You can really tell that Zohran Mamdani’s election to lead the city of New York has really got people in a full-blown tizzy by reading letters like Kevin Landry’s (“Democrats take a page from Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm,” Nov. 16). Landry reels from hyperbole to hysteria as easily as Donald Trump navigates a golf course during a national crisis. 

“Noun, verb, ‘Animal Farm.'” “Noun, verb, ‘1984.’” Great stuff. Great, tired, clichéd stuff. Sure those books are 80 years old, and using them to describe today ignores completely realities like nuance and context, but that stuff isn’t any fun. 

It ignores that Zohran Mamdani won a free and fair election. That he was elected by teachers, nurses, Uber drivers, baristas and mechanics while Stalin, Mao and whatever other long-dead, foreign boogeyman that can be conjured up was elected by no one. 

Or that Mamdani and Graham Platner aren’t gleefully celebrating extrajudicial killings at sea. Aren’t funding the bombing of Gazan women and children cowering in tents or hospitals. Aren’t allowing masked agents of the government to arrest anyone and everyone they deem suspicious in our streets and homes. 

That sure sounds like an authoritarian nightmare to me. And it sure sounds like our real life right now. Not a work of fiction from 80 years ago.

Jeremy Smith
Old Orchard Beach