Shahid Bolsen on the Election of Zohran Mamdani

Well, I think that there are a number of things that you can take from the election, of Mamdani in New York City, and none of them are good, frankly. Not good for New York, New York City. And of course, I don't mean I don't mean the the hateful narratives, you know, of the Republicans and the right wingers. This is those narratives are just as dishonest as the triumphant narrative of the Democrats and the left wingers. Both of them are dishonest.

Look, first of all, whenever you see a very orchestrated, very synchronized, and very sort of constantly repeated narrative across the media, that includes the counter narrative to that narrative, by the way. In other words, when you when you when you have both sides, when both sides are coming out with a very organized, very confident and sort of absolutist narrative about anything, about any issue, about any candidate or what have you. Well, that's exactly what it is. It's narrative. It's propaganda.

It's nothing but propaganda. And both sides are actually working together. Yes. Both sides are working together. They're working together to craft the official story for their respective demographics.

So for example, the Republicans, they have their demographics and the Democrats have their demographics. And together, the two sides together, they compose a narrative whose function is to keep you invested in the Republicans and in the Democrats in the system. So the left and the Liberals, the Democrats, they have their self validating story about Mamdani and the Republicans and the right wingers have their self validating story about Mamdani, which are the two opposite stories. So for the Democrats, he's a token of progress, You know, progress, inclusion, tolerance, and what have you. And for the Republicans, obviously, Mamdani is a Muslim boogeyman.

He's a boogeyman token. Each side of the narrative on the right and on the left, each side is intended to keep you believing in the system, to keep you mobilized in the direction of polarized party politics. That's the whole point. And to make sure that reality remains completely obscured. So if you're hopeful and you're excited about Mamdani's election, they've got you.

And if you're outraged by his election, well, they've got you too, both of you. You understand? Whenever you see a full consolidation of narrative across the media, and I don't mean that there's only one story or that there's only one angle being spread on the media. I mean, two competing rival opposing narratives. When those two competing rival narratives fully consolidate how something is supposed to be talked about, how something is supposed to be covered, well, then you need to know that it's nothing but synchronized propaganda.

It's synchronized propaganda that's restricting the whole frame of possible discussion. And this is what's very clearly going on in the case of Zoran Mamdani. So that's the first thing that I would say about it. That's the first thing you can take from it. The next thing is, you need to understand what politicians are in America, what their function is.

Politicians in America are nothing but effigies. They're effigies that are packaged in ideological wrapping. They're nothing but front men. They're front men and fall guys. That's what they are.

That's all they are. They're decoys. And if they can keep you looking at them, whether you're looking at them proudly, whether you're looking at them hopefully, looking at them angrily or disappointedly or eventually, as long as your focus is on them, then they've done their job. And when the policies that they implement that are actually dictated by the private sector and when those policies make your life miserable, then they take the fall for it. That's the contract.

That's the deal. They're just the stunt doubles for the actual private sector lead actors. Now, don't know if Mamdani knows this or not himself. Most likely he does. But if he doesn't, he's gonna find out soon enough because that's the way politics works in America.

Listen, just practically speaking, just practically speaking, government officials, politicians, elected officials, functionally, they're middle management at best on the on the national level, on the state level, and on the city level. This is certainly the case in New York City. I mean, if you were to rank all of the power players in New York City, well, I think that the mayor's office would be somewhere like fourth or fifth in terms of real existing power out of like eight different levels. So it's like right around the middle. I would say at the top in New York City, you have the developers, real estate developers, land use capital and so forth.

People like Steven Ross or Renato Realty and so on. The big landlords, real estate boards, the partnership for New York City and so forth. These are the the at the top level. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying. They control the land.

They literally control the land. They act collectively and they operate according to very long term horizons. Now beneath them would be big finance, asset management companies, finance firms, the headquarters of different corporations that are located in New York. Then you have maybe the labor unions, both the private and the public sector labor unions including including the police. And then maybe you say that the mayor's office would rank just below them, something like this.

