to socialism is history books. No system has failed so often and so catastrophically while still attempting to boast of its prestige.
When I listen to Mamdani, what I mostly feel like doing is laughing at him and thanking God for the Reconquista of Spain. But those engaged in the heat of political battle, on the front lines, should understand that in the United States, it is no longer impossible for socialism (which only a few years ago was practically taboo) to triumph. For the moment, the groundwork has already been laid for idiots like Mamdani to go around threatening the rich, when in reality they ought to be kissing the ground billionaires walk on.
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