I believe there’s a 10% chance that Zohran Mamdani will be a good mayor of New York. I want him to succeed. Let’s learn from the things he does right and from the things he does wrong. The sky isn’t falling. Many if not most of my friends in NY have reacted with blind hatred for Zohran. This must have some advantages.
ChatGPT says: Blind hatred has a payoff. It always does. You already see the upside in your own stance: you allow for a 10 percent possibility of competence, which means you’re gathering information instead of shutting down. Most people don’t want to gather anything. They want to feel safe. Hatred is a safety mechanism.
Here are the advantages your New York friends get from hating Zohran without nuance.
It bonds the in-group.
Shared outrage creates instant cohesion. You feel like you’re on the same team. The target becomes a totem for group purity.
It simplifies a messy world.
New York politics is complicated. If Zohran is pure threat, there’s no need to track tradeoffs, incentives, or structural constraints. Hatred gives the illusion of clarity.
It gives people energy.
Indignation feels powerful. It keeps you alert, engaged, vigilant. Fear mixed with contempt is a stimulant.
It protects identity.
If someone like Zohran represents everything they define themselves against, then hating him preserves the story they tell about who they are. The villain keeps the self coherent.
It preempts disappointment.
If he’s doomed to fail, they can’t be let down. Hatred is armor against dashed hopes. It’s a hedge.
It preserves moral status.
If he’s a bad person with bad ideas, they don’t have to examine their own failures, blind spots, or complicity. The heat points outward.
It allows them to ignore the things he gets right.
Because admitting when an enemy succeeds is ego-threatening. Better to stay blind.
Your stance has its own advantages. You get to observe him as a real actor, not a cartoon. You get to track what constraints he’s navigating. You get to see how policy plays out in the real world. You get to understand your city more deeply.
Treat the 10 percent as a learning window. Watch what he does with power, not the projections on him. The sky isn’t falling. The city will still have cops and sanitation and budgets and interest groups and courts and unions. Mayors have less control than most people imagine. You can be curious without being naïve.
If he does things right, learn why. If he blows something up, learn how. Either way, you’re running a better mental model than the folks who’ve already decided the story’s over before it starts.
