"It Was Never Like It Was"

Don't Think We Can Just Restore the Past

Back in the late 1970s, when New York was losing population, flirting with bankruptcy and Times Square was more or less an open sewer, an elderly lady supposedly went up to Ed Koch, who had just been elected mayor.

“Mr. Mayor,” she said. “Make it like it was.” He smiled. “Madam, it never was like you think it was. But I’ll try to make it better.”

We are now in this nation’s worst crisis at least since the Civil War, with a malignant administration attempting to destroy Democracy and the social safety net painstakingly built over generations. We have to do all in our power to fight against this. But for this to happen, something was gravely wrong before.

Yes, we had a decent progressive government less than two months ago. We offered a thoroughly qualified candidate for President. But somehow the American people didn’t get that. More than half voted for Donald Trump. or equally bad or thoroughly irrelevant candidates like Robert Kennedy Jr, Jill Stein, or the faceless Libertarian.

If we somehow survive this, we can’t be content with “making it like it was.” For “like it was was a world when millions thought they needed to turn to Donald Trump.

We have to figure out why, even as we do anything we can to stop this evil. Think about it, and why so many voted against their best interest. That doesn’t mean we give them a pass, or become craven opportunists like a certain Democratic governor I could name who is cozying up to Trump.

And by the way, most New Yorkers thought that Ed Koch, for all his quirks, did make it better.