Why Curtis Sliwa Can't Win: A Rant

 LIVING IN CLASS-BASED AMERICA

I SHOULDN'T CARE about the New York City mayoral contest, but observing it from a distance has set off my alarm bells about why America never fulfilled its potential and why the American Dream today is a fraud. 

What do I know of New York? I never lived there-- tried to once-- but when I was promoting the Underground Literary Alliance in the 2000's I went up there from Philadelphia via the Chinatown Bus nearly every week. Before and after 9-11. I promoted a number of events (crashed more) there-- one at historic CBGB's-- and attended countless readings, open mics, parties, you name it. I knew a lot of writers who lived in NYC, from varied backgrounds, and I caught at least part of the New York vibe.

What triggered this rant is noise from the usual suspects about the various other candidates, with Curtis Sliwa usually dismissed as "kind of a loon." As any ambitious person not from the elite class, or inside an approved institution, is viewed.

Liberal-left intellectuals, of whom there are many in New York City, are backing Zohran Mamdani, whose parents are themselves intellectuals: his father a Columbia University professor; his mother an award-winning filmmaker. Likely they see themselves, or elite versions of themselves, in him. Curtis Sliwa is an actual working class guy, but leftist intellectuals, who claim to speak for the working class, don't trust him to know his city and its people. Who has traveled New York City's streets more than Curtis Sliwa? There was even once a mob hit put on him! He should be, and for many is, a folk hero.

But no, Sliwa doesn't fit the standard pre-packaged ideological solution which has never worked any time, any place. They'll keep trying to pound the square peg into a round hole because it's what they've been institutionally taught: the most conditioned persons on the planet from the time their yuppie parents dropped them into their first pre-pre-pre-school at age two.

Differences between the candidates are huge. Only one is not from a conforming institution, but from the streets, the grass roots.