Maybe, when you were younger and dumber, you had some questionable friends. They dabbled in illegality. They weren’t dependable. They often needed you to bail them out of trouble. They stole stuff…sometimes your stuff. They never paid for gas, and when they did, it’s because they borrowed your car without telling you and ran it into a tree.
Some had incendiary beliefs, and you only tolerated them because you were young, impressionable, and apathetic. They were fun to drink with or do drugs with, but you wouldn’t trust them with your sister.
Now we jump ahead–and you find yourself in a position of power. You’re successful. You have gained a lot (in both material and non-material things), so now you have a lot to lose.
What do you do with the old friends–the ones who could make you look really, really bad? Do you continue to embrace the friendship, or briskly walk away, like a man leaving a bar he’s decided is either too rough or too smelly?
President Obama had that decision to make a handful of years ago. Of course, his highly questionable friendships with radicals didn’t really threaten his election–the media didn’t care, for they envy such edgy bonds–but it had the possibility of making him less savory to an American public who aren’t crazy about mad hippy bombers or race-hating reverends. And so President Obama disowned Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright and never looked back.
Well, not really. While he might have dumped his old pals, I don’t believe Obama severed ties to their ideologies. Reverend Wright’s beliefs are alive and kicking in President Obama’s actions. Nominating a rabid defender of a cop killer to a top spot at the Department of Justice is exactly what Wright would have done–it’s an act that serves to punish a country that you believe, in your heart, is racist and corrupt. Wright is gone, but hardly forgotten.
As for Ayers, his fervent radicalism left an imprint on Obama and permeates his soul–reflected in the arrogance of a snotty grad student who lectures America on its gross inequalities. As he whistles!
Of course, no one can find a country that is more equal than ours, without including those nations that employ it by force. Enforced equality works in the way death works: everyone is equally dead.
And so we return to the love affair between anti-capitalist goons and the bureaucrats who embrace them. I refer to the recent election of Bill De Blasio to New York Mayor and the resurgence of Occupy Wall Street rhetoric.
Few may remember the name Melissa Mark-Viverito, but she was the East Harlem Councilwoman who was arrested back in November 2011, along with more than 250 others, for blocking the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge as part of Occupy Wall Street’s “Day of Action.” (Groups like OWS confuse such things with action).
She also advocated for the release of a leader of a terrorist group called the Armed Forces of National Liberation, a pile of thugs and murderers. The FALN waged a reign of terror across the country, and in 1975 bombed a tavern in New York, killing four innocent men. Frank Conner was one of them–on the day he would celebrate the birthdays of his two sons. FALN took credit for this misery, saying it was a blow against “reactionary corporate executives.” What bullshit. This story is so repulsive that I point you to this piece by the son of Frank Conner to get the rest of the tragic and disgusting details: “Melissa Mark-Viverito & my dad’s killers.”
And now, in 2014, in a unanimous vote, Mark-Viverito has been elected speaker of the City Council–making the group just slightly left of the SLA. Later, as the New York Post reports, during her swearing in, Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez took this as a good sign to proclaim, “Long Live the Wall Street Occupy movement!”
My gut says he’s right.
So, where does this lead in 2014?
De Blasio has promised a complete progressive transformation of the city–which is an open invitation to OWS to storm the gates. And not as the vanquished, but as the victors.
Oh, what a hell he’s in for. And, sadly, us too.
Right now, the best thing Bill can hope for is a long, long winter–the “nuclear” kind that stretches into the next three years. Because the moment the sun reappears and the long coats scurry back into Manhattan Mini Storage, the shouters and shitters will return to the parks and the streets to claim their spoils from their patsy Mayor. They should be brimming with renewed energy.
And they have every right to. Because the city didn’t just elect De Blasio, they elected them. And I doubt he can disown them in an effortless Obama fashion.
They’re what you’d call his extended family. They own the dork.
So how will all those well-intentioned liberals who voted for Bill deal with this? What of the successful business owners, taxpayers, and parents who must endure the re-ignition of an ideological movement whose only plank was to hit you over the head with one? OWS is only about retribution against those who have achieved.
And so I ask again–what should New Yorkers do–principally the ones who voted for the most left-wing mayor in history, after 20 years of unbridled progress under two non-liberals, once they inevitably become the target of hyper-enthused radicals?
Go screw yourselves.
Then, move.
Greg Gutfeld is a mainstay on Fox News as co-host of The Five and the host of Red Eye. He’s also the NY Times best-selling author of The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage. His new book Not Cool, is now available for Pre-order. For more from Greg check out his official site or follow him on Twitter.
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