After that, you have basically the sort of quasi public institutions like the ports authority, the MTA, utilities companies and so forth, civil society and so on, philanthropic institutions, foundations and whatnot, the media, etcetera etcetera. This is basically the power structure in New York City. And every level below the first two levels will essentially organize themselves around the agenda of those two top tiers. The mayor's office functions as a broker, translating private capital's goals into some form of public legitimacy. Understand this is a structural reality.

This is not subject to the individual corruption or the individual virtue of anyone who might be elected. It doesn't matter. If you were to do a relative power index evaluation of the mayor's office versus the top two tiers of the power structure in New York City, Mamdani or whoever sits in that office would probably be less than a quarter of the real existing power of New York's biggest real estate developers and big finance sector. It's a very minimal degree by comparison. And again, this is just a structural reality of how power is.

Okay. The next thing that you have to understand is that America is a racist white supremacist country, and New York City is no exception to that, not in any way whatsoever. If you think that the election of Zoran Mamdani disproves that, then you really don't know how any of this works. I'll explain to you this way, what do so called white people do when they become a minority in any given neighborhood? You know.

When that when that neighborhood used to be all white or majority so called white and they start seeing minorities and immigrants and so forth moving in. Well, everybody knows what white people do, they leave, they move out. That's the historical pattern. They up stakes, they abandon ship, you know. They say there goes the neighborhood and they pack their bags.

They don't wanna be in a place if they can't dominate it culturally, if they can't dictate the culture and dictate the tone and dictate the the the character of that neighborhood, of that place, they just leave and don't look back. Okay? So in New York City, so called white people are less than a third of the total population. I think they were like 33% or so of the population around five years ago and it has decreased since then. So New York City, for them, it's a write off.

It's a loss. In terms of the social contract, I mean. I'm not saying that they've abandoned New York City altogether, but in terms of the social contract. This is what I've been talking about for a long time. All of the social contracts in America are being annulled.

To whatever extent they were ever honored in the first place, that's up for debate, but they're all being annulled at this point. New York City is just an example of that. It's just an example. And the election of Mamdani is actually proof of that. It's a proof of white supremacy.

It's not a disproving of it. Understand. The power structure remains in New York City. I'm not saying that the power structure is abandoned. The top two tiers are still there.

They're not writing the city off because they can still extract from the city. But now the mediator the mediator between the top tiers of the power structure and the public, which is the elected officials, that that that middle management, you know, the floor of the power structure that fields complaints, basically the the sort of customer service department of the power structure, that's the politicians. That's being written off. Because the only customers that they ever listened to, the only customers that ever mattered anyway to them were so called white people. Rich and white people.

But if the city is gonna be like 80% African American, Latino, Asian, Muslim, immigrant and what have you, well they don't care anymore. They don't care if your your mayor was chat GPT, it wouldn't make any difference to them. They could care less. You understand what I'm saying? So in my opinion, I would expect things to go downhill in New York rapidly.

Not because of Mamdani. Understand me. Not because of him, but because Mamdani's election is a sign that the power structure has already written New York off. You see what I mean? They made him the pilot because they know that the plane is already in a tailspin.

And when it crashes and it will crash, he'll be the one in the cockpit. Again, I'm not saying anything about Mamdani's, stated policy goals or even his perceived or inferred, policy goals. That's irrelevant. That's completely irrelevant. This is what I keep telling you.

The downward trajectory of The United States Of America is irreversible. And that includes New York and it includes New York City. It includes Chicago, it includes Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, every major urban center in America. The train that you're on has no brakes and the track is running out. There are no brakes on that train and there's definitely no reverse gear.

Look, New York City has been hemorrhaging rich households for at least the past decade. You understand? People with incomes over $200,000 a year have been migrating out of New York for at least the last decade, millionaires too. New York has lost something like $14,000,000,000 because of this this exodus of rich people. Because like I said, that's what they do.

They move out the neighborhood. And these are the people whose complaints got listened to. These are the ones who the customer service department is for in the first place. Customer service department meaning the government, the state government, the city government. So crime and violence is gonna increase in New York in my opinion.

