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Ross, I've enjoyed your reporting and writing about the NYC mayoral race, but I disagree with where you've landed here: I think AOC's embarrassingly hypocritical attacks on Yang while ignoring the actual democratic mainstream's identical statements (well documented by Greenwald), coupled with the resolutely absolute apathy of New York voters towards any of the so-called "progressive" candidates in the mayoral race show that this "new left" movement is just dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, and it's well past time to move on.

Sunrise throws Alex Morse under the bus for unfounded (and maybe even mildly homophobic) accusations?; the NYC DSA bumps black Marxist professor Adolph Reed from speaking for being too class-oriented?; the entire Squad's Twitter account is reactionary in ways that most Republicans could only dream of? - I could go on and on with examples of that movement fading into abject meaninglessness of the toxic poison pill variety. The hope of the class-based, left-populist Sanders' 2016 campaign was totally turned into a nasty experiment in identity politics and dense, rich Brooklyn yupsters bullying their way into the leadership of once useful organizations over the last 4-5 years. I was reading Streetsblog the other day, whose work I've (mainly) enjoyed over the years, and when faced with evidence that the entire city is now reacting to spikes in crime and murder, he writes it all off to not observing some of the finer points of the "defund" movement. Let's be honest, continued adherence to this platform could doom the entire Democrat project for a generation.

I know that nobody wants to hear this - and I'm sure I could be fired from a Brooklyn graphic design firm for saying so - but I think Andrew Yang may actually be the "progressive" candidate in the race, and the attacks on him - for the rote politicking or bland statements that all candidates actually trying to win office make - all seemed based on his having some different ideas from the mind-hive, or refusing to adhere to (honestly brain-dead) talking points.

The quicker we remove AOC and that narcissistic cult from left political parties, the quicker the left can actually "progress." In the meantime, we can watch the New York Times endorse the most non-controversial, identity-box-checking political candidates that are polling at around 2% and Teen Vogue will be the intellectual journal of the new "movement." Politics, yay!

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Ross, your own views on Israel and Palestine reflect whataboutism. As an American Jew myself, I also once thought this was a clever and progressive stance. Rebuke Israel but also acknowledge the complexity, Hamas, asymmetry, blah blah. And telling me to go elsewhere for this debate doesn’t work either.

Ross, how much time have you spent with Palestinians? Have you been to the West Bank at all? Or more than a few hours on a birthright trip? As Edward R. Murrow said “I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.”

There aren’t two sides here or many sides. These are war crimes.

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