We have a similar problem with the attitude of the MAGA-aping Reform and the rest of the far right who hate London and its Mayor (and, of course, its diversity). They spread lies that London is crime-ridden and dangerous, despite the face that rates of violent crime are lower in London than in the rest of the country. The same goes for life expectancy and road deaths.
The right lives in a make-believe world. One where their propaganda network tells them what to believe, who to hate, and when to be angry. They are living in a dictatorship of their own choosing and want fervently to impose it on everyone else. It is an odious worldview.
In the early 2000s a top Republican operative — reputed to be Karl Rove — mockingly told the journalist Ron Suskind that while Democrats were living in the “reality-based” world and bragged that Republicans were creating their own alternate reality the media chose to turn a blind eye to that shocking truth instead of shining a spotlight on the many ways Republicans were deliberately distorting reality — lying about things like WMD and climate change, pretending to care about debt while blowing it up with tax cuts for the rich, lying with impunity about opponents, etc.
Now the mainstream media are pretending this rejection of truth, science and reality only started with Trump. Who knew, amirite?
VERY well said. Actually, neoconservatism started this. In a 1976 WSJ article, neocon founder Irving Kristol wrote that for conservatives to win elections, it's necessary that intellectuals stay "at the margins of society", as they should, in a "healthy" society, because if not, so when conservatives have to debate their ideas in public, they will always lose.
Therefore, the op-ed argued, it's important to make sure that people vote with their gut feeling, not their brain.
25 years later, neocons took over the Grand Old Party and the first big lie killed hundreds of thousands of people: WMD found in Iraq.
This is also when they create Fox Entertainment, to fool as many people for as long as possible.
It could all have blown up when in 2016, Trump was the only one on the GOP debate stage to dare to tell the truth about THE biggest neocon lie (the Iraq war). People could have seen that an even bigger conman was falsely claiming to care about the truth. Instead, Fox and then the GOP embraced him, realizing that they had reached a point of no return...
Now, the neoliberal neofascists who already in the 1940s invented neoliberalism to fight back against democracy and the New Deal, are manipulating Trump in the WH, using him as his clown in chief.
And mainstream media believe that getting the truth out means constantly creating a totally FALSE "bothsidesism" that made more than 50% of the country not know what caused global inflation under Biden by Nov. 5.
The RWNJs have always been out there. They are truly paranoid and seek out conspiracy theories to gratify their personality disorders. What is truly evil about Faux is that it brought them all together for their daily fix of propaganda.
It's also the fact that it takes low-information, low-engagement folk who might be generally conservative but not about everything and might disagree with you but not think you're literally Satan, crams their head with bullshit 24/7 until they're full-blown fanaticized zombies.
Fox deliberately creates a lot of fear in its viewers — for example the constant harping on the crime rate in blue cities like NYC but ignoring the higher crime rates in many red areas. What really infuriates me is how the mainstream “liberal” media plays along with these false narratives.
Faux was inspired by Rush who was already radicalizing a lot of people. But Faux knew how to reach more moderate, female voters — like some of the women in my extended family.
Mainstream media certainly perpetuates the myths about American cities. The NY Times in particular never misses an opportunity to bash Chicago and San Francisco. A recent article called San Francisco voters who wanted to turn the "Great Highway" into a park "anti-car". Really? Maybe they just wanted to reduce the expense of having to jeep the ocean front stretch free of sand!
That was my argument for taking it easy on Trump because on important issues like Medicaid expansion and abortion and gay rights and Bush wars Trump was closer to Democrats than Bush Republicans. Unfortunately Democrats campaigned with Liz f&@*ing Cheney in 2024 and now many independents believe Democrats are the party of war and hardship instead of peace and prosperity.
The most damaging part of the make-believe world Republicans believe in is their central tenet: that Uncle Miltie’s fantasies about trickle-down tax policy are good for capitalism. Republicans have been promoting this fantasy for well over a hundred years, well before Milton Friedman codified it.
America has always been a prime target for profiteers, who are still the ugly underbelly of our nation. I love this country because most of us still want to make it fair and just, and we have the tools to do it- if we keep at it!
No one CHOOSES hatred. Hatred increases when you don't have access to emotional intelligence training tools. It's up to us, those who claim to hate less, to make sure that we help those who became victims of fascist propaganda to show them how to hate themselves less. Once they've learned how to do so, they'll stop hating others too.
I'm not so sure about that... Their hatred is the outward representation of their personality disorders and Personality Disorders are remarkably resistant to treatment. Their hatred makes them happy - the Psychiatric term is 'egosyntonic'.
IMO Trump has Antisocial Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as evidenced by his total disregard for others. Go to the DSM and see how many of the criterion for both fit him. It's pretty close IMO. We all have some dysfunction, some more than others. It's our own dysfunction that syncs up with others dysfunction, and in Trumps case, his charisma, and the right wing media support enhances this process. I don't believe all the other MAGA's have those personality disorders, but they do sync up with Trump, and breaking that tie will take either some hard core work with each of his individual followers, some type of crisis event for Trump, or both. A coming economic crisis might just be what it takes to break a significant portion of Trump followers away from Trump. Unfortunately, we will all have to suffer thru that, but we may be able to come out the other side of that economic crisis much more critical of the hate that drove us into it, and come back together with a much stronger democracy. That's a lot of wishful thinking, but hey, it's what hope I've got.
I don't disagree with you. We may all be in bread lines before he has done with us. As Captain Sheridan said on Babylon 5 - "The duration is going to be a lot longer than the war."
