Lessons from NATO and New York

Instant radical populism versus old fashioned politics

In politics and international relations, every day everything changes, and over time, nothing changes. That’s because people tend to reward leaders who do things, versus just talk about doing things, even when the folks getting the reward don’t deserve it. And when political showrunners forget the basic rules of what makes a good candidate, or a bad one, we end up with what happened in New York City.

Karamccurdy, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, Vlada Republike Slovenije, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

You’d think that Democrats would listen to sane advice after running Hillary Clinton in 2016, then picking the senescent Joe Biden to run for a second term after he promised to be a one-term president. (When you swear something on the precious, be careful. “The ring is treacherous. It will hold you to your word.”)

You’d think that disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who reigned like The Man in the High Castle from Albany, condemning the elderly to COVID death, would know better than to try to re-enter politics, in of all places the Big Apple. The fact that on name recognition alone, he got a decent number of votes, is impressive. But Cuomo was a terrible candidate running against someone who promised to get things done. Albeit, Zohran Mamdani wants to do things that will likely harm most New Yorkers, but at least he fights!

It’s a bitter irony that Cuomo’s main voters were the low-income and Black residents you’d think would flock to Mamdani’s socialist messaging. But those voters weren’t preferring the former governor; they were rejecting Zohran because they saw through his promised socialist paradise to what he is really going to build: a Soviet system that destroys economic freedom and mobility, while rewarding the luxury beliefs and virtue signaling of the rich and liberal.

Many of New York City’s neighborhoods have been devastated by the closure of commercial businesses, from big name stores to bodegas, due to mass shoplifting and the influx of large numbers of undocumented immigrants during the Biden years. Now Mamdani wants to do what the spectacularly unpopular progressive mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, already tried, unsuccessfully. He wants to implement non-profit, city-run grocery stores to control prices. Welcome to the bread line, comrade.

The first thing that will happen when Mamdani takes office is he’ll have to deal with John Catsimatidis, owner of the Gristedes grocery chain, which has graced the city since horse-drawn cart days. “We can’t compete with Mamdani opening city-run supermarkets for free,” Fox Business reported that Catsimatidis told the New York Post.

“If the city of New York is going socialist, I will definitely close, or sell, or move or franchise the Gristedes locations,” he added. That’s 17 stores, plus possibly moving his headquarters to New Jersey, and himself to Florida. But Mamdani is going to do things, and he’s one of those progressive radicals that the Democratic Party has cycled through in a search for the soul of Barack Obama. (David Hogg, anyone?)

Rich, progressive, rabidly anti-Trump and anti-everyone who refuses to call Trump Hitler, Democrats are seeking instant radicals by the dozen until they find the one that can ring their magic bell, or pull the sword from the stone, or whatever incantation they’ve come up with to demonstrate liberal purity in all its intersectional glory. I think Andrew Cuomo would have been a terrible mayor of New York City, but even his corruption and rent-seeking smugness would be light years better than the Soviet system Mamdani envisions.

And that doesn’t even touch on the whole Israel thing. How can a man claim to represent a city containing the largest number of Jews in the world outside of Israel, and hold to the claim that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state? Israel was founded as a Jewish state, and that is its stated purpose. So to say Israel has a right to exist, but not under its own founding principle and purpose, is to say Israel has no right to exist at all, which is what Mamdani believes. It would be like saying the United States has no right to exist as long as the Constitution is our supreme law. (Then again, I think I’ve heard a certain New Yorker who lives in the White House paraphrase that thought.)

The first lesson of New York is that people want a politician who gets things done, even if those things are vapid and benighted, as long as it makes the people feel good. The second lesson is that if you want to counter an instant radical, don’t reach down into the bag of has-been crooks for a recycled hack. Then again, in 2020, Marjorie Taylor-Greene beat a respected brain surgeon in a runoff to claim her seat in the House of Representatives. Sometimes the people want someone without a brain.

I am never sure how to write about The Hague. The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, but all their government stuff is in The Hague. It reminds of me Hogwarts or something—a shadow place where Muggles are not allowed. In any case, NATO, or OTAN if you speak French or live in a mirror house, met at The Hague, and Donald “Daddy” Trump took center stage. The entire event seemed to be an effort to please him. I wonder if they served burned steak and ketchup, paired with a 2025 Diet Coke.

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb gushed, “We’re witnessing the birth of a new NATO.” Members agreed to increase military spending, and recommit to mutual defense. A happy Trump even agreed to try and find some Patriot missile batteries for Ukraine. Maybe he can rummage through the storage room at Mar-a-Lago, where they’re likely piled around the boxes of classified information from his first term. It’s unclear whether Trump means to give the missile defense systems to a properly grateful (and suit-wearing) Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, or sell them for cash.

The orgasmic NATO meeting comes on the heels of a president who actually got something done, versus just talking about it, or signing treaties. If you want nuclear non-proliferation, you have to have the cojones to go out and obliterate stuff. And nobody obliterates like the United States Air Force, and they do it and still make it home for dinner the next day.

The whole world is pretty happy to see the self-important ayatollahs get their butts roundly kicked. Even Russia tips its hat in respect. And the U.S. once again demonstrated its position as the world’s only military hyperpower. Not only did Iran get bombed, Tehran blinked, Jerusalem blinked, and they both agreed to a ceasefire that Trump simply decreed. It’s an impressive display of global power and will. The other guys at The Hague lived on that high, and gave Trump what he wanted.

Tomorrow things could all change. I’m sure Iran has some nefarious plans to do us in, with knives, in the middle of the night. I’m sure Russia wants its Shahad drone supply uninterrupted. I’m sure China wants to build its own B-2, known as the Xian H-20, which is still under development. America has had B-2s flying since 1997. No other nation on earth has anything like the GBU-57A/B MOP—the bunker-buster. It’s the bestest weapon pair since the USSR’s Tu-22M Backfire bomber and the RN-40 nuke.

For all the tariff-wagging, stupid threats, and hate at home, Trump has an international following because he does stuff. Stuff nobody else has been willing to do. If only he would do stuff to Vladimir Putin. Maybe, bathing in the starlight of his newfound jocular friends at The Hague, Trump will finally decide to stand up to the actual dead-eyed soulless bully. But that bully, unlike Ali Khamenei, has nukes. Lots of nukes.

Getting NATO to mostly agree to 5 percent of GDP defense spending is worth a feather in any diplomat’s hat. Creating a world giving those countries reason to fear enough to commit to spending 5 percent of their GDP on weapons is not a reason to crow. Overall, Trump has made the world less safe, but dealing with Iran and Israel, he has quelled, for now, a world war trigger. If he had a better tag line than “Daddy,” it might be the opposite of Armor All protectant, that claims to make your world less rotten.

The main lesson of NATO at The Hague is if you want the respect of that particular club, make sure to obliterate something hard a few days before the meeting. That being the case, maybe NATO should meet more often, and they could all submit their list of things they want Trump to obliterate in advance. Knowing Trump, he could announce the winning entry based on the largest bribe bid contribution in a public ceremony. Then the bombers can fly.

My personal obliterate entry would be to evict a particular breed of immune, self-important, Jew-hating diplomats and mandarins from a property in Turtle Bay, Manhattan borough. Turn the curved structure into a parking garage, and the adjacent tower into a non-profit department store, or perhaps rent-controlled apartments that someone like Zohran Mamdani would award, like Joseph Stalin, to his closest comrades. It’s a dream, but I don’t have the cash to put in a bid. Maybe some billionaire will help out.

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