Please follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Truth Social, Gettr, Twitter
As a Brooklyn teenager, Eric Leroy Adams was beaten by cops.
Adams and a fellow "7-Crowns" gang member had stolen a TV from a prostitute, and the (white) arresting officers wanted answers. As the story goes, a black officer intervened and sorted things out peacefully. And so a seed was planted. True story or apocryphal, Adams would go on to become one of New York's Finest, a 20+ year career that he would draw upon in order to forge a successful political run. Six years in the state senate, then seven more as Borough President of Brooklyn, eventually culminating in his mayoral election. He was sworn in on January 1, 2022.
"From the gutter to Gracie Mansion" has a nice movie title ring to it, maybe too much so, more on that later. What do New Yorkers know about Adams? In conversations with fellow city dwellers, the answers are often paltry. Aside from a few gaffes, Adams is best known for once wearing a badge, and lately, for wearing tuxedoes and darkening the door of posh joints like Cipriani. The designation of "Nightlife Mayor" is self-applied: his embrace of after-hours fun is an endorsement of all New York has to offer (even if Adams sticks to the same two questionable spots).
As a city, we audited the eight year class about how psychology can shape a mayor. CIA agent Warren Wilhelm, Bill de Blasio's father, lost his job after McCarthy-era hearings exposed familial ties to the communist party. He ultimately committed suicide in 1979 when DeBlasio was 18. Such events can shape a person. Indeed, de Blasio sought to make New York the "fairest" large city in the country, not the safest. The two unfortunate terms of de Blasio slowly stripped the tall man of his many guises. All that finally remained was a naked, clumsy charlatan (RIP Staten Island Chuck) bargaining with the public to get the Covid vaccine in exchange for free french fries. Apart from awkward photos of his dating life (for some reason he divorced Chirlane McCray), he now resides in the where-are-they-now file, his political relevance--as Wilhelm, Sr. might have put it--kaput.
So what shaped Eric Adams? His mother Dorothy cleaned houses, his father was a butcher and an alcoholic. The fourth of seven children, his family lived modestly in Queens. Adams sometimes earned money cleaning windshields with a squeegee, or selling fake gold chains on Canal Street. Or so the story goes. Regardless of the veracity of his stump speech anecdotes, Adams, like so many of his Big Apple mayoral predecessors, has set his sights high. Even prior to his election, he alluded to presidential aspirations, claiming to be the new "face of the Democratic Party."
Such lofty ideas have floated back down to earth over the past two years. In the throes of the migrant crisis, high crime, a Soros-planted D.A., and a City Council all too willing to override his vetoes, Adams is up to his neck. And it shows. In the past week, Adams has acquired an almost Bidenesque susceptibility to foot-in-mouth disease. Yesterday, it was a press conference while wearing a $700 Fendi scarf under his body armor vest. It was a combination that succinctly illustrates Adams mayoralty: all business on the surface, but upon closer inspection, the trappings of luxury not necessarily commensurate with living in NYC on a $258K salary.
Just prior to Christmas, in an attempt to describe what the city has to offer, Adams said, "you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center...to a person who's celebrating a new business". He later backtracked, but the damage was done. If there's one thing any New Yorker holds as sacrosanct, 9/11 is it. No, there wasn't a huge public outcry over the thoughtless remark, but there were millions of heads slowly shaking in muted pain.
Now...add to that scenes of organized migrant crime rampant in the city. In a nasty twist, the scooters used to snatch purses were provided to migrants by...the Mayor.
On January 30th, the City Council overrode Adams' veto on the How Many Stops Act, thereby requiring the NYPD to record the race of all the individuals with whom they interact. The intention of the act is to catalog stop-and-frisk encounters. But as Adams knows from his years on the beat, it's another feel-good idea that will only add to desk time, overtime, and slower response times for a department already stretched thin.
Fashion choices, slips of the tongue, Albany, the White House, and a stacked City Council aside...is Mayor Adams the person to blame for the state of affairs in New York City? Yes and no. Yes, because he is the mayor. The city buck stops with the city boss.
But that's just a platitude. In an age where billionaires aggressively fund district attorney and low-turnout congressional districts (see Alvin Bragg, AOC), in an age where a sitting president ignores the U.S. Constitution in order to pack formerly deep blue states with illegal immigrants, is it valid to blame a mere mayor?
Adams does go through the motions of complaint. He says the city is being overrun with migrants, using the Scriptural "my cup runneth over" (Psalms 23:5) improperly. It is meant to convey, "I have more than I need", not, "stop sending aggressive, military age males with no documentation to my already cash-strapped city".
Perhaps Adams is a flesh-and-blood straw man. A foil, an ostensibly sound choice--a former cop--who agreed to play the role of frustrated mayor. Much like with Governor Hochul, what Adams says about Joe Biden, Alvin Bragg, and the hyper-progressive wing of his party doesn't match his actions.
"Adams would go on to become one of New York's Finest..." Well...he might have gone on to join the NYPD...but I doubt he was one of NYC's "finest"!
adams is walking proof of the democrat party is comprised of socialist kleptocrats, only mouthing their "concern" for the citizens under their benign socialism when the criminal element they have encouraged becomes so blatant that there is a popular outcry.
See also: Bottom up, top down socialist revolution, meaning that the elites encourage lawlessness so that the people cry for more police, which can then be turned against the people found to be politically inconvenient.
cloward-piven