I'm not sure that 'scientific' is a word which should be used in regard to Psychiatry. Most Psychiatric and Psychological studies are fit only for The Journal of Irreproducible Results. Psychiatry has barely risen above its shamanistic roots, but even shamans have their success stories.
I think it's all a matter of what method we use. Fortunately, we don't have to start from scratch here, previous generations already discovered the method that works. It's MLK Jr.s "love your enemies". Not so easy to do, but definitely doable...
It's universal. Big cities are where the diversity and the education are, therefore they *have* to be worse off than the Wholesome Small-Town Folksy Settings, because any other situation would support the conclusion that diversity and education are good for you, and not only for you but for your whole community. And the reactionaries can't have that.
Cities are also where the money is. They're the places where competition is tough and merit is rewarded. These are all scary things for people who live out in the sticks and figure that your place in society should be based on how many cows or sheep your father owned.
They broke it so badly that it has a three-term mayor elected by the city's entire population.
And they so desperately want the fiction that "Labour broke London" to be true that we had that insane episode at the time of the last mayoral election between the polls closing and the votes being counted whereby the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg (who frankly should have known better) recycled a rumour that Sadiq Khan was doing much worse than anticipated and might struggle to be re-elected.
Because the votes weren't counted until the weekend (which also gave rise to conspiracy theories, although it's how mayoral and London Assembly votes have always been counted), this meant that the rumour had plenty of time to fester and metastasise until the official result confirmed that Khan won very comfortably indeed by a whopping margin of 11%. Which was pretty much what the polls had been predicting all along.
West coast “blue”cities are also demonized. I encounter people who used to live in “the city” who are shocked at all the reported NEW violence and depravity- before they come and look for themselves. Right Wing propaganda has smothered reality in that regard. Cities look like the nation, and deal with real situations that arise in a visible way. Rural towns historically have higher violence rates, worse standards of living, and poor services. How that turned into “better” is quite an achievement.
Yes, I had a friend who turned maga, and she told me how horrible California was, with cholera and syringes everywhere. I told her that would come as a shock to my friends that live there, and if it was that bad since I left, they would have mentioned it!
We live in Los Angeles. Have been here since 2000 and not endured a single instance of crime. Yet, whenever the New York Times has an article or opinion piece pointing out that crime is down in cities nationwide, the same yahoos show up in the comment section to say that the numbers must be gamed. They yammer on and on with no evidence at all. Not a shred. Often they trot out anecdotes they saw on the news from several years ago or from when they lived in a city 5 to 20 years ago.
I will counter with the fact that we’ve been here for 25 years, with no crime, not even a porch pirate, in Northeast LA (which is considered by people who don’t know the area as “dangerous”). These math challenged oddballs try to tell me that we’re “lucky,“ and when I point out that we are the NORM, that we fit the normal statistical crime risk for an Angeleno (which is basically none), outrage ensues.
Recently, a group of coworkers and friends were hanging out and the subject came up, and it turned out that our experience held true for the group, all of us Angelenos for more than two decades each. Ironically, a week later, one member of our group did indeed have a crime incident: somebody used an electronic device to hack into their Tesla and steal a beach bag while they were inside a store. So that’s ONE.
This is a fantasy world these folks dwell in by choice. There’s really nothing much we can do about it, I’m beginning to think.
I was born and lived near LA after WW II, then in or near Seattle. Always in a low middle class area. Except for teens using a sling shot to steal a piggy bank and bad speakers, I haven’t been a victim either. I feel for those caught in law enforcement deserts who do, of course. But that is explainable, and hopefully more preventable in future.
I have been living in NYC since the 80s, after growing up in a small town in the south. My mother, may she rest in peace, always worried I’d be a crime victim, when the truth was that her small town was overrun with meth kitchens, house break-ins looking for drugs, and moonshine liquor. There was far more crime just in her neighborhood than anything I’ve experienced here, but she worried nonetheless. And she didn’t even watch Faux News.
Yes, I live in an inner suburb of London, and the sad picture of a crime-ridden dysfunctional London, painted by the usual right-wing suspects, always makes me smile. We enjoy fantastic public transport, great public spaces, a young and diverse population, and a good local economy. Oh and we white, brown and whatever Londoners have repeatedly voted in a moderately left-wing Muslim mayor, which is the best "two fingers" of all to the race-baiting right-wing.
He's insulated against it by being ultra-rich. You can probably get away with being gay if you're rich and don't march in Pride parades or act in-your-face weird.
FL would collapse if not for NYkers who vacation and retire there- thanks to NYs healthier economy, folks can afford to move to FL. If there were only a way to get folks to think for just another 10 seconds or so……….
Unfortunately, the good ones don't last here, only the MAGATs stay. DeathSantis advertised on Right-wing channels to get more racist cops and such down here.
Even though, as Sen. Joni Ernst tactlessly put it, “We’re all gonna die.” Duh, Joni! But don’t blame us for wanting a high quality and long quantity of life for everyone.
Having moved back from Florida to Maryland in my underemployment years in the 2010s, I can't possibly overstate what a relief it is to be back in a community where your health coverage isn't dependent on your income (in other words, a state that took the ACA expansion). Like, literally "crossing the Iron Curtain" level of relief. I'd had a lot of medical problems the previous year. I'd also literally seen a co-worker die because the lack of health coverage meant he was stuck relying on a charity clinic that was only open one day a week, and it turns out that that plus the occasional trip to the ER is no substitute for proper medical care. There's a hell of a lot to knowing that your community *isn't going to let you die if they can prevent it.*
(Naturally, Trump is doing everything he can to ensure that Maryland and New York have to revert to Florida's psychopathic standards).
