In his swearing-in ceremony, the new Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, said, "We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."

It sent chills down the spines of most of those who understand the history of governments given over to collectivism. I think it’s likely in name only, a virtue signal for those at the top to feel better about income inequality.

Let Zohran meet the needs of the poor and the marginalized while we enjoy our mansion in the Hamptons in peace. They’ll have to cough up the taxes to buy off some of that guilt, but that’s a small price to pay compared to an unruly mob banging down your door.

It struck me a little funny since I’ve been thinking about the book Pendulum: How Generations of the Past Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future.

In it, the authors see the 80-year cycle in Neil Howe and William H. Strauss’ The Fourth Turning as two 40-year cycles: the “We” cycle (collectivism) and the “Me” cycle (individualism).

They theorize that humans always take a good thing too far. Collectivism starts well, solving problems for the underclass. Then, it becomes toxic and dangerous, like Nazi Germany dangerous. Then the pendulum begins to swing back to individualism, where it thrives for about 20 years, then winds down, as humans take a good thing too far, leading to nihilism, emptiness, and selfishness.

From the book, which was written in 2011:

The second half of the Upswing of “We” and the first half of the Downswing from it (2013–2023) bring an ideological “righteousness” that seems to spring from any group gathered around a cause. The inevitable result is judgmental legalism and witch hunts. The origin of the term witch hunt was the Salem witch trials, a series of hearings before county court officials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693,6 exactly at the beginning of the second half of the Upswing toward the “We” Zenith of 1703.

Senator Joseph McCarthy was an American promoter of this witch-hunt attitude at America’s most recent “We” Zenith of 1943 (see the “House Un-American Activities Committee,” 1937–1953); Adolf Hitler was the German promoter (see the Holocaust, 1933–1945); and Joseph Stalin was the Soviet promoter (see the Great Purge, 1936–1938). Our hope is that we might collectively choose to skip this development as we approach the “We” Zenith of 2023. If enough of us are aware of this trend toward judgmental self-righteousness, perhaps we can resist demonizing those who disagree with us and avoid the societal polarization that results from it. A truly great society is one in which being unpopular can be safe.”

According to this theory, the “We” cycle peaked in 2013, just as Obama was about to enter his second term, and as Critical Race Theory began infiltrating schools, and, it was right around the time Helen Andrews says the Great Feminization began.

Michael R. Drew and Roy H. Williams, the authors of Pendulum, also targeted the height of the “witch hunt phase” at 2023, which seems to be exactly when cancel culture escalated into the indictments against Trump and brazen lawfare. Cancel culture seems like child’s play compared to trying to put your political opponent in prison and throw him off the ballots.

Even though the book Pendulum was written back in 2011, they seemed to know back then that the time we’re living through now would be very bad. Maybe not Nazi Germany bad, but Tyler Robinson and Matthew David Crooks bad. Collectivism has no choice but to go to that awful place where they demand compliance and conformity.

Rugged individualism not only built this country, but it also built New York City. It’s the land of opportunity. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Deciding New York, of all places, will be a socialist hellhole is a choice the voters made. They’ll have to live with it, good or bad or ugly.

According to Pendulum, we’re in the “collectivism gone wrong” phase, and we’re moving back toward the individualism phase — and honestly, not a moment too soon.

The downstream effects of our collectivist phase are only now beginning to show themselves. There was a good piece in Compact Magazine about the Lost Generation of white men who were told not even to bother applying to jobs because they wouldn’t even be considered.

I know a lot of young men who have spent the last ten years aimless, rootless, with no place to land. It isn’t only white men, but it’s especially white men, and according to the Left, we’re not supposed to care. We have to care.

Right now, Zohran is a man with a dream. It happens to be an old dream, one proven again and again to fail, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see whether he can really change New York City for the better or whether it will just be another role he plays because it sounded good at the time.

Start spreading the news…

Anyway, Happy New Year. I have high hopes for 2026. Maybe this will be the year things start to turn around. Thank you for being such faithful readers. I so appreciate it. I meant to get my podcast out tonight, but it’s not quite ready. Until next time…