Miranda Devine: Don’t count New York - or America - out yet
After listening to the Democrats damn America at their convention, the Republicans have taken the same upbeat approach as New York, which is defying the doomsayers and coming back, writes Miranda Devine.
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Jerry Seinfeld was forced to defend his hometown this week from naysayers who insist New York City is “dead forever” and won’t bounce back from the pandemic.
What caught the comedian’s ire was a viral LinkedIn essay by hedge-funder James Altucher claiming no one who fled the city when COVID-19 hit would return because fast internet “bandwidth” now allows them to operate remotely from anywhere.
“How the hell do you know that?” Seinfeld railed. “Energy, attitude and personality cannot be ‘remoted’ through even the best fibre optic lines … Feeling sorry for yourself because you can’t go to the theatre for a while is not the essential element of character that made New York the brilliant diamond of activity it will one day be again.”
Seinfeld’s optimism is welcome in a city walloped with a triple-whammy of calamity since March: the worst COVID crisis in the country, riots and a crime wave.
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With sky-high local taxes, and disorder flourishing under an unpopular clown of a mayor, the city has lost its sheen.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s policy of installing 10,000 homeless people in ritzy hotels hasn’t stopped homeless encampments colonising the footpaths.
You can’t walk 10 blocks without dodging human faeces, druggies shooting up and exposing themselves.
The city often looks like a scene from a zombie movie. After dark it takes on a new air of menace, as the NYPD, who once made New York the safest big city in America, are disempowered and demoralised.
Yet despite it all, you see signs that the city is sputtering back to life.
Tourists have returned to Times Square, shops are open, footpaths are starting to bustle and everyone has become used to wearing masks.
Restaurants have grabbed hold of sidewalk dining with every ounce of creativity they can muster.
They compete to have the prettiest dining space, which they improve every day with colourful flower boxes, silk bows, stylish awnings and even ceiling fans.
Resilient New Yorkers return the show of faith by filling the tables every night, even when it rains.
It’s people who make an economy and if optimism can make a comeback in New York, with its 24,000 COVID death toll, it can make it anywhere.
That’s the case Donald Trump is making this week as the Republican National Convention kicks off with uplifting themes of “Promise”, “Opportunity”, “Heroes” and “Greatness”.
The optimism of the first night of the convention, Monday, was a rebuke to the gloom-fest of the Democrat convention last week. Trump’s ubiquitous presence and daily appearances in battleground states or in media interviews also stand in contrast to Joe Biden’s fearful basement campaign.
Democrats spent four days last week denigrating America for racism, xenophobia, sexism, bigotry, you name it, kicking their nation in the teeth as it tries to rise from its knees.
By contrast, Republicans, paid homage to American exceptionalism.
“We are idealists and dreamers … rugged and independent. We make the impossible a reality”, intoned the voiceover to an opening video heavy on patriotism.
With a mixture of live and recorded speeches, the first night of the so-called “people’s convention” was more polished and entertaining than the Democrats’ production.
Overseen by a former producer of The Celebrity Apprentice it also benefited from a TV-savvy president who reportedly was involved in every detail from staging to the speaker line-up.
It began with an opening prayer from New York Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Dolan, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, and most speakers signed off with “God Bless these United States”.
Reflecting Trump’s hopes of winning minority votes from the Democrats, black speakers were prominent, including Herschel Walker, the former NFL star who spoke of his “deep friendship” with Trump.
“It hurts my soul to hear the terrible names that people call Donald — the worst one is ‘racist’,”, he said.
“I take it as a personal insult that people would think I would have a 37-year friendship with a racist. People who think that don’t know what they are talking about. Growing up in the Deep South, I have seen racism up close. I know what it is. And it isn’t Donald Trump.”
The most pungent criticism of Democrats came from one of their own, black Georgia congressman Vernon Jones. “The Democratic Party does not want black people to leave the mental plantation,” he said. The party has been “infected with a pandemic of intolerance, bigotry, socialism, anti-law enforcement bias [and a] dangerous tolerance for people who attack others, destroy their property, and terrorise our own communities.”
The only black Republican in the Senate, Tim Scott, of South Carolina, accused Biden of taking black votes for granted.
“Joe Biden said if a black man didn’t vote for him, he wasn’t truly black. Joe Biden said black people are a monolithic community. Joe Biden said poor kids can be just as smart as white kids.”
But he finished on a happier note, recalling his illiterate grandfather who grew up in the segregated south: “Our family went from Cotton to Congress in one lifetime. And that’s why I believe the next American century can be better than the last.”
As the economy comes back to life and the promise of virus treatments looms on the horizon, Trump is banking on hope and optimism trumping the fear and pessimism being hawked by Democrat naysayers.
Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph