Ghostbusters and the NYC Ballot

People sure seem forever condemned to choose the form of their own destructor.

There is a scene in the original Ghostbusters film that, though played for laughs, reveals something close to a transcendental truth about human nature.

The Ghostbusters confront Gozer, the supernatural antagonist who demands they “choose the form of the destructor.” The heroes are told that whatever image enters their minds will be the physical embodiment of their destruction. They try to clear their thoughts - but Dr. Raymond Stanz, unable to help himself, imagines something harmless: the smiling, soft, and seemingly innocent Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man. A moment later, a hundred-foot marshmallow monster lumbers through New York, flattening buildings and spreading chaos.

It’s a perfect metaphor for how societies often choose their own undoing. Even when warned, people often select their destructor in a form they find comforting, familiar, or non-threatening. Human beings rarely recognize evil when it arrives smiling, wrapped in soft words and moral posturing. Instead, we embrace it as progress, compassion, or justice - until it’s too late.

Today, in the most illogical of twists, the deaths of literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been erased and the ideas of socialism, Marxism and communism have now become as warm, fuzzy and comforting as a baby’s woobie at naptime.

Irony tends to be cruel and nowhere is that more evident than in New York City, the very city the Ghostbusters saved, because people may have chosen their own version of the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man. Recently, voters there elected a leader who embodies values directly opposed to the ones that built the city’s freedom, tolerance, and prosperity. This new face of “progress” has been described - accurately - as antisemitic, Islamist, and communist. It’s a strange trinity for the so-called capital of modern liberalism. Yet, it makes sense in an age when identity politics and emotional narratives overpower reason, memory, and moral clarity.

For this to happen, several things had to be true. American Jews - who have long been among the most loyal Democrat voters - had to cast ballots for candidates openly aligned with people who despise them. Progressives who once warned of a “Handmaid’s Tale” dystopia voted for representatives of a religion and culture in which the Handmaid’s Tale isn’t fiction - it’s daily life – and more than voting for it, they are posting videos on TikTok cheering the coming of “the caliphate”. Voters who claimed to fear “authoritarianism” voted for those who would eagerly impose it, so long as it came with the right hashtags and talking points.

There’s a tragic absurdity in this. Like Dr. Stanz, who thought of a giant marshmallow man because he wanted something friendly, New York’s young and idealistic voters thought they were choosing kindness, inclusion, and empathy. What they actually chose was the political manifestation of everything they claim to oppose: intolerance cloaked as virtue, censorship sold as safety, and theocratic zeal dressed up as multiculturalism.

The data shows that voters under 30, especially women, overwhelmingly supported these new “progressive” figures. Many are college-educated, but their education has been more in indoctrination than in critical thinking. They’ve been taught to see history as a morality play, with themselves as the righteous heroes destined to correct the sins of the past. In that sense, their vote wasn’t rational - it was performative, even redemptive. They believed they were choosing justice, when in fact they were summoning their own political destructor.

The Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man was funny because it was absurd - a smiling, puffy symbol of destruction that no one could take seriously until it started crushing everything in sight. Our current moment feels eerily similar. The smiling avatars of “diversity,” “equity,” and “social justice” seem harmless enough - until their policies manifest in antisemitic marches, suppressed speech, crumbling public order, and economic decay. Then we realize, too late, that the soft and smiling forms we trusted are capable of immense damage.

New York City, like Dr. Stanz, has made its choice. The form of the destructor has been chosen, and it looks nothing like the monster people expected. It looks friendly. It sounds enlightened. But soon, as it strides through the city’s institutions and values, flattening everything in its path, even the truest believers may begin to see the monster for what it really is.

Sorry, NYC. Not even the Ghostbusters can save you now.