I started to feel guilty, in reacting on social media to New York City Democratic nominee Zohran Kwame Mamdani: to this immediate legacy-media darling, this Uganda-born, collectivization-advocating, smugly smiling, beautifully beard-groomed Bowdoin graduate, whose expensive, cleverly packaged Mayoral race launched him into our collective consciousness a few months ago, out of thin air. I try never to be personal, in my political assessments, and I feel guilty because my reaction to Mamdani is so personally aversive.

It is aversive because of the lie-and-deception factor.

Mamdani, as I will reveal, is a nepo son dressed as a communist — but a communist takeover of NYC is not what really motivates this man, not what is really behind this campaign.

Apart from the full-spectrum communist agenda which Mamdani superficially offers, one reason for my sense of personal queasiness when I consider this candidate in various settings is because I know guys like this. Though I am of another generation, some things do not change.

I went to school with guys like this. They are Jaspers. Let's call that archetypal guy, Jasper.

Here is Jasper with the classic graphic Marxist raised fists and the Chinese communist graphic sun rays:

Jaspers are smarmy legacy rich young men, who never had to work for money in their lives; who have that one darling, costume-y thing – that raffish curl over the forehead; or who wear that quirky fisherman's cap, or that Palestinian jelabiya, though they hail from Darien, Connecticut — and who embrace the cause of "the workers," abstractly, or, in my day, say, of the Marxists in El Salvador.

"The people! United! Will never be defeated!" That's for the march on the campus green. Then — let's all go have a latte at the dining club.

This cosplay lasts just so long, before they go back to scooping up the vast privileges of their perches on the better-paid edges of the visual arts, or of filmmaking, as they let the interest in their trust funds compound.

In my experience, when it comes down to their personal wellbeing and comfort, I have learned that Jaspers will, right-on pronouncements or no, personally sacrifice nothing.