Whatever Happened To Rudy Giuliani?

      Ah, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. What happened to you?
     Was there really a time, long ago and far away,  when you were admired, even loved, not only by New Yorkers, but by the whole country?
      Do you remember those bad old days when New York City was a mess of graffitied walls and subways, trashy sidewalks, streets rife with crime petty and grievous and all sorts of other civic infractions and urban blights, and who could forget what a den of iniquity and ugliness Times Square was back then?

     And then remember how you came along, you, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the new sheriff in town, and you lowered the boom bigtime, rounded up and locked the heels of urban offenders great and small, cleaned up the city, and set a new, higher standard of street and civic behavior?  And how, by your tough love, a fresh, new quality was breathed into the environment and life of New York, not to mention the vast improvement in the tourist experience?
      Times Square today.

      And then came the horror of 9/11, the day on which two 1800-foot towers fell onto Manhattan, tons and tons of debris rained down, people ran for their lives, city blocks were demolished, and three thousand people died.

      New York  was traumatized, the country left in shock.
     But remember how you were there, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, strong at the helm of leadership during that dark, terrifying time, perhaps your finest hour, so that you earned the title from a grateful nation as America’s Mayor?

      Oh, Rudy, what happened? When in the world did you cross over to the dark side? When did greedy ambition for excessive wealth and excessive power begin to seep into your soul and poison whatever well of positive strength and heroism used to exist there? When did you turn from hero to absolute villain?
       Because that’s what you are now, Rudy. You are an absolute villain. You are in league with Donald Trump, who is also an absolute villain, and now the two of you slither about intertwined, generating a slime trail of corruption that is damaging not only our American democracy but now, and perhaps even worse, the far more fragile fledgling democracy of Ukraine.
      This Ukraine thing is bad. Really bad. Donald Trump is now on the road to impeachment for his proposition of a self-serving quid pro quo in a telephone call .to  the young, newly elected neophyte President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

    (That Trump held up military aid to Ukraine in an effort to pressure that country to find some 2016 election dirt on the Democrats was inadvertently confirmed in an off-the-cuff  remark by Trump’s  dim-witted acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who is now desperately trying to take back what he publicly said about Trump holding back aid to Ukraine. But what’s said is said).

     But the thing is, Mr. Mayor, it’s looking more and more as if you, and not Donald Trump, are the cerebral engine behind the whole Ukraine thing. It was you, after all, who latched onto the idea that there was a computer server owned by the Democratic Party and hidden somewhere deep in Ukraine that would prove that the interference in our 2016 elections came from Ukraine and not Russia, and was – for some not-easily-understood reason – generated and fed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Even though it was Donald Trump who benefitted from said interference. Go figure.
      It was also apparently your idea to have Trump pressure President Zelensky to produce scandal on Joe Biden’s son, who was at one time on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
      And then, Rudy, there are your two criminal business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who have been charged with fraud in an arcane scheme that involved funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars through a bogus company to a former Texan Congressman, Pete Sessions, in exchange for Sessions pressuring the Trump administration to fire the American Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich,

…for speaking out against corrupt former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko.

      Wheels within wheels, webs within webs, lies within lies.
      It’s most recently come to light that with the full patronage of the President of the United States, you, Rudy Giuliani, have been running a shadow State Department, playing your own game of underground chess with our America ambassadors and emissaries to profit not your country, but yourself and your benefactor Donald Trump.
       But imagine, Rudy, if instead of slinking down the sleazy garden path to shame and ignominy, which is surely your ultimate destination, you’d chosen a different path after your honorable tour of service as Mayor of New York.
         What if, instead of falling prey to greedy ambition, setting your sights on the highest possible pinnacle of power, you’d instead pursued a more noble ambition commensurate with the good work you did as Mayor of New York City?
        How many cities across this country could have benefitted – could still benefit - from your talent and toughness in cleaning up cities and solving urban problems?
       What if, instead of setting your sights on becoming President or -  as you’ve become – surrogate President of the United States, you had established a non-profit to assist mayors of cities in crisis with their urban problems?
      Quite frankly, some of your tough-love techniques could be the salvation of a city like Portland, Oregon, where law, order and civility have eroded under good intentions and administrative cluelessness.

    Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, California, New Orleans, Louisiana…there are probably dozens of cities across America that could have gained from what you could have offered.
       Or if not as an advisor to beleaguered cities, there are any other number of honorable pursuits in which you could have found your stride.

       Consider the good Jimmy Carter has done since his term in public office.

   The name Rudy Giuliani could have garnered the same respect, admiration, and love as the name Jimmy Carter now does.
      But instead you’ll probably end up in prison in your ripe old age and your name will go down in history as synonymous with muck.
        Sigh. Ah, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. What happened to you?

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani

https://www.businessinsider.com/mick-mulvaney-confirms-trump-held-ukraine-aid-for-investigation-2019-10

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/11/768662050/how-former-ambassador-marie-yovanovitch-became-a-target-in-ukrainehttps://www.npr.org/2019/10/11/768662050/how-former-ambassador-marie-yovanovitch-became-a-target-in-ukraine