RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/11/01/zohran-mamdanis-rise-is-fuelled-by-generational-resentment/

The likely election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s next mayor reflects a profound shift in generational politics. As the era of boomer domination finally draws to a close, a new cohort is bringing fresh energy to an already polarised landscape on both right and left – with potentially devastating results.

Diminishing economic prospects for younger workers have played a key role in undermining faith in free-market capitalism, making the case for socialism seem viable again. Cast largely in traditional Marxist terms, many on the reinvigorated left see the ‘cost of living’ focus as a promising strategy for progressives otherwise out of step on cultural issues.

Yet it would be wrong to view Mamdani’s rise as driven primarily by the working class. In the primary, he lost in many predominantly black and Latino areas such as the Bronx, Brownsville and Rosedale, and traditional working-class districts like Canarsie in south Brooklyn, all of which backed his rival, Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani’s support instead came largely from the gentrified zones of Lower Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn, particularly Williamsburg, where a cadre of educated young voters drove record turnouts. A recent New York Times poll shows Mamdani with 73 per cent of the vote among 19- to 29-year-olds, compared with just 32 per cent among voters over 65. Only a massive mobilisation of older New Yorkers, who generally favour Cuomo, threatens his momentum.

Whether he wins or not, Mamdani epitomises a youthful politics defined by the primacy of social media. His followers tend to be less conventionally literate and more prone to political extremes. Their politics – epitomised by the media-savvy Mamdani – is largely performative, based more on emotion than on even remotely practical policy. His candidacy is merely the latest cause célèbre, following a sequence of ‘progressive’ enthusiasms from climate change to transgender rights to the Palestinian cause.

Some young activists also display a disturbing acceptance of political violence. A YouGov poll in September 2025 found that among adults under 30, 19 per cent said political violence could sometimes be justified, compared with 11 per cent of Americans overall. In one survey, nearly 38 per cent of respondents – and more than half of progressives – said the assassination of Donald Trump would be ‘justified’.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/11/03/heres-an-idea-use-the-shutdown-to-privatize-air-traffic-control/

‘American travelers shouldn’t be held hostage by politics in Washington. It’s time to privatize air traffic control,” says Rachel Greszler in the Daily Signal.

“The shutdown-induced mess at U.S. airports,” she writes, “demonstrates yet another consequence of leaving our skies in the hands of a politically driven, budget-dependent, and inefficient government bureaucracy. 

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

She goes on to note that “most other industrialized countries have lower-cost, more efficient air traffic control systems that are insulated from government spending battles. That’s because they are commercialized instead of bureaucratized.”

We could not agree more. In fact, we made this case in February. Here’s what we wrote then:

After the mid-air collision at Reagan National Airport, President Donald Trump cast blame on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration. But the problem goes much, much deeper than that.

Decades of gross mismanagement and chronic waste have left the FAA’s air traffic control (ATC) system dangerously ill-prepared to safely do its job. And the only fix is a complete overhaul – something Canada and most other industrial nations did years ago….

Personnel is only half the problem with air traffic control. The other is woefully antiquated technology used by traffic controllers. “For over four decades we have reported on challenges facing FAA’s modernization of its ATC systems,” the Government Accountability Office said in December.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-socialism/

On November 4th, barring an improbable upset, self-professed socialist and jihad enabler Zohran Mamdani will become New York City’s next mayor. That outcome is a sure bet given the Democrats’ permanent nasty pique over Donald Trump’s victory, especially in deep blue New York, and the Dem’s young left-wing being fed up with the party’s elderly establishment.

But what’s more interesting than a rich, clever, glib hustler pretending to be a “person of color” and flogging every clichéd, preposterous socialist fantasy, is why socialism is viable at all–– especially in the richest, freest, nation in history that billions of people from poor and autocratic countries, many socialist, risk their lives to join?

Like most discussions involving human beings with minds and free will, to answer this question we need to start by talking about human nature. In a democracy comprised with politically equal and free citizens, envy is endemic and prone to radical egalitarianism, for as Aristotle explained, “those who are equal in any respect, are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”

The U.S. quickly became famous, or infamous, in Europe for its obsession with freedom. Indeed, the great champion of America, Alexis De Tocqueville, commented, “Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”

The dangers of radical egalitarianism troubled the Framers of the Constitution. James Madison in Federalist 10 linked it to another danger, that of political “passions and interests” as the prime motivators of political behavior, and the “factions,” which Madison defined as a group of citizens “who are united and actualized by some common impulse of passion or of an interest, adverse to the rights of citizens. . . and the community.”

More telling for our times, Madison continues, “The most common and durable source of faction, has been the various and unequal distribution of property,” i.e. wealth. Hence those with property and those without “have ever formed distinct interest in society.”