If being rooted in the real world is getting you down, just do what Donald Trump, New York’s Mayor Eric Adams and the leadership at Harvard University are doing. They’re all living in fantasyland.
Let’s go in order. First, the likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.
As I wrote last week, anything can happen between now and November with Trump’s already tiresome candidacy. But after his two 50% wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, and precluding a multi-year stint in Allenwood, Trump is the odds-on guy to run against Joe Biden, (sigh) again.
If Trump were a sane candidate, he would analyze the early voting results and see that, while he’s very strong with the MAGA base, he’s still very weak with the swing voters, the independents, the suburban housewives. These are the voters a Republican must win over to win the White House. A candidate living in the real world would alter his campaign rhetoric to try to portray himself as a uniter, not a divider, someone who’s a doer and not a detractor.
But not Trump. His narcissism won’t allow it.
He harps on his totally unproven claim the 2020 election was stolen from him. He mocks his one remaining opponent. He insults Nikki Haley and her Indian heritage. He demeans her intelligence and her integrity. Hey Trump, how about giving voters a reason to not vote for Joe Biden? How about articulating a vision for the future of America, instead of dishing out more anger, bluster, lies and vitriol?
Trump lives in a fantasy world where he believes the MAGA voters that turn out in the primaries are enough to propel him to victory in the general election.
They’re not. Period.
We will have Trump up to our eyeballs for the next ten months, so let’s move on to another politician who dwells just south of reality. But unlike Trump’s dark world, New York Mayor Eric Adams apparently lives in a city where there’s only sunshine and rainbows.
Adams delivered New York’s annual State of the City address this past week. According to hizzoner, New York is in great shape. Everything’s going according to plan. New York is back, baby and the future is brighter than ever.
Ya gotta love a guy who creates his own reality.
But the real reality is, New York City is a mess. A financial mess. A political mess. A lawless mess.
New York is in a free-for-all, free-fall.
Want to buy some toothpaste at CVS? Well, first, you’ll have to find one that hasn’t closed. Then you’ll have to wait a half hour for a store employee to unlock your Colgate so the marauding thieves don’t steal it.
You want to want to avoid being run over by an unregistered, uninsured motor scooter that’s disobeying all traffic rules and regs? Good luck.
You want to be able to walk home at night without nervously fingering the pepper spray in your coat pocket? Not in NYC.
Oh, and what about the 172,000 asylum seekers who’ve ended up here in the last couple of years? The mayor himself has said the overwhelming financial strain they have created will end the city as we know it. Adams blew right past that little nugget.
I don’t know what Eric Adams is smoking. Maybe he picked up a pre-roll from one of the thousands of illegal weed stores no one seems to be able to close down.
Before we move on from Adams, one last question. Do you think, after two years in office, we are better off under Eric Adams than we were under Bill de Blasio? Hmmm…
While you’re thinking about that, also think about who’s really in charge at Harvard, because he, she, him, her, they, must have their PhD’s shorting out their brain cells.
When the elite geniuses at Harvard formed a high-level task force to investigate and to take action against campus anti-semitism, who did they choose to be its chairperson?
His name is Derek Penslar, Director of the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies, which is an oxymoron in and of itself. Penslar says antisemitism at Harvard isn’t as bad as it’s being portrayed. Well, maybe he should ask Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who can’t leave his menorah in Harvard Yard overnight because it will be vandalized.
Pensler wrote a book entitled “Zionism: An Emotional State” where he said Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians from their land and oppression of those who remain have made it one of the most disliked countries on the planet.
Larry Summers, Harvard’s former president, has publicly called for his dismissal from the task force, as have others.
In the woke-addled world the Harvard honchos call home, Penslar’s appointment probably made perfect sense. Of course, they are the same folks, detached from reality, living in a fantasy, that thought they could ride out the Claudine Gay fiasco when most everyone else knew she was dead woman walking.
It seems Cambridge is the place to be if you want to escape the real world.
One Last Thing…
There was lots of moaning and groaning by journalists this past week over the dismantling of the LA Times. More than 115 staffers were told their time was up, that’s about 20% of their newsroom.
I truly feel bad for many of those soon to be out-of-work, ink-stained wretches, who are faced with the reality of trying to find jobs in a drastically shrinking market for reporters, writers and editors.
But, am I surprised the LA Times is a failing journalistic enterprise? No. Its journalism stinks.
The paper’s senior entertainment writer, Meg James, seems to have survived, for now.
She fits in well in the LA Times land where facts that don’t fit her narrative are ignored and regurgitated falsities are plastered onto the front page.
So, while others are wearing sackcloth and ashes over the gutting of the LA Times, there’ll be no tears from me, not even one.