[April 14, 2023] I’m not a New Yorker, but I did live in NYC for five years (minus a year in Iraq), where I enjoyed the amenities of living in the Big Apple. Fortunately, my wife Nancy is from NYC (Brooklyn) and acted as an experienced tour guide to all the good things it had to offer. But we left the City in 2016. Why?
NYC has many benefits, and I figure most people know that. Why else would someone want to visit there in the first place? I think we can admit that there is a particular unspoken attraction to the “big lights” and the famous places to visit and enjoy, like Radio City Music Hall, plays on Broadway (and off), shopping in Saks on Fifth Avenue (or Bloomingdale’s), watching a New York Yankee baseball game, and cruises on the Hudson River. Perhaps even a trip to the top of the Empire State Building.
There is, however, a big problem with the Big City, and it’s not just an increasing crime wave. The biggest problem with NYC and other large cities is the full-on, exploding corruption of those who govern them. I don’t mean they take money under the table to give their political friends lucrative contracts illegally; that happens too. The problem is the corruption of the ideal of what good, essential governance for all citizens is about.
You may say, “Hey, I don’t care because this is only a big city problem.” The issue for you and me is that this attitude – that city government is for the residents – is no longer the driving force we assumed underlays all decisions. In NYC, corruption is primarily driven by the progressive political movement pushing out the average New Yorker via high taxes, restrictive regulations, soaring energy costs, pro-crime policies, and poor public education. And it’s working.
In recent surveys, most long-term residents plan to leave the City in the next five years. And they are leaving the City in droves. When you infuse lefty ideologues into any system, they rip apart the traditional social fabric through terrible policies undertaken in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. When that happens, we all lose.
This is a trend coming to you. Remember I told you so.
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Great article about a sad topic.
A little off topic here (to use a Gen. Satterfield phrase)!
“Climate change causes home runs, apparently”
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/04/13/climate-change-causes-home-runs-apparently-n543624
Beware the MSM.
Good one, Stacey!
Nothing like a crazy NY Governor to encourage folks to leave the state. The rise in crime, the increased cost of living, and the failing public schools were all driven by policies enacted by liberal Democrats. How were things supposed to turn out any differently? They can’t have honestly believed that scaling back the police force in a city with the gang problem that New York has would result in less crime. Nobody capable of feeding themselves can be that dumb.
Just in time when we are taught that the world is getting smarter, we prove exactly the opposite.
😎 Great comments section today, Gen. S. And, please keep these kind of articles coming our way.
Great article. I live in a small town and that is just right for me and my family.
In the first three months of 2023, more than ten thousand people fled New York and relocated to Florida. If things keep going at this pace, Ron DeSantis is going to run out of places to put them all. (NY Post) Don’t let them come to Texas, we don’t want liberals here, we got enough from California (the other big socialist state).
Yusaf, I laughed when i read your comments but you are spot on for them. I too left a big city, San Francisco but that was a decade ago. Even then, things were getting out of control. I’m glad I left.
… and not because you are an “idiot” but because you could see the writing on the wall. Get out of California if you can but please please please go to Washington DC or Colorado or some other liberal state and please leave your politics behind. Remember if you are a liberal and are getting out of the big cities, please remember this, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. yeah!!!!!!
Wow, nailed it Kenya!
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Gee, and these whacko politicians believe they can fool everyone all the time.
Gen. Satterfield, I can perfectly understand why you wrote this article. I’m sure it is frustrating to leave such a once-beautiful place.
Good thing you got out of New York City while the getting was still good. Crime is out of control and getting WORSE every day. Drug addicts everywhere and killings spiking. If you are poor, and you live in the big apple, you’re screwed.
Gen. Satterfield knows when even he can’t make a difference with corruption and New York City is the epicenter of political corruption infused with the neo-Marxist progressive ideology.
Boy Sue, yes, of course you are right. But too many folks just plain are too stupid to notice or they dont care.