By Jim Dickson
It looks like three formally great American cities are now engaged in the race of the century … the race to the bottom. Which city will win, at this point it’s all up in the air, but Chicago has a sizable head start.
I pretty much thought that it was a contest between Chicago and San Francisco, but if Zohran Mamdani wins the general election for mayor of New York City, I think San Francisco is pretty much out of the race, and New York City becomes the hands down favorite.
San Franciscans have done a few things to handicap themselves. They got rid of their “Looney Tunes” mayor and district attorney and replaced them with two fairly sensible people, so that is going to count against them, especially if NYC jumps in with a self proclaimed antisemitic, Social Democrat.
Chicago still has a pretty good chance as long as Brandan Johnson is in the mayor’s office. It’s going to be fairly hard to beat a city whose mayor has been declared “The Worst Mayor in America,” but I think if the Mamdani thing happens in NYC, Mayor Johnson may lose his title.
Many of us who have loved Chicago over the years watched in horror as Mayor Lori Lightfoot started the process of taking one of the nation’s most prosperous and dynamic cities on a fast downhill slide and almost transformed it into a third world country. When her term was up, many of us breathed a sigh of relief, thinking maybe the city is saved and can be turned around.
Then they elected Johnson. What we thought was impossible suddenly was. He is worse than Lightfoot! It’s not bad enough that he is a socialist who is bankrupting the city and controlled by the school and government unions, he is a clueless socialist, who stumbles from one disaster to the next without understanding why.
A mayor Mamdani in NYC would, I think, be even more dangerous. He appears to be very smart, good looking, well spoken and extremely likable. Which is all good for a politician.
The other side of the coin is what is scary. He is a self proclaimed Social Democrat who hates capitalism, wants the government to own all means of production and wealth. He says that he will abolish the police, close all prisons, make buses, trains and college free, freeze rents, and heavily tax anyone who makes a million dollars or more to pay for all of this.
Sometime, if you want to ruin your day, Google the Social Democratic National Platform, what they want for America is laid out for all to see. It could have been written by Karl Marx, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders. Just as a special added attraction, Mamdani is very openly antisemitic in a city which has the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israeli, and is the world center of capitalism, yet he just won the Democratic primary, and has good chance of becoming mayor, go figure!
Aside from the fact that New York City and Chicago used to be exciting, vibrant, and endless interesting places to visit, why would anyone living in South Carolina care what happens to them? We should care; those two cities are an integral part of our national economy and our culture.
If they fail the economic and cultural impact will be felt all across the country. Because of bad government, crime and high taxes, people with wealth and major corporations are already moving out, and that process will only accelerate until there is no one left to pay for all the “free stuff,” and for those who can’t move, life will get very ugly.
What can you do about it, sadly nothing unless you can vote in one of those cities. The important thing is to stay informed and involved so that it doesn’t happen here. I know, but never say never, what citizen of New York or Chicago twenty years ago could have imagined what is going on there today?
Born, raised and educated in the Southwest, Jim Dickson served in the U.S. Navy Reserve in Vietnam before a 35-year business career. Retired to St. Helena Island, Dickson and his wife are fiscally conservative, socially moderate and active in Republican politics, though they may not always agree with Republicans. Having lived around the country and traveled around the world, Dickson believes that the United States truly is the land of opportunity.
