NYCCR - EP30: HESHIED!

My guest today is Heshy Tischler. He's an activist in the oldest and best sense of the word, not the bongo-beating, chanting idiot kind, but a guy who knows everyone in his neighborhood and brings food to people who need it. A guy who has earned his influence in Brooklyn by meeting everyone, and helping everyone he meets as much as he can; and then he uses the influence he's earned to accomplish more of the same, but on a greater scale. Heshy is also just a kooky guy that it's pretty much impossible not to like. It was my great pleasure to speak to him. Plus - Douglas Nelson's New York Post Stories, and a weird video or two. About the episode: Some subscribers at Censored.tv may recall that 2020 was among the most educational years of our lifetime. For example, we learned that the people elected to represent us - on the federal, state and local level alike - possess the political will to take away our most basic rights, while insisting that they are protecting us. It was also a surprise to me that our federal and state governments could just declare an emergency and fck with us indefinitely by imposing and enforcing absurd and arbitrary policies and rules. And in 2019, it would've been inconceivable to me that a majority of Americans would so eagerly embrace the bogeyman they were being offered, even though it limited their ability to earn a living and turned their lives upside down in so many tangible and relevant ways. New York City, despite its alleged sophistication and toughness, was seemingly the world capital of COVID-BELIEVER SYNDROME. The city's full-on embrace of COVID-19 absurdity was enraging. The Unquestionable Truths of the Virus ranged in veracity from extremely questionable to easily disprovable, but anyone who wanted to keep living in reality was considered a terrorist. The city has always been intense, but now it was extra intensely stupid, scared, weak, craven and, yes, SUPERSTITIOUS! Liberal people will make their proclamations about COVID-19 hitting the black and brown communities the hardest, but I don't think it divided us along racial lines, but rather intellectual lines - and certainly, as a result, political ones as well. I believe no one suffered as badly as those of us who could tell from the start that this pandemic shit didn't ring true. Heshy Tischler - my guest today - fought harder against the sort of government overreach demanded by the COVID-19 hysteria than anyone else visible to me in New York City. Heshy's resolve to fight and his ability to rally his neighbors in Brooklyn's Orthodox community was an inspiration, as well as a source of hope to all those New Yorkers who stubbornly remained on planet earth during the trying years of 2020 and 2021. HeshyTischler.com is his website. He's running for City Council, and it would be better for all of us if he won.

Mar 15th, 2023