The full impact of Anthony Weiඣner’s onanistic mayoral adventure is belatedly becoming💧 clear — in what we’re finally learning about Bill de Blasio.
Weiner’s late entry into the Democratic primary, and the carnival that followed, convulsed a press corps whose attention-deficit disorder was already notorious. So only now is information emerging that could have — probably would have — altered the outcome of the primary.
Thus only now are key questions being asked.
Such as, just who is Bill de Blasio, anyway? Does even he know? What is his true vision for New York City? And is that vision compatible with the best interests of arguably the most prosperous, humane and nurtur𒈔ing municipality on earth?
True, nothing startlingly new is surfacing. But post-primary reporting on de Blasio is providi🌜ng some critical detail — and raising important questions.
For example, is it significant that de Blasio is now on his third set of legal names? Born Warren Wilhelm, he petitioned a court in 1983 to become Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm, and then agaiꦍn in 2001, becoming just plain Bill de Blasio.
He says all this essentially r♛eflects a tumultuous childhood, And it’s true enough that he’s free to call himself anything he wishes.
Still, the changes certainly suggest a man having substantial difficulty defining himself — to himself. That, or it identifies a cynic who understands that a “de Bl🎃asio” on a ballot is likely to fare꧑ better in Gotham than a “Wilhelm.”
Again, his choice. But curious.
Then there’s the s💫oft-focus portrait of the politician as a young activist that ap🍰peared in Monday’s New York Times.
Childhood fantasies are what they are, and de Blasio wasn’t the only young man of his generation with an urge to get down with Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, his Marxist Sandinista “revolutionaries” and th🎃e utopian notions of the international socialist movement. (The deꦦrisive nickname for these First World revolutionary-tourists: Sandalistas.)
Now, most romantics come to understand ⛦that there’s no such thing as utopia. Not de Blasio, or so it seems. He delivered “medical supplies” to the Sandinistas in the ’80s, and has fond feelings for them to this day.
But, 🌺except for the willful, there never was any real doubt about what Ortega represented: The imposition of another Marxist tyranny in the Western Hemisphere. In this he failed, thus largely sparing the Nicaraguan people the bloodbath that virtually always follows such revolutions.
No thanks to de Blasio and his legion✨ of♏ fellow travelers, of course. (And of course Ortega’s back in power now, with the outcome yet to be determined.)
What’s ironic — and what is most germane here — is that successful Marxist rev🌞olutions ꦍnever deliver the goods. Ever.
One gang of thugs is replaced by another gang of thugs, blood runs i🌸n the dungeons, the gulags swell — and 10 years later there is still typhus in the local water supply. (Not that ♐the Daniel Ortegas ever drink from it.)
And that’s because Marxism simply🌠 doesn’t work; nor, really, does its anemic kissing cousin, democratic socialism. Not if economic growth is t꧑he objective, anyway.
Contrast the countries that fell under the Soviet Union’s sway a💮fter World War II with those that entered America’s orbit. Or just compare contemporary North Korea to South Korea. ’Nuff said.
Or maybe compare the New York City de Blasio finds so wanting with any municipality that has embraced his nostrums, anywhere in the world. Detroit? Managua? Havana, where de Blasio and his wife secretly honeymooned in 1991?
New York City, a global marke𒀰t-economics icon, has its problems. There are, again, nꦺo utopias.
But the city has gained some 300,000 net new jobs over the past 12 years — 90,000 in the past year alone. It is a bastion of strength on a planet bedeviled by economic uncertainty — and the last thing tha🌸t it needs right now is an injection of Marxian wealth confiscation and other gimꦫmicks.
And yet here is Bill🎀 de Blasio, brimming with nostalgia for his Sandinista acquaintances: “They had a youthful energy and idealism mix🌌ed with a human ability and practicality that was really inspirational.”
Plus Soviet AK-47s. A lot of them.
Some romantics, of course𓂃, just never get over it.
But now that Tony Weiner’𝓡s time has expired, maybe New York will get a look at the real Warren Wilhelm, er, Bill de Blasio. The fellow who’s on view now is disquieting.