“The Desperate Life of Carlos Danger” is explored by Heather Wilhelm of Real Clear Politics:
This week, the Onion featured a particularly timely satirical article: “Unambitious Loser With Happy, Fulfilling Life Still Lives in Hometown.” In the piece, friends express mystification at a happy man’s strange lifestyle choice: “Sources close to Husmer reported that the man, who has meaningful, lasting personal relationships and a healthy work-life balance, is an unmotivated washout who’s perfectly comfortable being a nobody for the rest of his life.”
But somebody like Weiner, craving constant adulation, could never accept being a nobody. Neither could his wife, Huma Abedin, who reportedly pushed for him to run for mayor after his embarrassing congressional resignation, posed for a gushy family profile in People magazine while her husband was still sexting, and is set to publish a “vote for Anthony” personal profile in September’s Harper’s Bazaar. And neither, it should be noted, could Sydney Leathers.
Those who try to portray the Weiner saga as an issue of gender disparity, oppression, or sexism are reading from an old script. This is, quite simply, a power-hungry couple working together to claw their way up the political ladder, with a large splash of fame-crazed Internet dystopia served up on the side.
Meanwhile, Daniel Greenfield, the “Sultan Knish,” explores the desperate final days of America’s most dangerous city and writes its obituary, in a read-the-whole-thing post tilted “So Long Detroit”:
The crisis of the city is that it has become a welfare state, not just in fact, but in orientation. The city exists to take care of people who won’t take care of themselves. That makes it something between a homeless shelter and a state institution. And to rephrase Groucho Marx, the city may be a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution? Especially one whose chief appeal is to the people dragging it down, not those lifting it up?
The city’s troubles are America’s troubles. A thriving economy can support a welfare state, but a welfare state cannot be an economy. A country or a city needs a purpose that goes beyond providing services for populations that are incapable of doing the least smallest thing for themselves. Without that purpose, it is already a failed state.
Detroit exists to provide welfare for much of its population and to provide government jobs for the people taking care of them. And like those populations where generations collect welfare checks, shop with food stamps and aspire to no future other than the perpetuation of this way of life, the city that they live in has no future.
What was good for GM may or may not have been good for America, but what’s good for Detroit is the destruction of America.
As with Detroit, what’s good for Anthony Weiner is also the destruction of America, at least as it was once defined.
Just as Detroit is the terminal destination for America’s “Progressively” governed-cities, Anthony Weiner is the endgame for leftwing politicians. He had no experience in business or in the military before entering politics straight out of college, initially as a staffer for another leftwing political lifer, Chuck Schumer. He has zero charisma as a public speaker. He has no vision for where he’d like to see the nation go. He’s in politics strictly for himself, because, well, what else is he going to do?
As Kyle Smith noted in April, what business would hire him? Other than MSNBC, I guess. He’s running for the mayor of New York simply because that’s what you do when you have no other career prospects. Say what you will about Michael Bloomberg, and we’ve said plenty over the years, but at least he had a lengthy business career, first at the bond-trading firm Salomon Brothers, and then forming his own diversified company, before deciding to run for mayor of one the most important cities in New York.
For Weiner, that’s just what you do next, after resigning from Congress in disgrace.
In a sane world, a major news organization would look at Weiner’s nonexistent real-world C.V. and laugh if he said he’d like to be handed the keys to Gracie Mansion. Instead, the New York Times and Time-Warner-CNN-HBO-owned People were both quite happy to grease the skids for Weiner’s election bid in service to their party, up until the point where he – again – made a fool of himself.
Shortly before Weiner resigned in 2011, when the late (and sorely missed) Andrew Breitbart served as the opening act for the Greatest Press Conference of All Time, Ever, I quoted Nietzsche’s warning in 1885′s Also sprach Zarathustra, “Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.”
Behold: this week, we’ve witnessed the last American city, and the last Democrat.
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