We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you this breaking sociopolitical rant.
This past winter, in the immediate wake of an inspiring, hopeful, historically unprecedented act of political esprit de corps, untold thousands of New Yorkers made the dispiriting conscious choice to literally treat their city like shit.
When the snow stubbornly carpeting New York in January and February finally—finally—began to recede, I was shocked to discover the property of my Bronx apartment complex studded with dog turds. Call me naïve, but I couldn’t believe my neighbors would disrespect our shared home like this.
The scene was no different around the rest of the neighborhood: the sidewalks and curbsides a minefield of thawing scat. When I would text friends in the other boroughs to see how they were surviving the long, cold winter, the response was some variation of, “Fine—except for hopscotching around all the dog shit.” The problem was so pervasive, it was covered on the local news:
Frustrated New Yorkers took to Reddit to vent. They posted personal appeals for decency on scaffolding poles and lampposts:
All of which reminded me of a scene from State of Grace (1990), a movie I’d already been thinking about in light of St. Patrick’s Day, in which Jackie Flannery (Gary Oldman) laments the yuppie gentrification driving the Irish out of Hell’s Kitchen:
“It never used to be that way. Used to be you dropped a cone, you could pick it up and finish it.” Hear, hear.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. How’s sidewalk-forsaken dog shit, after all, any different from the ubiquitous sixteen-ounce Poland Spring bottles filled to the spout with urine, capped carefully and tossed carelessly into the gutters along the parkway’s service road?
Or the thoughtless dicks on the subway—or the express bus; or the Metro-North; or the elevator—watching TikTok videos at top volume, sans headphones, like we’re in their personal media room?
Or the daily instances of drivers honking angrily at the morning rush-hour traffic in which they’re ensnarled, creating needless noise pollution over a universal vexation that’s no one’s fault and can therefore only reasonably be met with patience?
Though I suppose laying on the horn is preferable to the other common demonstration of their petromasculine preeminence: blowing through (solidly) red lights at busy intersections (often around cars ahead of them and head-on into oncoming traffic) because they’re late for some job they hate.
We live in a country of “everyday heroes”—assholes for whom the rules don’t apply, who treat everyone else as obstacles to be circumvented or steamrolled, who see themselves as the righteous protagonists of their very own heroic narratives. The rest of us? We are merely players, performers and portrayers, in their ongoing dramas.
Far more virulently than any “scourge of wokeness,” however one defines that, a spirit of Trumpian nihilism now pervades nearly every aspect of American life. And while this in no way excuses the fuck-off, me-first mindset—and certainly doesn’t apply to everyone who espouses it—when the state fails to honor its commitment to the social compact by providing a modicum of safety and stability for people, is it so hard to understand why they no longer feel obligated to live up to their end of it? Nihilism, after all, is a self-perpetuating cycle.
What are folks supposed to do when they can’t get access to the mental-health services they need? When the cost of living has far outpaced wages? When the specter of A.I.-driven mass unemployment looms over blue-collar and white-collar professions alike? When that draft-dodging, warmongering orange fuck is $4 billion richer than he was a year ago while the price of Froot Loops—the thing he was ostensibly supposed to bring down on Day One—has only gone up?
When people feel like all they get is the shit end of the stick, is it really so surprising when they leave shit itself in the public commons? Not a particularly abstruse metaphor, as those things go.
In State of Grace, Jackie and Terry weren’t merely bitching over beers about the yuppies coopting and defiling the streets of their hometown; they were lamenting a way of life in the real-time process of being lost to Reagan-era neoliberalism—the way the poor get squeezed, anything of value they may actually possess inevitably extracted from them for redistribution to the rich.
“Taxi Driver” (1976), “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975), “Dirty Harry” (1971), “Death Wish” (1974), “The French Connection” (1971)
It’s no coincidence that violent, vengeful, desperate, and/or disillusioned urban antiheroes overtook cinema in the 1970s—just as the welfare state was being systematically dismantled—and have proliferated ever since. Reflecting on Death Wish (1974) for its fiftieth anniversary, film critic Charles Bramesco says this of liberal architect–turned–bloodthirsty vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson):
Paul’s stand inspires his fellow New Yorkers to stand up to their sidewalk bullies, who are duly cowed by any firm act of resistance. The copycats imply that Paul is acting on impulses everyone shares, channeling a culture-wide spirit of frustration in a way markedly similar to the riot-sparking Joker of Todd Phillips’ 2019 film—another guy who snapped after being pushed too far. At least the Clown Prince of Crime was honest about the simple indulgence of his violent whims, where Paul sees himself as some fashion of civil engineer keeping urban America from going off the rails. Anyone actually schooled in the discipline will tell you the most effective method of lowering street crime has more to do with outreach and pre-empting the circumstances that leave the economically precarious with no other options.
