Mounds of Snow and Trash Are Just the Opening Act of Mamdani's Collectivist New York
Images out of New York City this week have gone viral, and they are doing more to project the city’s future than any campaign speech ever could.
They show piles of trash sitting curbside and piles of snow still frozen nearly two weeks after a storm. They show a city struggling with completing tasks that should be routine.
This is what New Yorkers are seeing as Mayor Zohran Mamdani begins to warm his seat in City Hall.
According to WABC-TV in New York, sanitation crews fell behind after heavy snow and deep cold slowed cleanup efforts across the city. Trash piled up in multiple neighborhoods.
Welcome to NYC
where the trash piles higher than the snow! pic.twitter.com/y1nVvHI0N4
— Dr J Rould (@jrouldz) February 3, 2026
Only in NYC would they not remove the snow but spread it around so everyone endures the same slick sidewalks. Socialist Snow Plowing in action under Mayor Mamdani. pic.twitter.com/BWzgnuLT5x
— Valk (@AdValoremGP) February 4, 2026
The mayor defended the city’s botched response as New Yorkers complained about living in a landfill.
I am not from New York, I do not want to visit New York, and I am well aware that New York City has dealt with snowstorms and sanitation problems long before Mamdani arrived.
I also cannot say with certainty that this entire situation is his fault. It might be, it might not be.
What I can say with certainty is that this will not be the last time New Yorkers complain about a problem that could have been avoided.
It will not be the last time residents are told to lower their expectations and accept dysfunction.
The problem is not the snow, but the city’s Marxist leadership.
Communist and socialist systems tend to fail pretty quickly for many reasons, but one stands above the rest.
These systems do not value or reward competence. They value and reward loyalty and ideology.
The experts whose job it is to see problems coming and prevent them are almost always removed and replaced with apparatchiks who share the correct political views.
Critical systems are being put to the test and will likely suffer in the years to come.
Leftist radicals are not known for being the brightest people in the room, though some are obviously successful in the arts.
I would not want them to be the last line of defense between my children and a polluted drinking water system.
I would not want them standing between me and the power grid of a nuclear plant.
That is how disasters happen. That is how Chernobyl happened.
I also bring a perspective that many commentators do not.
I grew up in Oklahoma on land later ruled to be part of an Indian reservation after the Supreme Court’s decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma. I watched a socialist system operate inside another state, and that’s exactly what Indian tribes are.
A new chief gets elected, fires everyone, and installs friends, relatives, and political allies into tribal jobs they are not qualified to do. Everyone stays poor except the chief, his inner circle, and those who work hard in spite of the system.
The process is not unlike the one overseen by corrupt former Democrat New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina struck the city in 2005.
New York City is already starting to look like that.
When Mamdani took office last month, he vowed, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
New York is experiencing the collective part now. The warmth is nowhere to be found. In fact, the lack of it has proven deadly, as 17 homeless people have reportedly frozen to death in recent weeks.
The misery is just beginning.
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