When the Maryland governor was Larry Hogan, he introduced a bill in the Maryland legislature that exempted from state income tax the first $100K of income of retirees over 65. I had the hardest time convincing people that the principal beneficiaries of this proposed exemption were the wealthy. First, 50% of the assets in qualified plans (including pensions, IRAs, 401-K's, etc.) are held by the top 10% (in terms of wealth) of all households. Second, of course, people who have no wealth and are forced to work as Walmart greeters or at McDonalds, would get no benefits at all since, under the terms of the proposed bill, they weren't deemed to be retired.
The New York of 1975 had Kojak, and that alone should be enough to make anyone happy! But for real, talk education too. I have a friend who is a native Floridian, and also a special Ed teacher with special needs children. They tried to move back to florida, in a basically free home surrounded by her family, but the resources for her kids were so damn sucky, she came back after a year. (Also her employment was extra frustrating). As a one time single mother, I will gladly pay extra taxes to fund public resources. I don’t understand why that view is so outrageous. As famous New Yorker George Costanza once said “we’re living in a SOCIETY!!”
In 1980 I was a simple country boy from small-town Vermont. I was asked to take my present Father-in-law’s brand-new car and drive his daughter to JFK airport. We were to stay the night in the Village with a friend on mine from medical school.
All I could see for 50 miles north of there was concrete ( though it doesn’t look like that to me now). I felt fully engulfed by an unknown urbanity, and panic intensified. It was made worse once I entered Greenwich Village and the grid pattern of streets broke up completely in lower Manhattan.
I had to stop the car, got out, catch my breath, and promptly locked the car with the keys in the ignition! I looked wildly about and a man said to me, “What you look at me that way for?” I replied, “I didn’t look at anybody that way, I just locked my keys in the car!” That answer was accepted.
Across the street then was the Village East Cinema. “Sinbad the Sailer”was advertised on the marquee. I said to my now wife who I had impressively failed, “We going to see a movie.”
The movie and the theater experience was great. After I asked the usher for a coat hanger, and he readily obliged me.
The coat hanger opened me to a whole new world. The doors had these newfangled anti theft knobs and I struggled. What came next was most amazing.
People started gathering and everyone wanted to give the coat hanger a try. They were very friendly about it and I learned some new techniques. A policeman stopped, stood by the front of the car on the sidewalk, but never said a word to any of us.
I finally opened it myself, and there was no real harm to the car that I had to explain to her dad. The friendly crowd and police just disappeared. I drove uneventfully to the apartment in the East Village and then to JFK International the next day, all uneventful.
I routinely take Amtrak down to NYC. I have my brother-law’s apartment in the West Village to stay. Over the years I have walked the length and breadth of Manhattan, and I love the subway, as is. I know no finer place.
There is no friendlier place than NYC, where I lived for many years. Once I was in the subway and watched what appeared to be a tourist walk off the subway and accidentially drop his wallet with the money in it visible. Several people jumped up to hold the doors open, called the person and gave him his wallet. That's the spirit of New Yorkers.
I’ve experienced many generous gestures on the subway. Now when I enter a car, people jump up to offer me their seat. I’m in pretty good shape and don’t mind “ strap holding” (though now the straps are gone), I sometimes just have to accept the offered seat.
Simple answer to that question - those who are entirely selfish will never vote for help for anyone else - and those who care about the less fortunate WILL !
No one mentioned hurricanes. I just moved from Florida after living there for 20 years. My property insurance has gone up a lot and every few years my insurance company would threaten to leave the state.
Not to mention that much of the state will literally be underwater, and MAGA, very much thanks to the contributions of Florida voters, is doing its best to speed that up.
I honestly think this is why Florida politics are *screwed,* arguably more than any other red state's.
Global warming and what it's doing to Florida means that the only people that are still moving there are science-deniers, and the only businesses that are still investing there are either run by science-deniers themselves, or by short-term scam artists who don't care about the state's long-term prospects because they're not planning to be around that long anyway.
It shouldn't be impossible for even Florida to survive the effects of global warming, but figuring out how to do it requires the kind of long-term thinking, community-minded thinking, and, well, willingness to listen to facts that are increasingly anathema to the state, because anybody who has these qualities is taking one look at it and going "nope. I've got 49 other choices, I'm not pissing them away for this."
Low income people don’t live on the coast, at least not any more as either previous storms or rising property values have driven them out of coastal communities, but big slow moving hurricanes can cause inland flooding that is equally catastrophic.
There is an alligator in nearly every body of fresh water here in southern Florida. They are generally frightened of humans, unless some dipshit has been feeding them, which makes them associate humans with food. Then they become nuisance gators, and must be trapped and destroyed. It is against federal law to feed them for this reason.
Sinkholes are most prevalent in the central portion of the state.
I moved to nyc in summer 1977 to go to Columbia grad school. That summer I walked the city obsessively, I adored it. Even then it did not feel unsafe to me. It was so neighborly, everyone walking, out on the street, not anonymous speeders on the highway.
One of the pure joys of my life was walking around NYC and Brooklyn for hours. I’m not from there, but I spent a lot of time and I live in Rochester now Boston native there is nothing like walking around cities!
Thank you for yet another sharp and insightful column. Your reflections on the irrational animosity toward New York—and the broader tendency to vilify diversity, urbanism, and intellectualism—resonated deeply with me.
As a long-time visitor to New York, I’ve had the privilege of watching the city evolve over decades. My first trips in the 1980s were to a city struggling with crime and disrepair. But returning year after year, I’ve seen firsthand how New York has transformed into one of the safest, most vibrant urban centers in the world. Today, it offers an enviable quality of life for those who can make it work—culturally rich, socially dynamic, and full of energy and opportunity.
