DC and our dying blue cities
Here’s an article describing how depressing and dangerous Washington DC has become.
Now, you might say that DC has been that way for a long time. But it’s clear that it’s recently gotten even worse.
You also might say “Who cares?” Well, I do. Not only is DC our capital, but it used to be a fun place to visit. And DC is hardly alone; there’s been a decline in so many of our big cities. And if you also don’t care about them – perhaps because such cities are Democratic strongholds or because you live far away? – I think you’re being short-sighted. Not only were many of these cities beautiful and lovely to visit – San Francisco being a prime example – but in each case a great many people are sinking with those cities, and a great many states. Coming soon to a city and state near you?
You might also say that if things get bad enough in those cities, maybe voters there will vote for something different; something better. Yes, every now and then a Soros DA is recalled, but I don’t see much changing in such cities as a result.
The combination of lengthy COVID restrictions, work from home, post-Floyd-riots’ relaxation of controls on crime, the demonization of police and their resultant flight, and illegal immigration and criminal gangs ha been a big part of the mess that so many of our cities have become. I wonder if this can be reversed, and if so how.
And in addition to the human cost and the economic cost, we have the undeniable fact that these blue cities have become the perfect venues for political trials against the right. Right now we see this especially in DC, New York, and Atlanta. Prosecutors there feel comfortable using twisted and novel legal theories to charge those on the opposing side, and confident in judges and juries to convict. This is a very ominous development.
These cities and their decline affect us all.
Their voters are feckless, and accept what the political class serves them. The political class – the people motivated to run for office – seldom include anyone who works in a position that has operational measures of competence or is subject to market discipline. If we had a healthy political society, a collection of local businessmen and professionals would put together a slate and run these cretins out of office. Well, people with real work to do have lost interest in local government and the electorate is composed of the sort of people who, given the choice between Keith Wofford (a BigLaw partner who had other things to do with his life) and Letitia James (a failed legal aid lawyer who had quit practicing nearly 20 years earlier) chose James. This is the reality: a lot of your neighbors are unworthy of the country they inherited, and it shows.
its sad because wasn’t new york the first capital, before the federal district, and philadelphia where the declaration was signed, all three have become mordor,
they have hemorhaged persons, thats why they are welcoming ‘newcomers’ yes the phrase from alien nations, to balance their census count,
it virginia from sources in the know, they seem to have infected the northern region, one thought the 2021 race had made some mark, but it was a minor cauterization, the decay seems to have returned the year later
Art Deco–there is a lot of voter-fraud here in Los Angeles. That is why I have no trouble believing that the last national election was “stolen”. There is NO WAY, an election can be fair when mail-in ballots combined with no requirement to show identification is allowed in the manner which has become the norm here. Truly, I call this “ground zero” for destruction of the Republic and Neo is right that it will have a cascade effect. The porous border is and has been a primary weapon.
Elections have consequences – our vote has consequences.
If Trump wins—the consequences in many of these “blue cities” will be riots that make J6 look like a baby riot in the local hospital’s newborn nursery unit. However, as usual, those violent & destructive riots in “blue cities” will be allowed to operate basically freely—with few, if any, arrests.
Power Line had a post some time ago – that was talking about states like California suing businesses (and people???) for leaving their states.
If these Blue states & Blue cities are crumbling – then perhaps such a consequence is due to their Karma…so to speak.
When I was a kid and we visited DC, I thought it was so beautiful! It was spring, with the cherry blossoms.
Art Deco is right.
Art Deco:
If local government is hurting their businesses and making their cities unsafe, why would “people with real work to do” be uninterested in changing local government for the better? Why would they “lose interest”? You seem to be indicating it’s because they feel there’s no hope of being elected? But turnout in many of these cities – New York being a prime example – is very low. Increase turnout on the right, and they’d have a chance.
I have to agree with Neo about the loss of these cities. We visited NYC just post Guiliani and what a wonderful place it was. Same for SanFran in the 80s. DC is the saddest. I would make a point to visit as much as possible, now you couldn’t get me anywhere near it. Democrats are like locusts, they come in and destroy everything then move on to their next target.
It could be worse, geo strategic analyst Peter Zeihan is now saying that China is now in “the final stages of absolute demographic collapse, and it will cease to exist as a unified, industrialized nation state within ten years .”*
* See Zeihan’s China’s Demographic Collapse: Will It End in 10 Years” on Youtube.
