“Blessed are you when men hate you and ostracize you and insult you and scorn your name… be glad in that day.”

You discover your real friends in the time when you are unwanted by all others. You must naturally go to them then and petition them. There’s an old joke that goes like this, “A woman wants to know who loves her more, her boyfriend or her dog. So, she puts them both in the trunk of her car for 3 hours. When she opens the trunk her boyfriend jumps out first and starts to curse and scampers away, terrified. The dog, however, is grateful. It jumps out happily and begins to lick her face.”

Understandably, no one is particularly fond of loving New Yorkers these days in a way we are used to being loved. Certainly no one wants us to escape from New York. We are in our own trunk. While we typically standout in a foreign city because of a preponderantly higher percentage of wealth, ideas and enhanced vocal chords, no city in the USA is keen to give New Yorkers refuge in this brutal hour.