I’ve also spent time in Florida—Miami, the Keys—especially during the winter months when the climate is undeniably appealing. But to suggest that Florida should be a model for the rest of the U.S. at the expense of places like New York ignores what truly makes a society thrive. Florida may be easy on taxes for the wealthy, but it lacks the infrastructure, cultural capital, and social cohesion that dense, diverse cities like New York offer.
What troubles me most is the increasingly divisive rhetoric coming from those in power—targeting states or cities that don’t align politically with their own ideology. The deliberate strategy of portraying urban centers as dystopian wastelands simply because they vote differently is not only dishonest, it’s corrosive. It pits Americans against one another and chips away at the unity and mutual respect that should bind the country together.
What I’ve always admired about the U.S. is its diversity—of people, ideas, and landscapes. That diversity has long been its greatest strength. Sadly, that strength is being weaponized and diminished by those who would rather see division than dialogue.
For now, I find myself postponing further trips to the U.S., hopeful that better times lie ahead—times when the richness of America’s cities and the power of its pluralism are once again embraced rather than attacked.
With appreciation for your voice and continued advocacy for reason and truth,
"Why do New Yorkers live longer? One answer is that city life — which involves a lot more walking than suburban life — is generally good for you."
Yeah, it's funny. We're overrun with all these cliches about how life in the country is healthier than life in the city, because of all the clean air and the great outdoors and all that. Except it turns out that the real world isn't an episode of Daniel Boone anymore, and in the modern world, the farther you live from city centers, the more you use your car for absolutely everything, and that's terrible for your health.
Years ago, I studied and worked in the field of health care policy, and was delighted to find that living in the middle of a large city was the healthiest lifestyle - walking and interacting with people throughout the day and night.
We were in NY last spring. I think we averaged 6 miles walking a day. It was crowded, busy, exciting and delightful. What a wonderful place. The architecture and civic atmosphere is amazing.
"But there is absolutely no reason to believe that what’s good for Scott Bessent is good for America."
Unless, of course, you're Scott Bessent.
I'm also puzzled that Bessent (and much of MAGA) is apparently unaware of "Florida Man." You never get headlines out of New York like "Florida Man Throws Alligator Through McDonalds' Window."
Even more disturbing is that they are aware, but are entertained (and even proud?) by these sorts of headlines. Unless and until an unfortunate event happens personally to them they don't seem to care about the greater world around them
I have lived my 60+ years in peaceful Norway. I spent two weeks in NYC in 2008 and felt safe all the time. (Norway has 5 mill. people and 40 homicides per year. There are lots of guns around, but they are for hunting.)
I find it amazing that Scandinavian countries make these superb crime series, detectives who solve murder after murder, but with so little real homicides :)
This is an astute observation, and not reported on enough. TV, social media, etc. are not reality. And the US government, from the top down to the cabinet head level, is now populated by people that think they're in some big reality TV series. This is likely to end in catastrophe, in real life the cavalry does not show up right on time, and the good guys don't always, or usually, win.
As a native Floridian, the country does not need to be more like the hellscape the GOP and corrupt politicians have made Florida into. It is a state that benefits the rich and leaves the poor to struggle.
We have a similar problem with the attitude of the MAGA-aping Reform and the rest of the far right who hate London and its Mayor (and, of course, its diversity). They spread lies that London is crime-ridden and dangerous, despite the face that rates of violent crime are lower in London than in the rest of the country. The same goes for life expectancy and road deaths.
The right lives in a make-believe world. One where their propaganda network tells them what to believe, who to hate, and when to be angry. They are living in a dictatorship of their own choosing and want fervently to impose it on everyone else. It is an odious worldview.
In the early 2000s a top Republican operative — reputed to be Karl Rove — mockingly told the journalist Ron Suskind that while Democrats were living in the “reality-based” world and bragged that Republicans were creating their own alternate reality the media chose to turn a blind eye to that shocking truth instead of shining a spotlight on the many ways Republicans were deliberately distorting reality — lying about things like WMD and climate change, pretending to care about debt while blowing it up with tax cuts for the rich, lying with impunity about opponents, etc.
Now the mainstream media are pretending this rejection of truth, science and reality only started with Trump. Who knew, amirite?
VERY well said. Actually, neoconservatism started this. In a 1976 WSJ article, neocon founder Irving Kristol wrote that for conservatives to win elections, it's necessary that intellectuals stay "at the margins of society", as they should, in a "healthy" society, because if not, so when conservatives have to debate their ideas in public, they will always lose.
Therefore, the op-ed argued, it's important to make sure that people vote with their gut feeling, not their brain.
25 years later, neocons took over the Grand Old Party and the first big lie killed hundreds of thousands of people: WMD found in Iraq.
This is also when they create Fox Entertainment, to fool as many people for as long as possible.
It could all have blown up when in 2016, Trump was the only one on the GOP debate stage to dare to tell the truth about THE biggest neocon lie (the Iraq war). People could have seen that an even bigger conman was falsely claiming to care about the truth. Instead, Fox and then the GOP embraced him, realizing that they had reached a point of no return...
Now, the neoliberal neofascists who already in the 1940s invented neoliberalism to fight back against democracy and the New Deal, are manipulating Trump in the WH, using him as his clown in chief.
And mainstream media believe that getting the truth out means constantly creating a totally FALSE "bothsidesism" that made more than 50% of the country not know what caused global inflation under Biden by Nov. 5.
The RWNJs have always been out there. They are truly paranoid and seek out conspiracy theories to gratify their personality disorders. What is truly evil about Faux is that it brought them all together for their daily fix of propaganda.
