"Who cares where they died? They died." —Andrew Cuomo

Everybody has a COVID-19 story these days.  

My tale begins in March 2020, when the Wuflu was new in America and Doctor Gucci (AKA Fauci) was still ambivalent about those masks.  Last spring, you may recall, state governments like New York were paying lip service to social distancing.  Concurrently, the NYC subway system was running COVID through the five boroughs on disinfectant-free express trains.  At the same time, Governor Andrew Cuomo was flushing sick old folks out of hospitals and back to nursing homes, where agony, if not death, was a near certainty.

Beds were at a faux premium back then.

Concurrently, the Cuomo administration immunized the nursing home industry, a big Democrat campaign contributor, from wrongful death lawsuits.  Today, New York has the highest COVID death toll in America, mostly elderly, and mostly from the Big Apple, a liberal Democrat political sierra hotel (née sinecure).  New York State has nearly 50 thousand COVID deaths, mostly elderly.   

We have some vintage "friends," my wife's prep school chums to be precise, who now reside in New York City.  Back in March, our New York friends, let's call them the Hegiras, like many urban snowflakes, decamped from the Big Apple and fled to less hazardous venues, like our fair city.  Yes, husband, wife, and two kids crossed three states to find refuge with a centenarian grandparent three blocks up the hill from us.  Four untested New Yorkers, seeking refuge and "safety," put their aging grandfather, et al. in harm's way in Washington, D.C. after fleeing the Big Apple.

You should not be surprised to learn that all four are adult, lockstep liberals.  We should note that before decamping, the Hegiras sublet the apartment they were sub-letting.  Subletting rent-controlled apartments in NYC is every liberal's favorite racket.

The Hegira daughter is a graduate of a tony emporium of pre-pubescent white girl privilege in the Big Apple.

The wandering New Yorkers spent a good part of two months in Washington, D.C. on daily walks through our neighborhood, often regaling Beltway rubes with tales from the Big Apple, often chatting with my wife over the fence.  One day they came by to recite the virtues of the Cuomo clan as the "only adults in the room," embellishing the argument with claims that they, like Cuomos, as academics, "followed the science."  One day I asked Hegira mom how four selfish cliff-dwellers moving in with a vulnerable senior represented charity, compassion, common sense, or science.

The clan immediately rallied around Mom and insisted that Mom was only trying to "protect" her family.  With that, a "friendship" that had endured for half a century crashed and burned on the altar of candor.  My wife, in no way responsible for my insensitive question, was subsequently canceled.

Today, we know a lot more about geriatric genocide in New York than we did last spring.  Few dare call Andrew Cuomo "the only adult" in the room anymore.  Even CNN refuses to allow brother Chris (AKA Fredo) to have Governor Andrew on for guest propaganda spots anymore.  Defending callous COVID policy, the Cuomo clan now has more blood on its hands than the entire American Mafia since the turn of the 20th century.

As a former Catholic, I have a personal theory about Cuomo's moral reasoning.  Never mind that, like most urbane thugs, Andrew is a liar, braggart, and bully.  What I see in the Cuomo family is Mafia logic, the reasoning of cafeteria Catholics, multiple-choice Christians.

Social mores or rules, surely the commandments, are "choices" for many Catholics today, not mandates.  A cafeteria Catholic gets to choose, as from a menu, the rules or laws he wants to follow.  The rest is window dressing.

Hence, "devout" (sic) Catholics like Joseph Robinette Bidden and Andrew Cuomo can rationalize abortion and euthanasia and condemn capital punishment in the same breath.  In practice, kill innocents while absolving the guilty, the worst among us — at taxpayer expense — for life.

While the Cuomo clan was flying under the ethical and legal radar in New York, the American Fourth Estate was busy blaming Donald Trump for the COVID carnage.  Indeed, you had to read the N.Y. Post, or a foreign tabloid like the Guardian, to get the truth, the forensic details about gubernatorial euthanasia up in the Big Apple.

Andrew Cuomo probably reasoned that those hospitalized elders had one foot in the grave anyway, so why not free up some beds for folks who might survive to vote?  Cuomo is the cynic's edition of the banality of political evil.  President Biden calls Cuomo the "gold standard" governor in COVID-19 leadership — indeed, such a good performer that Hollywood literally gave Andrew Cuomo an Emmy this year for pandemic propaganda.

That's how things are done in the Big Apple.  After the carnage, you "leave the gun and take the cannoli."

The author was born in the Bronx, an erstwhile Catholic, schooled at three New York Catholic institutions, grade school through college. 

Caricature by Donkey Hotey (cropped) CC BY 2.0 license.