“The Narcissism of Small Differences” and the Molestation of New York Politics
by David Gottfried
About a century ago, philosophers and scientists opined that when two people, or two ethnic groups, were in many ways alike, they focused on the ways in which they differed, and those differences triggered hostility and conflict. These philosophers denoted this “The Narcissism of Small Differences.“
This problem is very evident in politics. I will concentrate on New York politics which is veritably crippled by the narcissism of small differences.
Very often, when two politicians have a lot in common, and espouse similar opinions on the issues, they proceed to destroy one another and this in turn destroys public services. I offer 5 examples:
1) My first example is the current shining star of ludicrous squabbles in New York, the feud between Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City’s Mayor, Bill de Blasio. They are both of Italian descent. They are both Democrats. They both posture as liberals, but De Blasio is markedly to the left of Cuomo. (I use the word posture because we really never know what they desire or believe in) In an ideal world, they would both marshal their energies to improve services, get more funds from the federal government and improve the lot of their besieged constituents. However, they spend most of their time savaging each other, and the people suffer. Among other things, the MTA (The Transit authority which, among other things, assumes jurisdiction for our aging and increasingly decrepit subways) is in dire straits, and some journalists have said that the DeBlasio/Cuomo feud has made matters worse because they continually sabotage each other’s projects and plans to improve mass transit.
2) Ed Koch and Governor Mario Cuomo. Ed Koch, a former mayor of New York, and Mario Cuomo, a New York Governor who was the father of Andrew Cuomo, were both Democrats, both purported to be liberals and they did everything they could to demolish each other. I had a bird’s eye view of their intense rivalry and its dreadful repercussions:
In the mid 1980’s, I was very anxious about AIDS and this impelled me to get involved in politics. I looked at the numbers and I saw that we were on a fast pace to doom: We had 1000 cases at the end of 1982, we had 10,000 cases at the end 1984 and it was clear to me, and the few people who gave a fuck, that soon we would have one hundred thousand, then a million and so on. Among other things, I wanted to increase government expenditures to find a cure for the malady. I dove into New York City politics and was introduced to a cast of characters whose cattiness, small mindedness and out and out bitchery made Nero seem emotionally stable.
Almost every politician I met was aligned with either Ed Koch or Mario Cuomo. If one worked for Koch, one’s most important job, from the moment one took one’s first amphetamine in the morning until one took a tranquilizer to get to bed (Okay, I only have evidence of the drug usage of a few politicos), was to commit character assassination against the chosen devil. So Koch employees spent their time attacking Cuomo and Cuomo employees spent their time attacking Koch. I thought maybe things would be different among gay politicos, because we were facing the death sentence of AIDS, but my youthful idealism led me astray in entertaining such optimism. Every party hack is a party hack and I don’t give a damn how much yoga and new age spirituality they claim to believe in. They are all worthless whores.
For example, I wrote an article, published in the New York Native (They paid me handsomely and that’s more than I’ve gotten from substack so far), which called for increased governmental expenditures for AIDS research. The Village Independent Democrats, representing Greenwich Village, endorsed my proposal. Of course, it never got anywhere. We couldn’t begin to wrestle with Capitol Hill Republicans. Too many primadona Democrats in New York wrestled our efforts to an early crib death.
I tried to deal with both the Koch camp and the Cuomo camp. Once, after having had a conversation with Jim L of the Koch camp, Thomas D, an ally of Cuomo, was hysterically anxious and grilled me on the phone for half an hour, demanding a blow-by-blow account of the talk I had with Jim L.
Needless to say, nothing good was done. In the early days, AIDS patients were burned out of their homes. The liberal Democrats of New York believed that since Reagan was a reactionary, they would always look good in comparison. “And the Band Played on.”
Life for homosexuals is much better these days, but that’s because of a) medical breakthroughs, b) artists and people in entertainment, and c) the willingness of more people to leave the closet. Political organizations merely confirmed the liberation that had already been achieved.
3) Governor Rockefeller and Mayor John V. Lindsay
From the mid sixties until the early seventies, New York’s Governor was Nelson Rockefeller and New York’s Mayor was John V. Lindsay. The were both Republicans. They both purported to be liberal republicans. They hated each other’s guts. New York endured a series of crippling strikes, including a sweltering and smelly, rat-infested sanitation strike. a bus and subway strike and two teachers’ strikes (The second one began when school started in September and continued until well after election day in November. As an eleven-year-old who hated his Sixth Grade teacher, Mrs. Barth, I was delighted) The ministrations and interventions of both Rockefeller and Lindsay exacerbated the problems.
4) Robert Kennedy and Mayor Lindsay. Robert Kennedy was elected to the New York Senate in 1964, Lindsay was elected mayor in 1965. When they both got on the New York political stage, they were ready to murder each other as if they were starlets trying to land a great picture with Louis B Meyer. Not only did they both position themselves as liberals and achieve a lot of popularity among Black Americans; they also were very attractive and had golden hair. They were dueling for the vote of horny women.
The papers claimed that these guys were both championing the rights of the underprivileged and persecuted. Of course, they did some of that good stuff too. But very often, they tried to tear each other apart, often because of petty squabbles. For example, when the New York Times gave its readers photos of Lindsay playing tennis, the Kennedy press office would go ballistic if the paper hadn’t also included photos of Bobby playing football, or climbing a mountain etc.
5) Bella Abzug and Ed Koch
They were both Democrats. They both originated among the staunchest liberals in the Democratic Party, although Koch was on a rightward trajectory for the last two decades of his life in public service. They both were Jewish. They both represented Voters in Lower Manhattan. They were at each other’s throats. Neither of them had a legislative record, of any significance, while they were in Congress; they were too busy knocking each other down.
Incidentally, Freud spoke of the narcissism of small differences in human psychology. I thought that I had best leave this factoid till last as the mention of Freud will automatically turn off a lot of people because he was allegedly sexist and patriarchal. Of course, a lot of people are too stupid to realize that a man’s allegiance to a supposedly invalid idea does not mean that all of his ideas are invalid. If we must not listen to anything Freud said because some of what he said may have been wrong, then we better stop using toilet paper. Let me explain.
Hitler was an odious man. Hitler also used toilet paper. Ergo, Hitler had some good ideas as he believed in using toilet paper to wipe his posterior. Believing that an idea is wrong because that idea is associated with a person who is detestable is known as the informal logical fallacy of “argumentum ad hominum.” However, I suppose I cannot complain about informal logical fallacies. This essay was about politics, and political hay is always made with the prolific use of informal logical fallacies.