It's also the fact that it takes low-information, low-engagement folk who might be generally conservative but not about everything and might disagree with you but not think you're literally Satan, crams their head with bullshit 24/7 until they're full-blown fanaticized zombies.
Murdoch made his billions by monetizing reichwing propaganda.
True, but that doesn’t let the people who bought his propaganda off the hook. They enjoyed the hell out of it.
Fox deliberately creates a lot of fear in its viewers — for example the constant harping on the crime rate in blue cities like NYC but ignoring the higher crime rates in many red areas. What really infuriates me is how the mainstream “liberal” media plays along with these false narratives.
They used to be isolated on low power AM radio at 3AM.
Faux was inspired by Rush who was already radicalizing a lot of people. But Faux knew how to reach more moderate, female voters — like some of the women in my extended family.
Mainstream media certainly perpetuates the myths about American cities. The NY Times in particular never misses an opportunity to bash Chicago and San Francisco. A recent article called San Francisco voters who wanted to turn the "Great Highway" into a park "anti-car". Really? Maybe they just wanted to reduce the expense of having to jeep the ocean front stretch free of sand!
Three cheers for Ocean Beach!
"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
Rove’s statement is mentioned by Matt Berninger in the National song, Walk it Back on the the album, Sleep Well Beast.
The difference is in the scale. The difference between a hundred and a million, or a million or a billion.
That was my argument for taking it easy on Trump because on important issues like Medicaid expansion and abortion and gay rights and Bush wars Trump was closer to Democrats than Bush Republicans. Unfortunately Democrats campaigned with Liz f&@*ing Cheney in 2024 and now many independents believe Democrats are the party of war and hardship instead of peace and prosperity.
The most damaging part of the make-believe world Republicans believe in is their central tenet: that Uncle Miltie’s fantasies about trickle-down tax policy are good for capitalism. Republicans have been promoting this fantasy for well over a hundred years, well before Milton Friedman codified it.
America has always been a prime target for profiteers, who are still the ugly underbelly of our nation. I love this country because most of us still want to make it fair and just, and we have the tools to do it- if we keep at it!
IMHO the profiteers went from being the ugly underbelly to being on top. There is no shame anymore in stealing from those who have less.
Yup. Easier than thinking.
Same goes for Berlin ….
No one CHOOSES hatred. Hatred increases when you don't have access to emotional intelligence training tools. It's up to us, those who claim to hate less, to make sure that we help those who became victims of fascist propaganda to show them how to hate themselves less. Once they've learned how to do so, they'll stop hating others too.
I'm not so sure about that... Their hatred is the outward representation of their personality disorders and Personality Disorders are remarkably resistant to treatment. Their hatred makes them happy - the Psychiatric term is 'egosyntonic'.
IMO Trump has Antisocial Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as evidenced by his total disregard for others. Go to the DSM and see how many of the criterion for both fit him. It's pretty close IMO. We all have some dysfunction, some more than others. It's our own dysfunction that syncs up with others dysfunction, and in Trumps case, his charisma, and the right wing media support enhances this process. I don't believe all the other MAGA's have those personality disorders, but they do sync up with Trump, and breaking that tie will take either some hard core work with each of his individual followers, some type of crisis event for Trump, or both. A coming economic crisis might just be what it takes to break a significant portion of Trump followers away from Trump. Unfortunately, we will all have to suffer thru that, but we may be able to come out the other side of that economic crisis much more critical of the hate that drove us into it, and come back together with a much stronger democracy. That's a lot of wishful thinking, but hey, it's what hope I've got.
I don't disagree with you. We may all be in bread lines before he has done with us. As Captain Sheridan said on Babylon 5 - "The duration is going to be a lot longer than the war."
Imho that only shows how young and unscientific "psychiatry" as a "science" still is :-).
I'm not sure that 'scientific' is a word which should be used in regard to Psychiatry. Most Psychiatric and Psychological studies are fit only for The Journal of Irreproducible Results. Psychiatry has barely risen above its shamanistic roots, but even shamans have their success stories.
I agree wth you. Hatred happens when individuals have no options to express their sadness & unhappiness in another, more productive way.
I’ve never been able to reach them, despite much effort.
I think it's all a matter of what method we use. Fortunately, we don't have to start from scratch here, previous generations already discovered the method that works. It's MLK Jr.s "love your enemies". Not so easy to do, but definitely doable...
Yes I've seen numerous articles in the right wing press pushing this 'Labour broke London' narrative.
It's universal. Big cities are where the diversity and the education are, therefore they *have* to be worse off than the Wholesome Small-Town Folksy Settings, because any other situation would support the conclusion that diversity and education are good for you, and not only for you but for your whole community. And the reactionaries can't have that.
Indeed, it has a 'blood and soil' resonance to it.
Cities are also where the money is. They're the places where competition is tough and merit is rewarded. These are all scary things for people who live out in the sticks and figure that your place in society should be based on how many cows or sheep your father owned.
They broke it so badly that it has a three-term mayor elected by the city's entire population.
And they so desperately want the fiction that "Labour broke London" to be true that we had that insane episode at the time of the last mayoral election between the polls closing and the votes being counted whereby the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg (who frankly should have known better) recycled a rumour that Sadiq Khan was doing much worse than anticipated and might struggle to be re-elected.
Because the votes weren't counted until the weekend (which also gave rise to conspiracy theories, although it's how mayoral and London Assembly votes have always been counted), this meant that the rumour had plenty of time to fester and metastasise until the official result confirmed that Khan won very comfortably indeed by a whopping margin of 11%. Which was pretty much what the polls had been predicting all along.
