[snip]
Why would the mayoral aide face questions about her mother’s home? Well, to put it mildly, the young bureaucrat brought it on herself.
For instance, the Mail story featured more than a half-dozen of Weaver’s posts on the social media platform X between 2017 and 2019, in which she urged those in power to “[i]mpoverish the white middle class;” to ensure “no more white men in office;” to “elect more communists;” and “[s]eize private property.”
Moreover, in a clip posted to X, she pledged that homeowners will face “a different relationship to property” moving forward.
[snip]
“Normalize [publicly] shaming communists,” one X user wrote.
Why, therefore, does she deserve empathy?
First, Weaver’s hyper-emotional response to a question about her mother’s $1.4 million home suggests a problem that, by their own admission, plagues a disproportionate number of left-wing women: mental illness.
Second, Weaver’s mother, Celia Applegate, serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Chair of History at Vanderbilt University. Applegate and her partner, Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Chair of History Emeritus David Blackbourn, have owned the swanky Nashville property since 2012, the Daily Mail reported.
In other words, much like Mamdani himself, Weaver hails from the uber-privileged world of academia. And that world either attracts or produces angry, self-loathing leftists with authoritarian ideas.
Finally, according to the New York Post, Weaver has expressed a degree of regret over her past comments.
[snip]
Weaver posted her anti-white racist views at a time when leftists proudly expressed such views. Today, with some notable exceptions, they tend to be more guarded in such expressions than they were in the heyday of Black Lives Matter madness. It appears, therefore, that Weaver assumed her overt racism would remain fashionable forever.
In sum, Weaver deserves to feel shame over her racist and communist ideas. But, based on evidence pertaining to her mental health and family background, she also deserves pity, for she is hardly the first young woman whose privilege and detachment from reality led her to embrace authoritarian ideologies. Nor is she the first to break down emotionally when confronted — perhaps for the first time — with real-life consequences.