— Charles Bramesco, “Death Wish at 50: a reactionary and repugnant revenge thriller,” Guardian, July 24, 2024
Look around. This is what a half-century socioeconomic experiment in upwardly funneled wealth redistribution looks like. Pretty shitty, no? That is, quite literally, the message on the streets. Christ, you can’t avoid stepping in it.
Hard to remember that just last autumn, New Yorkers made a different choice—a truly extraordinary and even altruistic one: We decided we deserved a better quality of life, a fairer standard of living, a renewed investment in social services and public programs, and we entrusted City Hall to a democratic socialist. That is a Big. Fucking. Deal.
For those whose only impressions of democratic socialism are informed by the distortions and prevarications of right-wing media:
That’s it—that’s what it means. I hear a lot of bad-faith bullshit about how it’s about taking money from hardworking self-starters and doling it out, no strings attached, to the “undeserving.” That ain’t socialism—it’s neoliberal capitalism, baby. That’s what we’ve been doing for the entirety of my lifetime. Such is what ushered the Second Gilded Age through which we are all suffering. Well, not the Epstein class Trump serves; they’re doing fine. The rest of us, I mean.
Zohran Mamdani is a man, not a messiah. He’s neither savior nor devil. I want him to be a great mayor; I think New York deserves one. I want him to prove to the rest of the country that democratic socialism can make our economy fairer, our society more secure and sustainable—that progressive governance is the way we right this listing ship. So far, he is off to an encouraging start.
But we have to do our part. We all have roles to play in our community and our democracy. Through both my activism and my writing, I have come to believe we will never emerge from the nihilistic morass in which we’re mired (despite past instances on my part of premature celebration) until we commit, individually and collectively, to living by an ethos of We’re all in this together.
Well-intentioned public policy, necessary though it is, is not by itself enough. Just ask Joe Biden, who tried his damnedest to put the country on the right track—passing historic investments in infrastructure and manufacturing with the slimmest of majorities in Congress—but we weren’t ready for it. I mean, he didn’t lower the cost of Froot Loops, so—fuck it—any chance the January Sixth guy’s up for another go?
Neither Biden nor his ambitious legislative miracles—and that’s what they were (something his successor recognizes, having shamelessly seized credit for them)—could rehabilitate the mentality of an electorate demanding overnight magic-wand fixes that would immediately improve their lives (or, barring that, sate their bloodlust) without pausing for a look in their mirror to ask what they might do for their country.
If that’s what New Yorkers expect from Mayor Mamdani, his administration, regardless of any political accomplishments he may notch, is destined to disappoint. Same as Biden’s. Ask not what your community can do for you, ya know?
To be sure: There are plenty of New Yorkers—plenty of Americans, for that matter—who live by such a community-minded ethos. I’m fortunate to work with many of them as both an environmental activist and member of my co-op board. Those are true everyday heroes—sans quotation marks—of all different temperaments, ethnicities, professions, and socioeconomic backgrounds who routinely invest their time and attention in initiatives from which they themselves do not profit (save the considerable satisfaction that comes from serving their communities).
When you associate with folks like that, you see their footprint of compassion everywhere. I noticed it the other afternoon, waiting in the car for my wife’s train across the street from a Friendly Fridge on Broadway by Van Cortlandt Park, where locals were patiently picking up prepared meals free of charge—and adhering to the posted honor code:
Take only what you need and leave some for others; clean up your mess same as you would at home; be kind and respectful. Rules to live by, methinks.
To that end, “doing for one’s community” can be as simple as merely acknowledging that community: recognizing we share this world with others—that the people we pass on the sidewalk, sit beside on the subway, wait alongside at red lights, stand in line with at the pizzeria and post office, etc., aren’t NPCs in the Story of Me.
That’s the noxious Randian worldview Hollywood romanticizes, that Ronald Reagan invoked to justify shredding the social contract in 1981, and that Trump has harnessed so impressively to stay in power (and out of prison): crush your enemies; own the libs; “hate the right people”; take whatever you want; lie with impunity; apologize for nothing; cast blame elsewhere; everything’s for sale—democracy included. Anything less is for suckers and losers.
Mamdani offers, to state it moderately, an alternative approach. I’m glad we elected him. Regardless of how his mayoral tenure ultimately turns out, it was the right decision—made for the right reason: because New Yorkers felt we—all of us—deserve a better, fairer New York. It was a hopeful vote from all who cast it, not a nihilistic or vengeful one—not a thumb of the nose to otherized people we’ve been trained to blame for our problems.
Hold fast to that spirit. Let’s give Mamdani the time and support he requires to do what we elected him to do at City Hall; in the meantime, let’s be the change we want to see, to invoke an admittedly starry-eyed cliché, on our city streets. Only then, when we’re all in this together, will we truly realize the New York we deserve.
Or, at minimum, one a little less shitty. That would be a welcome start.
Coming this spring: A deep-dive analysis of the 1990 coming-of-age drama Pump up the Volume.
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