The UK media is mainly right wing. Even the BBC has been intimidated by the right. The economist Simon Wren-Lewis has written about this problem:
“ How the broadcast media created mediamacro”
https://cepr.org/voxeu/blogs-and-reviews/how-broadcast-media-created-mediamacro
The Guardian has also addressed the issue:
“ The floundering of GB News and Talk TV reveals a dark truth about the mainstream media
The only reason fringe channels are failing to flourish in Britain’s rightwing media swamp is because it is already full”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/16/gb-news-talk-tv-mainstream-media-channels
West coast “blue”cities are also demonized. I encounter people who used to live in “the city” who are shocked at all the reported NEW violence and depravity- before they come and look for themselves. Right Wing propaganda has smothered reality in that regard. Cities look like the nation, and deal with real situations that arise in a visible way. Rural towns historically have higher violence rates, worse standards of living, and poor services. How that turned into “better” is quite an achievement.
Yes, I had a friend who turned maga, and she told me how horrible California was, with cholera and syringes everywhere. I told her that would come as a shock to my friends that live there, and if it was that bad since I left, they would have mentioned it!
We live in Los Angeles. Have been here since 2000 and not endured a single instance of crime. Yet, whenever the New York Times has an article or opinion piece pointing out that crime is down in cities nationwide, the same yahoos show up in the comment section to say that the numbers must be gamed. They yammer on and on with no evidence at all. Not a shred. Often they trot out anecdotes they saw on the news from several years ago or from when they lived in a city 5 to 20 years ago.
I will counter with the fact that we’ve been here for 25 years, with no crime, not even a porch pirate, in Northeast LA (which is considered by people who don’t know the area as “dangerous”). These math challenged oddballs try to tell me that we’re “lucky,“ and when I point out that we are the NORM, that we fit the normal statistical crime risk for an Angeleno (which is basically none), outrage ensues.
Recently, a group of coworkers and friends were hanging out and the subject came up, and it turned out that our experience held true for the group, all of us Angelenos for more than two decades each. Ironically, a week later, one member of our group did indeed have a crime incident: somebody used an electronic device to hack into their Tesla and steal a beach bag while they were inside a store. So that’s ONE.
This is a fantasy world these folks dwell in by choice. There’s really nothing much we can do about it, I’m beginning to think.
I was born and lived near LA after WW II, then in or near Seattle. Always in a low middle class area. Except for teens using a sling shot to steal a piggy bank and bad speakers, I haven’t been a victim either. I feel for those caught in law enforcement deserts who do, of course. But that is explainable, and hopefully more preventable in future.
So, is there also a comparison between London and, say, Clacton? :)
I have been living in NYC since the 80s, after growing up in a small town in the south. My mother, may she rest in peace, always worried I’d be a crime victim, when the truth was that her small town was overrun with meth kitchens, house break-ins looking for drugs, and moonshine liquor. There was far more crime just in her neighborhood than anything I’ve experienced here, but she worried nonetheless. And she didn’t even watch Faux News.
Oh, I’m sure the diligent local MP will elevate Clapton to London levels within a few years.
/s
Yes, I live in an inner suburb of London, and the sad picture of a crime-ridden dysfunctional London, painted by the usual right-wing suspects, always makes me smile. We enjoy fantastic public transport, great public spaces, a young and diverse population, and a good local economy. Oh and we white, brown and whatever Londoners have repeatedly voted in a moderately left-wing Muslim mayor, which is the best "two fingers" of all to the race-baiting right-wing.
In your case, Too many Muslims.
I'm sure that's also a big factor in why London's mayor gets demonized.
Scott Bessent speaks only for the rich, the very rich. And Florida should be more like New York. Period. Enough said.
I think, like me, most people with sense are running out of the DeSantis toilet as fast as they can.
Scott is gay. Has he not witnessed DeSantis LGBTQ agenda?
He's insulated against it by being ultra-rich. You can probably get away with being gay if you're rich and don't march in Pride parades or act in-your-face weird.
Being rich makes up for a lot!
"They were careless people....."
FL would collapse if not for NYkers who vacation and retire there- thanks to NYs healthier economy, folks can afford to move to FL. If there were only a way to get folks to think for just another 10 seconds or so……….
Unfortunately, the good ones don't last here, only the MAGATs stay. DeathSantis advertised on Right-wing channels to get more racist cops and such down here.
The whole country should be like NY state.
Climate change is slowly turning New Jersey into Florida. We already have the beaches and the crazy people...
“Start at the top. In my opinion, one important aspect of the quality of life is not being dead….” - for this alone, thank you Paul Krugman!♥️
Even though, as Sen. Joni Ernst tactlessly put it, “We’re all gonna die.” Duh, Joni! But don’t blame us for wanting a high quality and long quantity of life for everyone.
That, and her utterly immoral "apology" the next day (filmed in a cemetery) show how totally lost and useless the GOP has become.
They deliberately want to destroy the healthcare of 13 million Americans, all while giving the wealthiest 1% another $400,000 tax cut.
Why would millionaires and billionaires need an additional $400,000, knowing that they are ALL GOING TO DIE?
I wish journalists were competent enough to ask her this simple question.
They are competent enough, just not COURAGEOUS enough !
Given the GOPs ability to produce orators like Ernst, we should be hearing about the fiscal and dietary benefits of Soylent Green soon.
