How to learn about politics from two Democratic-leaning women in New York

Tonight I went rather late (around 9 pm) to an expensive New York restaurant; not super expensive where the millionaires from the East Side meet but one in West Village where mostly successful young (and not so young as the story will soon reveal) people gather to dine and talk.

Finding a place at the bar in mid-August when half of New York is gone on vacation is not particularly hard. There was an excellent place in the middle of the bar, between a couple of lesbians (as they introduced themselves later) and a woman 60+ in age, but in top physical shape. As soon as I saw her I knew her political philosophy. She wears it on her sleeve or rather in the way she crops her greyish hair very short and tight; in her fancy and super expensive, steel-framed glasses, “sensible”, but probably designer, shoes. It soon became clear that she is a regular at the restaurant and was treated with extreme care and attention by the head waiter.

After some non-descript conversation, initiated by her, about the restaurant and food, when she vaguely learned that she was speaking to an East European barbarian (although in accordance with the dinner etiquette she never asked a single question about my background) she became a bit more circumspect. She spoke however of how she “divides her time” between a state in New England, with a place on the shore, and New York. When I told her that after living many years in the United States I am still rather ignorant about New England and could not figure out different states, nor how they geographically stand in relationship to each other, I thought it was time to try to find some common ground. She told me that she was an artist and that she writes poetry from time to time. In fact, she held in front of her throughout the dinner, a small black booklet in which at regular intervals, when she did not want to talk, she would furiously write something. I rather suspect that she wrote nothing but random words. After having written a hundred or more such words, she would close her booklet and go back to the conversation. The only writer of whom I knew to have lived in New England was Marguerite Yourcenar. So, somewhat hesitantly, I asked her if she knew of a writer, a woman French writer, who lived on an island in Maine. She had never heard of Yourcenar; even less familiar to her was Hadrian.

Okay, I decided to try something else. Once, I said, I stayed in a house of a friend who lived in a fancy New England town where many impressive mansions were built in the 1920s by people like Morgans and the likes. I could not remember the name of that place but it was beautiful, I said, and I am sure she must know of it. (After dinner, I remembered that it was Newport in Rhode Island). She pretended not only not to know of such a place but that no such places existed in New England. It is a typical conceit of super rich Democrats to pretend not to even know the names of the towns where the uber-rich live not only because it is tacky to do name-dropping but because people like them love to believe that they are just “ordinary folks”. It is always the others who are super-rich, but not them. They, in their own mind, cannot accept that they are 1/10^th of 1 percent, but prefer to think of themselves as a tiny bit more “comfortable” middle class.

Of course, she was an artist. She did pottery and knitting. I had some doubts whether her pottery and knitting alone would buy her dinners in fine restaurants but I left them to myself. I added however that I knew nothing about modern plastic arts. She was not pleased with such an open expression of philistinism. But the conversation ended when she told me about some social platforms (the only acceptable social platform that may be used, according to her) and of which I have never heard. I told her that instead of that particular and socially-acceptable platform I like Twitter. It was the last straw. She expressed outrage that anyone may use Twitter in a language not less intemperate than had I confessed to some special adoration of the Satan.

She was touching in her self-oblivious self-righteousness.

Luckily, on my right, sat another woman, perhaps only five years younger than the lady of the liberal East Coast establishment with whom I had just ended this charming conversation. She was as appalled by Trump as the other was, but disliked Democratic party establishment equally. And told me the story that captures the entire history of American involvement with globalization: the story of American industrial rise, decline, and inability to ever get industrialized again. All told through her small fashion business. She owns a small or middle size successful fashion company. She started it some 35 years ago. The company at first bought all of its material, fabrics, prints and dyes etc. from within the United States, from California to the East Coast. But gradually US suppliers became too expensive, and the quality of prints from France and Italy was better. So, she switched to Italy and France. The US companies that worked with her small business eventually sold all their machinery and equipment and worker dispersed to the four winds. Her business continued to prosper. Things went on well even after a Chinese company bought the French and Italian suppliers. The Chinese increased the variety of colors and made her even happier. Until, a few years later when the new Chinese owner decided to quadruple (yes, she said, “to quadruple”) the prices of fabrics. It was a huge shock to her business. She tried to recontact some other French and Italian companies, but, as in the US, all had folded; gone for good. There was no way back. She somehow absorbed the price shock. The business continued. Things were more expensive but of a higher quality. It would all be, after all, she thought, okay.

Until Trump came. He increased tariff rates on the goods that she is importing from China from 10 percent to 58 percent. It is impossible, she said, to work with such prices. Nobody would buy her products. Could the Chinese pretend that the goods are produced elsewhere and sell them by paying lower tariffs, I asked? Yes, she said, they are trying to go through Peru, but it is super complicated and in the end not much cheaper. And this Trump’s dream, she said, of bringing the production back to the US is plain nonsense. Who is going to do it? “The companies I used to deal with have closed businesses years ago. Even the workers’ skills to do this work no longer exist. We shall never do it again in the United States”. Of course, I tried meekly to counterargue, perhaps new companies will spring up behind the high walls of tariffs and people will re-learn the necessary skills. She did not think so. And even if they did, it would all be too late for her. She did know what to do.

So, what did she think politically? Trump has put the last nail in her business’ coffin. She despised him. But she could not stomach the Democratic establishment; she liked Mamdani. But Mamdani is a New York phenomenon, she said; he cannot carry the United States. She was at a loss. The dinner was great and we drank another glass of wine (she liked white and I prefer rosé), but I think she felt it was the end-game.