By Steve Levy
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called upon New Yorkers to keep their thermostats at 78 degrees and above during this heat wave, which has given us a heat index of 110 degrees.
And, as is common with so many socialist policies, the riffraff like you and me must be asked to abide by these restraints on our freedoms, while the old boy network, such as Mamdani and his elite political allies, goes to work in a city office that is over ten degrees cooler.
Democratic Socialists love to throw the word “Democratic” in front of their title so they can try to make the claim that they are different from the communists of Mao’s China or Stalin’s Soviet Union.
The DSA try to paint themselves as the democracy-loving advocates for the working classes, and that they are just your humble servants. You are not our subjects.
But the so-called Democratic Socialists are still trained by the same Marxist ideology as were the greatest communist despots in history who were responsible for the murder of over 100 million people.
This 78° request is yet another example of how the socialists, Marxists, communists, or whatever you want to call them, want to control every aspect of your life to get closer to their utopia.
Now, of course, it does not mean subjecting them or their allies to the sacrifices that you must make to get there. They defund the police, but live within gated communities.
They want to ban guns, except for their own bodyguards who protect them 24/7.
They claim to be public school advocates and oppose charters and private schools, yet send their children to the most expensive elite non-public educational facilities they can find.
They want you to stop eating beef to lower your carbon footprint, but they then board private jets.
They want you to have a tepid showerhead where you can’t get the shampoo out of your hair, but they get salon-like treatments.
They want to make you take the dangerous subways while they are chauffeured in from afar in their limousines. Hence the term “limousine liberal.”
They want you to submit to a Medicare for All socialized medicine program that will make you wait in line, like they do in Canada, for up to five months to get an MRI, while they enjoy access to the greatest concierge healthcare you can find. (Remember when Congress passed Obamacare but exempted itself from its more onerous provisions?)
The Democratic Socialists have the same playbook as the communists, and, yes indeed, they are one and the same. They want control.
Control makes the populace a bunch of lap dogs and perpetuates the ruling class’ power. When they give you free stuff, they control you.
We know Mamdani’s call for a 78° thermostat is the first step in that direction.
There’s a reason the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) want open borders. They want as many foreign people — many of whom are more sympathetic to socialism and communism — to come over our border with the hope they will be given the right to vote. And they also, for the first time in American history, were seeking to have immigrants come here to go directly onto the public dole. As noted above, when you give people free stuff, you control them.
Remember, many of these leftists weren’t even calling themselves Democratic Socialists when they were passing bills in New York State banning you from buying a gas oven.
With great fanfare, they passed legislation telling home builders that all heating systems in the future had to be electric, which is brutally expensive and places tremendous strain on our electric grid.
Many will say that Mamdani’s call for the higher thermostat setting is not unusual. It’s a standard conservation effort that elected officials have often pursued in the past, going back to the days of Jimmy Carter, who pleaded with us to wear a sweater to keep warm. But Carter did so at a time when an oil embargo was in effect. At this point in American history, we are producing more oil and natural gas than at any time in the past.
We have the capacity to live in comfort. After all, isn’t that what progress is supposed to be all about? And please don’t tell us about how this is needed to curb global warming, which is supposedly an existential threat.
The hundreds of people who are dying in Europe during this heat wave could’ve been spared, had these European nations simply employed this new invention that is common in America. You might’ve heard of it. It’s called air-conditioning.
It was quite a revelation for many of us to see the videos from Europeans visiting the U.S. for the World Cup wherein they were praising America and coming to the conclusion that they were taught a bunch of nonsense by their hostile leftist media about the good old USA. They were marveling at our accessibility for a wide array of consumption at a Costco, a Golden Corral or even a Waffle House.
But most of all, they marveled at our air-conditioning, which was omnipresent.
The elites in so-called Democratic socialist nations in Europe somehow find it to be immoral to keep your room cool. Except, of course, for themselves. The leaders of the EU Commission, for example, limited air conditioning in the lower floors where the staff worked, but kept it cool on the upper floors for the EU leaders.
Our message to the Mamdani commies: keep your filthy, controlling Marxist hands off our thermostats.