There is a film from 1995 called The Last Supper. It is a dark comedy, almost too strange to explain without making it sound ridiculous. A group of liberal graduate students invite people they consider dangerous, hateful, or bigoted to dinner. They talk with them, test them, poison them, and bury them in the backyard when the guests fail the moral test.

The first killing begins as something close to self-defense. A man threatens them, the situation breaks open, and panic takes over. Then comes the turn that matters. They stop treating the killing as a terrible event and begin treating it as an idea. They convince themselves they have found a moral duty. Dangerous people can harm the world, so removing them begins to feel like service. History might forgive it. Good people might have to do ugly things for the greater good. The movie understands how easily disgust can dress itself as courage.

People rarely become dangerous while telling themselves the truth about what they are becoming. Most believe they are becoming brave. Their certainty becomes permission, and their disgust starts to feel like moral clarity. The film stayed with me because it shows a truth people prefer to see only in their enemies.

I thought about it again while watching what is happening in New York City. In the June 23, 2026, New York Democratic primaries, candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani won major congressional races in the city, including Brad Lander in NY-10, Claire Valdez in NY-7, and Darializa Avila Chevalier in NY-13. Many people will see those results as a clean political story about the left rising, the establishment weakening, and voters reacting to affordability, housing, power, corruption, and the old order. There is truth in that reading, because New Yorkers are under pressure and a city that becomes too expensive for normal working people creates its own rebellion.

I am not interested in writing this as a party argument. I live here. I built a business here. I raise children here. I have watched people work hard and still feel squeezed. I understand why voters are angry. The concern is what kind of leadership grows out of that anger.

There is a kind of leader who builds people up by giving them responsibility. There is another kind that gathers people around a common enemy. The second kind can sound powerful at first because resentment creates fast unity. People who feel unseen suddenly feel named. People who........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)