Racial tensions will increase, poverty, homelessness, all of this is gonna get worse. But if you think that that's because of mom Danny, or if you think that mom Danny will or can prevent this from happening, then like I say, you really don't understand what is happening. You don't understand what is happening or why it will happen. And making sure that you do not understand this is exactly the purpose of the consolidated narrative positions about Mamdani. To keep you misunderstanding what's going on, to keep you misunderstanding why it's going on, to keep you misunderstanding who or what is responsible for it, and to keep you believing, actually in the very system that's causing this to happen.

You know, the illusion of democracy, party politics, the fatally flawed western cultural and ideological character that created the system. They're trying to keep you looking at your enemies for allyship and for salvation. To keep you thinking that someone is gonna come to save you, maybe it's Mamdani. To keep you thinking that maybe if you can just elect the right man or the right woman to the system, then they can turn an incinerator into a three d printer. Now, I'm telling you the trajectory is irreversible and it's irreversible because all of the parts of the system and the culture that made the system and the operating logic of that system which cannot be reprogrammed, all of that combines together to create a machine that moves that that must move in this direction and this direction only.

So we're seeing decisions being made at the federal level, at the national level, and at the state and city level from the installation of Trump in the White House to the election of Mamdani to the mayor's office in New York, decisions are being made to accelerate movement down that trajectory. They're not trying to halt it or to reverse it or to even slow it because that's not possible and that's not profitable. There's no salvation and there's no liberation coming to you from the democrats or from the republicans. It's not coming from the right and it's not coming from the left. All of that is theater.

All of that is distraction and all of that is for the purpose of pacification. No. Like I said before, they're trying to push you into a civil war. You understand? You are being deliberately and calculatedly provoked.

So understand now, when you're being provoked, look. When you're being provoked, please understand, it's not just your action that they're trying to provoke. Now, they're trying to reach a certain outcome that your provoked actions would facilitate or expedite. Don't think short term now. It's not that they simply want you to violently rebel or to defy them or to oppose them or to resist.

No. They want you to do that in order to expedite the outcome that your violent resistance would enable. Once you know that, then you should understand that it doesn't matter if you violently revolt or violently resist or not. Like, you know, we've seen these reports of ICE agents getting shot in Chicago, getting shot at in Chicago. But when you understand, the outcome that they want you to help them achieve, well, means that that is the outcome where you're heading.

With or without your facilitating it. You understand me? With or without your so called resistance. In other words, you need to imagine that a civil war has already happened. Imagine that a civil war has already happened because they're trying to achieve that aftermath.

Because that's what wars are actually all about. That's what wars are about. They're about achieving the aftermath. That's why wars are fought. Okay?

So imagine America, a post civil war America, in the aftermath of a of a domestic violent conflict. Well, what does that look like? You need to picture it, you need to think about it because that's where you are heading, you know. You may or may not be heading there by means of a civil war and I pray that you're not, But the conditions that would exist post the civil war are the conditions that the power structure wants to achieve. Okay?

This is what they want to achieve and this is what they will achieve. So you need to imagine what that America is gonna look like so that you can start trying to figure out what you're supposed to do when those conditions prevail. So you can start your own survival strategy from now because listen, most likely by the year 2050, twenty five years from now, The United States Of America is gonna be completely unrecognizable from what it is right now. Whether there are secessionist movements or not, within the next fifteen to twenty years, America is not going to be a single legal entity anymore. Security, surveillance, intelligence, most of the military and law enforcement, all of this will be privatized.

There's gonna be in in in that society roughly three main tiers of the population. There's gonna be the elites who will live in, you know, secure fortified havens of safety and privilege. There's gonna be the oppressed majority that remain locked into the system. They will rent, they will not own, everything is gonna be a subscription service for them. You know.

Their salaries are probably gonna just be earned credit that's automatically transferred to pay for those subscription services. Rampant crime, violence, instability in the urban technocratic slums of the urban centers of the cities. And then there's gonna be small pockets of semi autonomous communities that operate more or less off the grid. These are the three main sections that you're gonna have in your country. Of course, this is just a general forecast, but this is roughly what the future is gonna look like in The United States.