Here’s the thing, what happens in these large cities ALWAYS spreads out to surrounding smaller cities. It’s often because they are so large that they have a huge impact in state legislatures and in the voting for governor, congress, US senate etc.
We have seen that in the state of WA where what is happening in Seattle has spread out to Tacoma and Bellevue not to mention many other suburban cities that my fellow Washingtonians all know well.
Now you go to someplace like Puyallup or Woodinville which are now seeing homeless on the streets, car burglaries and just general crime whereas not to long ago these were very safe suburbs.
So care or don’t about these cities but what starts there almost certainly will come to the suburbs it’s only a matter of time.
Times change and social conditions with them. We are constantly told how radically the world is changing, yet people don’t see that that will affect many things. We could well be on the verge of an era when cities just don’t matter so much as they had. Their rise in importance in the 19th C may be reversed.
I’m inclined to think that true. And while in some ways I’d tend to regret what is passing, given what the cities have done to themselves, that is limited. The possibility of changing their governments is limited by the extent they are corrupt to the core, and have been for ages. I’m from New York, which hasn’t had an honest government since well before the Civil War. Places like that will not allow themselves to be reformed.
I’m more inclined to regret the rural areas the bobos move into, and destroy. Especially the coastal ones.
https://apple.news/AMiIPM92ZTn-Jjk42ToacEQ
Here is a news item from NBC. You know it is a Presidential election year!
Eeyore:
On the contrary, cities matter even more. As more and more people on the right leave these cities, they become more monolithically leftist, dangerous, and corrupt, and they still contain an enormous number of people and dominate the politics of many states.
Look at maps of voting patterns, and you’ll see it over and over: a red state with a blue city or cities that make it a blue state.
And I’ve already mentioned the problem with lawfare using the blue cities to get its way.
Blue cities are losing some population, but they still are very large and very dominant.
how soon will this country have, they had a chance in new york and even new jersey to right the course, but they weren’t interested, as for arizona pennsylvania and michigan we know how that plays out,
I really wonder what those who don’t live in these urban environments are supposed to do to improve the lot of the corrupt and entitled and recalcitrant populations there.
Do you think that you are somehow going to convert them, psychologically, culturally, and spiritually? Do you think they are any more amenable to change than the friends you have mentioned?
And if “we” did save the cities for a time how long will that improvement last? Given that all one has done in salvaging the infrastructure, is to temporarily save it both for the feral hedonic nihilists ( and I include Democrats in general in that labeling based on their philosophical anthropology and moral presuppositions) and from them. This, until they can once again go back to their ways. “As the dog returneth to his vomit” as the proverb says.
Yeah, cities could be saved, if you could pry the current dwellers out with dynamite and crowbars and devote the rest if your life trying to save these unwilling people from themselves. And then ultimately what, and for what?
Might as well send an Evangelical to preach to and then sweep up after a gay pride pervert parade for all the permanent good it will do.
But yeah, it’s a shame. Lots of nice buildings with great architecture, and the possibilities for a both bracing and genteel life there … if only cities were not such attractions for the morally insane as well.
DNW:
I never suggested there was anything for non-residents of these cities or states to do about it. It is up to those who live there – and/or perhaps the governors and legislatures of the states in which the cities are located – as far as I can see.
@neo:
You describe the situation we are now in. I don’t see that as likely to be stable. On the contrary, I think the relative importance of cities will likely wane. It’s happened before, you know. I don’t see what urban centers really have to offer anymore, compared to 50 – 250 years ago. The payoff to running them will not likely balance the enormous cost of prying them away from their current rulers. And for what?
It’s going to be a new world. Now, I don’t think they’ll disappear, but they will reduce to where they were before 1800. Won’t happen overnight, of course.
Despite the crowding, corruption, and crime, we loved visiting Philadelphia once a year for a few days. Sure, you had to watch your step in some neighborhoods, but much of Center City was interesting, fun, with some great restaurants and the wonderful Reading Terminal Market. The food scene was amazing, at all price levels, and lots of different cuisines, and Philly people were proud of their dining scene. In our 2019 visit we discovered an incredibly authentic Italian restaurant with the best gelato we have found on the continent.
Then came 2020, the pandemic, and the riots. Our new restaurant find was on a street with extensive looting and street level damage. DA Larry Krasner declined to prosecute most rioters, and a lot of boarded up storefronts never recovered.
