The sun was down and the day had finally finished its cruel work. The evening air, which should have been crisp and jolting as a harbinger of fall, was filled with flecks of toasted tasting dust which grabbed at my throat. I had finally come out for a walk that evening and was crossing the northwest corner of 86th Street at Broadway with my wife and son while capturing a glimpse of the faces of the residents of the Upper West Side, faces to which I had grown accustomed over these many years both as a neighbor and politician. On this bitterly quiet but disturbing evening, still September 11, 2001, I began to see something in those faces which I had never seen over the many years and the many different circumstances and seasons. It was not fear. No, it was something which at first I could not identify but as the days ands months progressed and new events began to crash into my insular and somewhat insular neighborhood I identified on their faces that which at first escaped me: it was the deep and abiding sadness of one who anticipates the untimely death as of a loved one, as if the cherished companion of a lifetime had passed permanently from this world. But the beloved cherished companion for which my neighbors grieved was no living personage that walked these streets, it was rather a political philosophy, held, cuddled and defended for over a century. They were grieving for what they now knew was inevitable: the death of Socialism.
It would be too simple to say Socialism died on the Upper West Side on September 11, 2001. It is stated with a certain bitter humor by many who know the Upper West Side well that it is the last bastion of Socialism since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. No, this was not a place where Socialism was going to die easily. This political philosophy was not going to die merely because two of the greatest buildings located in one of the greatest cities in the world were destroyed, that 3,000 people died within two hours and tens of thousands of friends and family members were utterly devastated and an entire nation rose to a level of anger not matched since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This political philosophy was not going to die merely because the nation=s center of war making was hit on the same day by a similar cruise missile or that a third airplane destined to hit the capital crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. No, the death of Socialism on the Upper West Side would require a bit more pummeling before it would be purged from the souls of these true believers. But on the evening of September 11, 2001 I saw in those faces, especially in their eyes, a sense of confusion mixed with shock. By that evening, though we weren=t yet familiar with their names, we knew that the persons who flew the planes and directed the flying bombs into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon were Islamic Fundamentalists (AIslamo-fascists@, if you will) and that they obviously hated the United States to such an extent that nothing would stop them, not even their own existence. However monumental the shock of that destruction of lives and mortar took hold upon the psyche of my Socialist neighbors, the greater shock, the shock which began the throws of death of their long held political philosophy, was the realization that Socialism could lead to such a horrible act of terror. And it is this realization that everyone of its adherents have desperately kept from their consciences (and I might add from us too, the unbelievers) from the moment this philosophy was born in the 19th Century and its development and propagation into the 20th Century. During this period it congealed upon the brains and hearts of its supporters, rising from the foul sea of denials and blind belief, it lay dormant for a hundred and fifty years revealing for its Upper West Side adherents, perhaps for the first time, the true nature of its savage based philosophy. But, you may ask, what does Socialism have to do with Islamic Fundamentalism, this Islamo-fascism. Socialism, first and foremost is a philosophy which rejects God and adopts earthbound goods and products as the underlying fact of the human condition. Islam has its adherents submit to a living God. Here each dogma calls a truce, a truce to further the far greater dogma which the Islamo-fascists and Socialists both passionately share: a deep and abiding hate for individual freedom, a desire to control the activities resulting from the human condition and a violent focus upon any person or institution that contradicts this philosophic and dogmatic belief system.
-------------------------
On a sparkling New York March evening that same year coming home from the office, I chanced upon one of my neighbors. He=s a retired Jewish gentleman, perhaps in his late 70's. Standing in front of our building without seeming to have much on his mind, and always a person with whom I could share some neighborhood gossip, I stopped to say hello. The Israeli-Palestinian conflagration was the focus of the media that week and in the course of the conversation I reflected that the Upper West Side was peopled by a large number of Jews who were substantially sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. He offered me a look of disbelief and stated that that was about as ridiculous a statement he has ever heard. I responded by asking him if he were pro- Palestinian. Silence. I asked again, but this time with more confidence since I sensed I had hit the mark. Silence. I then demanded that he answer the question: AAre you pro Palestinian?@ AI am pro Jewish@ he responded somewhat sheepishly. There was little more I could say and proceeded to my apartment. I confess that this had been a question I had asked a number of my Jewish neighbors on the Upper West Side before and was not surprised at his answer. What is it, I found myself asking at that time, that attracted these Upper West Side Jews to a cause that is so clearly antithetical to their morality, their ethics and their history as a people? The answer to that question came a lot sooner than I ever believed.