America is not gonna be a dominant global power anymore, but they'll be able to retain some regional dominance through destabilization and violence. Most of your billionaires most of your billionaires are gonna emigrate out of the country. There's gonna be significant foreign ownership of your vital infrastructure including your digital infrastructure and including your media and so forth. By 2050, the the the US dollar will be internationally something like the British pound is right now, a domestic currency. Oil and gas and other commodities are not gonna be priced in dollars anymore.

Even the domestic value of the dollar is probably gonna be something like half what it is today. In real terms, maybe 30 to 40% of your salary is only gonna is the only thing that you'll have that will be like for discretionary spending. The rest of it is gonna be basically in the form of non transferable credits that are gonna be assigned to various subscription services like housing, like food credits, like insurance and so forth. Policing is gonna become increasingly militarized. Everyone knows this already.

Obviously, mass incarceration is gonna escalate and and that will take the form of both official incarceration like prisons and other forms, informal detentions. Again, like I said, it might be off in some of the details, but this is the logical trajectory of your system. Unless you can become exceedingly wealthy over the next ten years, you're gonna have to choose. You're gonna have to choose between remaining within this system or trying to build sovereign communities that have built their own sort of independent ecosystems. You have to understand that fighting or reversing this trajectory is not a realistic option.

As long as you're still placing your hopes in in the likes of a Mamdani or any other elected official, in my opinion you're just in denial. You're in denial about what is happening and what's going to happen. And being in this this sort of denial is gonna leave you with no options. You're gonna have no option but to comply. The only thing that you can realistically do is actually try to walk away from the system.

And that's not as daunting as it might seem. I mean, we see these weird cult groups popping up all the time in The United States and they literally build self sufficient ecosystems for their cults. Well, there's no reason why you can't do that minus the bizarre cultish, you know, doomsday strangeness. I mean, did you know that a that that a mid sized Amish community comprised of say 300 households with their bakeries and their farms and their dairy and their, what what have you, construction contracting companies and so forth. They generate on average something like $2,021,000,000 dollars a year.

That's roughly 70 and $80,000 annually per household. But you don't have to be a Quaker to do that. You don't have to belong to a cult that's waiting for the mother ship to do that. You could just do that because it makes sense. You understand me?

I mean, if mentally ill people in a cult, you know, mentally ill people who believe that some guy in a track suit is a prophet, if they can collectively come together and build self sufficient communities, well there's no reason why normal healthy people can't do it. You absolutely can because as I've said, you're gonna have to take care of yourselves. No one is gonna save you except yourselves and by yourselves I mean family by family, neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, community by community. Because look, you can't even think in terms of trying to save your nation. You can't think like that anymore.

You need to save yourselves and save, whoever is willing to go alongside you to save themselves. But if you're sitting around in 2025, and you're loving or you're hating on this politician or that politician, and you're arguing about party politics and so on. Well, that is just as meaningful or just as useful as binge watching a show on Netflix or arguing about the characters or the story lines in some movie or in video games or what have you. It's identical to just getting consumed by celebrity gossip. It's completely irrelevant.

It's like you're you're you're you're flipping channels on the in flight entertainment on a plane that's going down. You're not gonna change the culture of that country, that's not going to happen. You're not gonna change the values of that country. And you can't change the culture, you can't change the values, therefore, cannot change the system or the system's logic and the logical trajectory of that system. There's not gonna be any macro level movement in The United States.

The best you can do is work at the micro level for change at the micro level, the localized community level, you know. Doing the things that you need to do at the community level, the local level to try to grow community sovereignty. Establish and grow community sovereignty. Build a localized ecosystem with willing participants and within that community, you might be able to cultivate a better culture. Within that community, you might be able to cultivate a a better value system and and build a better internal logic upon which you can operate.

Understand, the America of your imagination does not exist. It already doesn't exist. And that includes the America in which you imagine that a Mamdani or an AOC or a Bernie Sanders or an Obama or a Kamala is gonna come to the rescue. The right and the left, the Democrats and the Republicans are just two sides of one system and that system is against you. You need to understand this.

It's like the right and left barrels of one shotgun. It doesn't matter if the shells are loaded in the right barrel or if they're loaded in the left barrel. Those bullets are gonna shoot whichever way that shotgun is pointed and both barrels of that shotgun are pointed directly at your head.