GREAT CITY; SO WHAT? :

The City and the Country (PAUL AUSTER, September 9, 2002, NY Times)

No one is sorry that the Taliban regime has been ousted from power, but when I talk to my fellow New Yorkers these days, I hear little but disappointment in what our government has been up to. Only a small minority of New Yorkers voted for George W. Bush, and most of us tend to look at his policies with suspicion. He simply isn't democratic enough for us. He and his cabinet have not encouraged open debate of the issues facing the country. With talk of an invasion of Iraq now circulating in the press, increasing numbers of New Yorkers are becoming apprehensive. From the vantage point of ground zero, it looks like a global catastrophe in the making.

Not long ago, I received a poetry magazine in the mail with a cover that read: "USA OUT OF NYC." Not everyone would want to go that far, but in the past several weeks I've heard a number of my friends talk with great earnestness and enthusiasm about the possibility of New York seceding from the union and establishing itself as an independent city-state.

That will never happen, of course, but I do have one practical suggestion. Since President Bush has repeatedly told us how much he dislikes Washington, why doesn't he come live in New York? We know he has no great love for this place, but by moving to our city, he might learn something about the country he is trying to govern. He might learn, in spite of his reservations, that we are the true heartland.

Mr. Auster apparently fails to comprehend that NYC, though the world's greatest city, is today little more than a theme park, a fact best indicated by the way they've redone Times Square to resemble Disney World. Even as we mourn the loss of lives a year ago we can note that fairly few of the workers at the WTC, and even fewer of the rescue workers, actually lived in Manhattan. Even as we acknowledge NYC as a symbol of democracy, we should note that despite several terms of reasonably good governance under Rudy Guiliani, it still has one of the worst school systems in the country and far more crime than any civilized nation should tolerate in any of its communities. Were NYC a "city-state" where would it have gotten the billions of dollars to pay for its response to this attack and to rebuild? Of whom would Hillary Clinton and the firefighters unions be demanding further handouts? Who today would be patrolling its skies and its harbors to try and prevent the next attack?
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 10, 2002 9:28 AM