Having moved back from Florida to Maryland in my underemployment years in the 2010s, I can't possibly overstate what a relief it is to be back in a community where your health coverage isn't dependent on your income (in other words, a state that took the ACA expansion). Like, literally "crossing the Iron Curtain" level of relief. I'd had a lot of medical problems the previous year. I'd also literally seen a co-worker die because the lack of health coverage meant he was stuck relying on a charity clinic that was only open one day a week, and it turns out that that plus the occasional trip to the ER is no substitute for proper medical care. There's a hell of a lot to knowing that your community *isn't going to let you die if they can prevent it.*
(Naturally, Trump is doing everything he can to ensure that Maryland and New York have to revert to Florida's psychopathic standards).
Maryland will never bend the knee! It residents won’t let it
We Marylanders can only hope.
No, DO SOMETHING!
Exactly! Hope is not a plan.
When the Maryland governor was Larry Hogan, he introduced a bill in the Maryland legislature that exempted from state income tax the first $100K of income of retirees over 65. I had the hardest time convincing people that the principal beneficiaries of this proposed exemption were the wealthy. First, 50% of the assets in qualified plans (including pensions, IRAs, 401-K's, etc.) are held by the top 10% (in terms of wealth) of all households. Second, of course, people who have no wealth and are forced to work as Walmart greeters or at McDonalds, would get no benefits at all since, under the terms of the proposed bill, they weren't deemed to be retired.
The New York of 1975 had Kojak, and that alone should be enough to make anyone happy! But for real, talk education too. I have a friend who is a native Floridian, and also a special Ed teacher with special needs children. They tried to move back to florida, in a basically free home surrounded by her family, but the resources for her kids were so damn sucky, she came back after a year. (Also her employment was extra frustrating). As a one time single mother, I will gladly pay extra taxes to fund public resources. I don’t understand why that view is so outrageous. As famous New Yorker George Costanza once said “we’re living in a SOCIETY!!”
In 1980 I was a simple country boy from small-town Vermont. I was asked to take my present Father-in-law’s brand-new car and drive his daughter to JFK airport. We were to stay the night in the Village with a friend on mine from medical school.
All I could see for 50 miles north of there was concrete ( though it doesn’t look like that to me now). I felt fully engulfed by an unknown urbanity, and panic intensified. It was made worse once I entered Greenwich Village and the grid pattern of streets broke up completely in lower Manhattan.
I had to stop the car, got out, catch my breath, and promptly locked the car with the keys in the ignition! I looked wildly about and a man said to me, “What you look at me that way for?” I replied, “I didn’t look at anybody that way, I just locked my keys in the car!” That answer was accepted.
Across the street then was the Village East Cinema. “Sinbad the Sailer”was advertised on the marquee. I said to my now wife who I had impressively failed, “We going to see a movie.”
The movie and the theater experience was great. After I asked the usher for a coat hanger, and he readily obliged me.
The coat hanger opened me to a whole new world. The doors had these newfangled anti theft knobs and I struggled. What came next was most amazing.
People started gathering and everyone wanted to give the coat hanger a try. They were very friendly about it and I learned some new techniques. A policeman stopped, stood by the front of the car on the sidewalk, but never said a word to any of us.
I finally opened it myself, and there was no real harm to the car that I had to explain to her dad. The friendly crowd and police just disappeared. I drove uneventfully to the apartment in the East Village and then to JFK International the next day, all uneventful.
I routinely take Amtrak down to NYC. I have my brother-law’s apartment in the West Village to stay. Over the years I have walked the length and breadth of Manhattan, and I love the subway, as is. I know no finer place.
Love your story!
Friendly people there in NYC. I’m glad you liked it.
There is no friendlier place than NYC, where I lived for many years. Once I was in the subway and watched what appeared to be a tourist walk off the subway and accidentially drop his wallet with the money in it visible. Several people jumped up to hold the doors open, called the person and gave him his wallet. That's the spirit of New Yorkers.
I’ve experienced many generous gestures on the subway. Now when I enter a car, people jump up to offer me their seat. I’m in pretty good shape and don’t mind “ strap holding” (though now the straps are gone), I sometimes just have to accept the offered seat.
Simple answer to that question - those who are entirely selfish will never vote for help for anyone else - and those who care about the less fortunate WILL !
MAGA = hate 👹
DEMS = empathy ♥️
It is not that simple. Reality never is.
"Who loves ya' baby?" 🍭
No one mentioned hurricanes. I just moved from Florida after living there for 20 years. My property insurance has gone up a lot and every few years my insurance company would threaten to leave the state.
Not to mention that much of the state will literally be underwater, and MAGA, very much thanks to the contributions of Florida voters, is doing its best to speed that up.
I honestly think this is why Florida politics are *screwed,* arguably more than any other red state's.
Global warming and what it's doing to Florida means that the only people that are still moving there are science-deniers, and the only businesses that are still investing there are either run by science-deniers themselves, or by short-term scam artists who don't care about the state's long-term prospects because they're not planning to be around that long anyway.
It shouldn't be impossible for even Florida to survive the effects of global warming, but figuring out how to do it requires the kind of long-term thinking, community-minded thinking, and, well, willingness to listen to facts that are increasingly anathema to the state, because anybody who has these qualities is taking one look at it and going "nope. I've got 49 other choices, I'm not pissing them away for this."
That’s true. And who will feel the brunt of the eroding coastline? Low income people who voted for trump.
Low income people don’t live on the coast, at least not any more as either previous storms or rising property values have driven them out of coastal communities, but big slow moving hurricanes can cause inland flooding that is equally catastrophic.
Yes, RD. And what about the alligators and sink holes?
Notwithstanding the 'gators we have in our sewer system /s :D
There is an alligator in nearly every body of fresh water here in southern Florida. They are generally frightened of humans, unless some dipshit has been feeding them, which makes them associate humans with food. Then they become nuisance gators, and must be trapped and destroyed. It is against federal law to feed them for this reason.
