From “A Number One” to “Troll of the Sewer”
Why NYC Can’t Afford Mamdani’s Marxism
From “A Number One” to “Troll of the Sewer”: Why NYC Can’t Afford Mamdani’s Marxism
By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com
There’s a reason Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” still stirs the American imagination. This city has always been more than steel and skyline — it’s a proving ground. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And if you can ruin it here? You can ruin anything. Which is why the idea of turning New York City over to a self-proclaimed communist like Zohran Mamdani isn’t just a bad idea. It’s a slow-motion cultural crime.
To understand the danger, let’s go back to the source material. Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848) was born in the smoke and clatter of Europe’s early industrial revolution. It was a time of child labor in factories, peasants bound to landowners, and economies still powered by coal and muscle. Marx imagined a workers’ uprising to end the exploitation he saw around him — a revolution that would sweep away private property (the productive kind), abolish inheritance, and centralize credit in the hands of the state.
That was 177 years ago. Since then, the industrial age has given way to automation, mechanized farming, and an interconnected global economy. Marx’s prescriptions weren’t just untested — they’re laughably out of sync with the America of 2025. Here, we value liberty, self-sacrifice, and above all, self-determination. None of these qualities mesh with the isolated writings of a lonely, out-of-touch intellectual who never saw any of his pipe dreams materialize.
And Mamdani? Same mold, different century. No experience in the real, competitive world we inhabit — just an updated script of the same stale ideology. In practice, every attempt to make Marx’s dream real has turned into a nightmare.
Soviet Union: Promised equality, delivered purges, gulags, and the Holodomor. Millions dead.
East Berlin: Built a wall to keep people in and shot those who tried to flee.
China: Not a “workers’ paradise” but an autocracy run by the Party, riddled with cronyism, where you thought Solyndra was bad? Try entire industries propped up to fail.
Cambodia under Pol Pot: A communist experiment that murdered a quarter of the population.
Venezuela: Once wealthy, now a cautionary tale of empty shelves, political prisons, and mass flight.
Not one of these regimes ever delivered a happy, liberated proletariat. What they did deliver was bread lines, secret police, and elections so fake they’d embarrass a high school student council.
The truth is, communism doesn’t fail because it’s “never been tried right.” It fails because it collides head-on with human nature. People want to build, to own, to improve their lot — not be told by the State how much they’re allowed to have and what they’re allowed to say.
And yet here we are, entertaining the idea of a man steeped in this bankrupt ideology running the most iconic city in America. It’s not just absurd — it’s dangerous. Because New York is not just New York’s business. It’s America’s brand. It’s the high bar. The city’s success or failure sets a tone for the entire country.
Bob’s kicker: You put Mamdani in charge of New York and whatever “A Number One” is, that’s not what the city will become. “King of the Hill” turns into “Troll of the Sewer,” and “If I can make it here” becomes “If I can survive here, I can survive anywhere.” Bread lines in January, ration cards in July, and your bodega guy explaining why the bananas are now a government-issued privilege.