SOHRAB AHMARI: Goodbye, Gotham.

Then there are the addicts and crazies. Please, liberals, don’t gaslight us. Don’t you dare say, “Welcome to New York—it’s always been like this.” No, it was not ever thus. It has gotten much worse, despite the nearly $1 billion City Hall spent on its ThriveNYC mental-health program, with much of the money wasted on fighting mental-health “stigma” and combating generalized depression and anxiety, rather than getting the severely mentally ill off the streets and into the involuntary inpatient programs they need.

Why do ordinary families have to be treated to the sight of a humongous crazy lady taking a dump on the corner? When will the self-talking, needle-jabbed, leaning-over-half-dead heroin addicts be cleared off Broadway and Penn Station? Where is the compassion in letting the crazy lady s**t on the open street? What humane end is served by not confronting the addicts and getting them the help they need, even if they’re too f***ed in the head to realize it?

Now layer the Covid biomedical security state on top of all this: the cruel and development-warping masking of kids, which won’t end anytime soon, if ever, though we have known for more than a year that they are at minuscule risk from the virus and transmit it at a much lower rate than do adults; the prolonged lockdowns that carved a swath of destruction through some of the most beloved small businesses in my little rectangle and many other neighborhoods, as well; the endless vax-mandate and booster-shot treadmill, just extended to children as young as 5; and, yes, the added informal enforcement of it all by sad, mostly childless middle-aged white women henpecking you in elevators and in department stores, even when and where mask mandates aren’t in effect.

You know what? Take the Big Apple dream and shove it—for now, at least.

I hope the Fresh Start States Initiative’s Welcome Wagon program is up to the task of reminding leftists fleeing their Blue State blues not to vote again for the initiatives that caused them to leave.