Sinkholes are most prevalent in the central portion of the state.
Hurricanes & HOA fees!!!
The traffic fatalities on a per-mile driven basis are likely higher in Florida, as well. Florida is 50th in teacher pay.
I know teachers in FL. They clean houses on the side to survive.
If you have money and kids, you pay for your kids' education in private schools.
Who wants to pay for other people's kids? (answer - responsible citizens)
Or waitress as my friend does, and DeathSantis is doing his best to kill education here.
I moved to nyc in summer 1977 to go to Columbia grad school. That summer I walked the city obsessively, I adored it. Even then it did not feel unsafe to me. It was so neighborly, everyone walking, out on the street, not anonymous speeders on the highway.
Same except to go to NYU. Still love NYC and I take ghe subway almost daily.
One of the pure joys of my life was walking around NYC and Brooklyn for hours. I’m not from there, but I spent a lot of time and I live in Rochester now Boston native there is nothing like walking around cities!
Dear Mr. Krugman,
Thank you for yet another sharp and insightful column. Your reflections on the irrational animosity toward New York—and the broader tendency to vilify diversity, urbanism, and intellectualism—resonated deeply with me.
As a long-time visitor to New York, I’ve had the privilege of watching the city evolve over decades. My first trips in the 1980s were to a city struggling with crime and disrepair. But returning year after year, I’ve seen firsthand how New York has transformed into one of the safest, most vibrant urban centers in the world. Today, it offers an enviable quality of life for those who can make it work—culturally rich, socially dynamic, and full of energy and opportunity.
I’ve also spent time in Florida—Miami, the Keys—especially during the winter months when the climate is undeniably appealing. But to suggest that Florida should be a model for the rest of the U.S. at the expense of places like New York ignores what truly makes a society thrive. Florida may be easy on taxes for the wealthy, but it lacks the infrastructure, cultural capital, and social cohesion that dense, diverse cities like New York offer.
What troubles me most is the increasingly divisive rhetoric coming from those in power—targeting states or cities that don’t align politically with their own ideology. The deliberate strategy of portraying urban centers as dystopian wastelands simply because they vote differently is not only dishonest, it’s corrosive. It pits Americans against one another and chips away at the unity and mutual respect that should bind the country together.
What I’ve always admired about the U.S. is its diversity—of people, ideas, and landscapes. That diversity has long been its greatest strength. Sadly, that strength is being weaponized and diminished by those who would rather see division than dialogue.
For now, I find myself postponing further trips to the U.S., hopeful that better times lie ahead—times when the richness of America’s cities and the power of its pluralism are once again embraced rather than attacked.
With appreciation for your voice and continued advocacy for reason and truth,
Erik
Antwerp, Belgium
Erik,
Will be visiting your beautiful city this December. My grandfather was born there. You are always welcome in Maryland
Hi Kathi, I am sure you will enjoy our beautiful city and thanks for the invite
"Why do New Yorkers live longer? One answer is that city life — which involves a lot more walking than suburban life — is generally good for you."
Yeah, it's funny. We're overrun with all these cliches about how life in the country is healthier than life in the city, because of all the clean air and the great outdoors and all that. Except it turns out that the real world isn't an episode of Daniel Boone anymore, and in the modern world, the farther you live from city centers, the more you use your car for absolutely everything, and that's terrible for your health.
Nice elaboration on the relationship between car use and poor health. And I chuckled at the Daniel Boone reference.
Years ago, I studied and worked in the field of health care policy, and was delighted to find that living in the middle of a large city was the healthiest lifestyle - walking and interacting with people throughout the day and night.
It could be that in a city one lives closer to medical services and resources.
(The "golden" hour.)
We were in NY last spring. I think we averaged 6 miles walking a day. It was crowded, busy, exciting and delightful. What a wonderful place. The architecture and civic atmosphere is amazing.
"But there is absolutely no reason to believe that what’s good for Scott Bessent is good for America."
Unless, of course, you're Scott Bessent.
I'm also puzzled that Bessent (and much of MAGA) is apparently unaware of "Florida Man." You never get headlines out of New York like "Florida Man Throws Alligator Through McDonalds' Window."
Even more disturbing is that they are aware, but are entertained (and even proud?) by these sorts of headlines. Unless and until an unfortunate event happens personally to them they don't seem to care about the greater world around them
You're missing part of that it's usually "Pet Meth Gator".
I only visited Florida once. That was enough.
I have lived my 60+ years in peaceful Norway. I spent two weeks in NYC in 2008 and felt safe all the time. (Norway has 5 mill. people and 40 homicides per year. There are lots of guns around, but they are for hunting.)
I find it amazing that Scandinavian countries make these superb crime series, detectives who solve murder after murder, but with so little real homicides :)
Yes! It's almost like they have to make it up rather than write from their lived experience!
Most cities/towns become far more dangerous after the clever detective moves in.
Aha! I always suspected as much.
Can you say more about life in Norway?
Look up my posts here. 🙂
You are what you see and hear. Trump is Television. Television has you by the mind.
This is an astute observation, and not reported on enough. TV, social media, etc. are not reality. And the US government, from the top down to the cabinet head level, is now populated by people that think they're in some big reality TV series. This is likely to end in catastrophe, in real life the cavalry does not show up right on time, and the good guys don't always, or usually, win.
And they don't realize THEY ARE the evil empire, not the rebellion!
As a native Floridian, the country does not need to be more like the hellscape the GOP and corrupt politicians have made Florida into. It is a state that benefits the rich and leaves the poor to struggle.
I agree, Florida is all "have a lot" and "have nots"