Angry New Yorker

Semi-Daily Rants from New York City's Angry Man

"As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly." - Dr. Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Life of Johnson, Sept. 1783

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Wednesday, August 11, 2021
 

So, Andrew Cuomo is out as governor. He's been an uber hack his entire career so we're very glad he's gone. Cuomo is one (of the thousand) of reasons we left NYC and NYS. His dismissiveness, arrogance, bullying, bluster, bombast, braggadocio (yes, alliteration is a thing) and open failings were there for all who were willing to see, even during the pathetic "Cuomosexual" adoration stage many of the weak-minded fell for last year. 

But his departure only highlights the corrupt nature of NY politics - the "three men in a room" control over the state and the Albany inbreeding of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours [and damned the consequences for the people of NYS]". The past two decades of NY politics has seen a string of governors forced to resign or otherwise made moot, with legislative leaders jailed, and with each new Attorney General (including Cuomo) riding rough-shod over the law. It has to stop. Spitzer. Schneiderman. Skelos. Smith. Silver. Bruno. Cuomo. Corrupt entitled losers all. 

We're no babes in the woods thinking there was a Golden Era of NY Governance. Look through NYS' history and it's replete with dirty deals, pay offs, crime and misbegotten leadership. The only saving grace is that we could always point to New Jersey and say, "You think we're bad? Yea, we are, but at least we're not as bad as New Jersey!" (And that's saying a lot as NJ had, by all measures, the most corrupt government from top to bottom of any New England state for at least the last 100 years.)

The big question is: Can NY be saved? And by saved we mean restored to a state where people and their children are willing to continue to live here, grow here and die here. New York was built into a powerhouse by location, history and leadership, but it's been coasting on reputation and inertia for a long time. Coasting doesn't work in an era of the internet and seismic social shift and we're in such an era now. 

I would always kid friends I visited around the country that when I visited them I felt like how I imagined an East German must have felt when he escaped from behind the Iron Curtain and saw the West in full focus: I couldn't imagine how much was available and at how low a price. NYC warps you. Some of the warp can be positive. But much is negative. Because you start to believe that "this is how life is. And this is how life will always and should be. Because how else could it be?"

For the record NYC isn't NYS. In many ways it isn't even in the US anymore. But before you take umbrage, think about it. In many ways NYC is a city from a different world. E.B. White celebrated it. Even while living on a farm in Maine. How much is there to celebrate now? We have family and friends still in NYC. But we would not move back after seeing what's available elsewhere. Living on bravado may be great for words on a t-shirt, but it doesn't work long term. And that's why we're the AngryNyker. Because it didn't have to be this way. And damn it, as a native born New Yorker, it shouldn't have been.

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posted by anonymous at 2:18 PM

Thursday, January 21, 2021
 

Day one. The amount of glee, fist pumping and self-congratulatory semaphoring on display yesterday was interesting to watch, but dismaying to behold, as if somehow an empty inauguration in an armed camp was worthy of unbridled celebration. President Biden (a/k/a "The Husk") bleated out "unity" many times yesterday, but in essence his speech in its entirety called in reality for "conformity" not unity. The failing and overreach of the Democrats (a party to which we once belonged) have been covered to exhaustion elsewhere, but Biden - surrounded by his Obama-era retreads - instantly demonstrated what his "unity" would mean: eleven Executive Orders signed within minutes reversing President Trumps executive orders likewise reversing Obama's. Tit-for-tat is the modus operandi going forward, 

And so Biden, with his empty lofty words, his empty Washington, D.C., and his empty ideas will over the next four years give proof to H.L. Mencken's famous quip: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

We're going to get it good and hard.


posted by anonymous at 8:58 AM

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