Robert Moses is trending...

TL:DR
#RobertMoses was a New York City politico and urban planner, who at one point held TWELVE different titles of government AT THE SAME TIME.

He’s credited for pushing laws and developing the city layout for the modern NYC.

Known as ‘The Power Broker’

He was:
1) racist,
2) entered NYC into several questionable public/private partnerships,
3) often clashed with activists,
4) purposely used highways to destroy NYC, especially ‘negro’ communities,
5) also is a modern archetype of the ‘pro-business’ politician

This man also had some famous clashes with prominent Americans including:
-FDR
-Jane Jacobs
-Nelson Rockefeller

This doesn’t include all of the thousands of local New Yorkers who opposed him. As well as those in city and state government officials who opposed him.

For decades he was THE man to make anything to happen in New York City/ State which led him to become an idol by...

Some people in pro-business circles, aspiring real estate moguls, prominent political figures, and free-market evangelists b/c:
1) he held decades of power in the most powerful city in the world
2) he beat local activists
3) made NYC for suburbanites and
4) ‘got stuff done’

This has caused both then AND now for many to overlook #RobertMoses’s b/c ‘the power broker’.

He was:
1) actually really bad at planning
2) almost destroyed all of the physical infrastructure of America’s biggest city
3) saddled the city w/ debt for decades

Also, when covering #RobertMoses there has been an uptick in people of my millennial cohort to write glowing reviews of his actions...They cite his ability ‘to get stuff done’ w/o acknowledging that he was the obstructionist

This includes aspiring urbanists, LLC Twitter, some real estate developers, and every startup bro’s fav writer David Perell who wrote this glowing review of Moses’s actions https://perell.com/essay/robert-moses/

I referenced this David Perell article b/c:
- he is 1 of the most influential writers right now
-(&Twitter user) for the Silicon Valley/tech-bro cohort who are raising billions and influencing the next economy
-who are the next gen ‘anti-mainstream media’/48 laws evangelists

This Perell article is the ethos of the next wave of everything the big business class is going...a return to a 1980s capitalist view in combination w/ the anti-government ethos of that era AND the glossing over important aspects in order to highlight their ‘success’

I don’t know if Perell personally fits there but his audience, especially on Twitter does

Which brings me all the way back to Robert Moses and the tweet that started it all from the Young America’s Foundation.

https://twitter.com/yaf/status/1380672884457213954

Young America’s Foundation was founded by William F Buckley, who started The National Review and also the modern conservative media movement. https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-man-behind-the-modern-conservative-movement-with-sam-tanenhaus/