The Spring of 2002 was filled with horror. A Palestinian homicide bomber broke into a Passover Seder in Israel proper resulting in the killing and wounding of so many people it was difficult to fully comprehend the magnitude of the event. The families of the dead and wounded however understood the calamity all too well. Israel was stunned. Newspapers reported that the bomb material was Aweapon=s grade@ blowing off the the roof of the restaurant where the worshipers were praying and celebrating. Coming on the heals of this event was something even more ominous. The various discrete European Jewish communities were under attack. Upper West Siders began to read that synagogues were being burned and defaced throughout Western Europe and Jews were being attacked in the streets. Islamic Fundamentalists , who constitute an ever growing part of Western European population and who had been causing a substantial increase in the general crime rate in France and the Low countries were now concentrating their violence upon the Jews of Western Europe. My Upper West Side Jewish neighbors= faces showed for the first time the confusion of holding two contradictory thoughts simultaneously: one being a philosophic affinity for the Palestinians and their cause and the other a recognition that, no matter how distant they were from the violence being meted out upon the Jews of Israel, that they too were Jews and could easily be the next target of their Islamic Fundamentalist friends. Their minds eyes wandered over to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a large Arab/Palestinian community, remembering the pogrom of Crown Heights and wondering what new evil Brooklyn was fomenting against them.
The Upper West Side is a seething caldron of contempt for the fundamental precepts of American exceptionalism. It manifests itself in various ways moving through well traveled highways of discontent. And in spite of the fact that the American system provides opportunities for free thought and action it is vilified. For years Upper West Siders expressed their political beliefs by sending forth to the various political institutions, the New York City mayoralty, the City Council, the New York State Assembly and Senate, the governorship, politicians who expressed openly the Socialist philosophy that permeated their beliefs and dogma. For the last 50 years these politicians, supported by the frothing troops of hate for all things having to do with individual freedom and self reliance, the center of the vanguard coming from the Upper West Side, made it their solemn duty to tear down the great enterprises of a great city developed for over a century. A public education system that produced some of the greatest writers, scientists, philosophers, music composers, entertainers and Nobel prize winners of this country is now, within a period of 50 years, in shambles. A political system that responded to the needs of its population now responds to public employee unions, racial hate mongers, supporters of sexual perversions and the perpetrators of every type of crime at the expense of their victims. A public welfare system established to assist lower middle class temporarily unemployed workers and their wives and children became the instrument that created the very poverty it was designed to avoid. And to those that raise their voices in protest, vilification and contumely. They place blame upon the critics while ignoring the destruction which their Socialist dogma has created. The inherent failure of this depraved dogma is ignored and Upper West Siders and their troops demand ever more restrictions, ever more benefits, ever more Socialist implementation which expands government, increases taxation and control until its final failure leads to its inevitable dialectic, tyranny.
So the death of Socialism on the Upper West Side was well into its last throws long before September 11, long before the violence of the Palestinians, long before the pogroms of the Isamo-fascists in Europe. But now the knock at the door in the dead of night. Who is it, they fearfully ask? It is not who they desire it to be: the jack-booted capitalist, their mythical beloved nemesis. Rather, it is their friend and comrade, joined in hate of all things American. Now the faces of my Upper West Side neighbors reveal the shock of the concealed truth of what they so desperately tried to keep from the rest of us: All Socialism, what appears to be benign or otherwise, leads to despotism, tyranny and murder.
The Upper West Side is now a quiet and contrite place to live. Socialism is dead. It died with the falling towers and the thousands of lives that turned to dust. It died with the revelation that comrades are now hunting friends with the intent to murder. It died when the truth of Socialism revealed a bankrupt and vacuous system. The neighborhood has fallen silent and its Socialist politicians are running for cover. The reverends Sharpton and Jackson no longer can find willing Jews to kick and roust out of their beds with bed clothes still on, pushing them into the town square for their weekly treatment of humiliation and self immolation. There is now among my neighbors a quiet circumspection. In the street they pass each other quickly. They no longer stop to talk. They avert their eyes. A simple conversation may require more than they can hide.
The Country Lawyer
Comments