Now Philadelphia’s historic and notorious corruption seems almost quaint, replaced by hateful far left aggression and anarchy. Violent crime is way up, once safe areas are sketchy, and formerly grim neighborhoods like West Philly, North Philly, and Kensington are virtual no-go zones. Lots of homeless, open air drug markets, wandering crowds of drugged up and mentally ill people, very sad and scary. And the Philadelphia elites insist it is all because of white supremacy and structural racism. Even a lot of the Jewish population is vociferously anti-Israel, and some really vile graffiti and placards appear frequently.
Friends we used to meet up with there are fed up, ready to move out of their hometown. We are not going back anytime soon, and despair at what we once so enjoyed has become intolerable.
Repeat this experience over New York, Chicago, DC, Baltimore, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, and more. It’s truly appalling, and end of empire stuff.
“On the contrary, I think the relative importance of cities will likely wane.”
People have been saying that for decades and it never seems to happen. Humans are social animals and most want to be around others. And despite the work from home blip there are big productivity benefits from people working n close proximity. That doesn’t mean we won’t suffer through a bad period like 1960-1990 due to destructive leftist rule in big cities. But cities will come back. They’re not obsolete.
port cities like new york, and philadelphia, well thats more of a river town but still, but pittsburgh also seems to be collapsing into the mire,
Survey Reveals ‘Only Half of New Yorkers Plan to Stay’ in Democrat-Run City
In years past we’ve heard similar reports from California.
*yawn*
They keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting that this time there will be a different outcome. Whatever the barrier, whether simple stupidity or willful blindness or ridged ideological commitment… the eventual consequence for the consistent defying of reality is a harsh one and, quite likely for many to ultimately be fatal.
Outside of the downtown/south of Market/Civic Center area, which was never the aesthetic part of the city, San Francisco is mostly ok. I had lunch recently in the very nice Noe Valley neighborhood which I hadn’t been to in many years, and it looked and felt the same as it ever was. One troubling development is the exit of so many businesses from Union Square. The banning of cars on Market Street that happened a few years ago was not exactly conducive to the thriving of the area.
Our visionaries in the city government, who care so much about the planet, came up with the brilliant idea of running a two-way bike lane down the middle of Valencia St., a thriving commercial street in the Mission District. It took away of a whole lot of parking spaces and, needless to say, negatively affected many businesses. I believe it was a pilot program so it might be ending fairly soon. This is not as sensationalistic as the homeless problem and all that entails but has had its own negative effects on city residents and visitors.
Gam zeh ya’avor.
Marisa:
I know quite a few people in more upscale San Francisco neighborhoods who’ve had cars broken into many times. That had not happened to them in earlier years. Oakland is a mess. I’m very familiar with Oakland, and the contrast between 10 years ago and now is profound.
As horrific as some of these cities have become with crime especially but also with anarchotyranny (not to be confused with arachnotyranny, which might be even worse), corruption, and incompetence, the voters in these cities still prefer this type of atmosphere to having a Republican in charge. It’s not rational to us, but there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done about it.
What can’t go on, won’t go on…
Though it’s likely to go on longer than one likes.
People do learn … again, taking longer than one likes.
Otherwise Trump wouldn’t be up in the current polls.
I know people who live in the affluent Capitol Hill area of DC. They don’t seem especially concerned. Navy Yard, though (which that paywalled article is apparently about) seems to have pretty big problems.
We live about 50 miles from Denver. It too has become a dangerous place to be in. I have heard (can not collaborate, but believe it) that one of the largest MS13 gangs is in a city 5 miles from us. Our state Dem legislature is busy taking gun rights, including concealed carry away from us. CO use to be a nice place.
@ Shirehome – we are in a township much closer to Denver, and we have quit going to the downtown area, despite our family’s love of the gardens, museum, and zoo.
I won’t go there at night for anything.
As for the legislature’s gun-grabbers, it seems there is a Conservation Law of Gun Rights operating in America now:
For every right seized from a citizen, one is bestowed on a “newcomer.”*
https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2024/03/19/federal-judge-rules-illegal-aliens-can-own-guns-n3784986
To be fair, the perp was not accused of any actual criminal use of the gun (which may be a first), merely its possession.
But I can’t see this judge giving you or me the benefit of any 2A protection.
*If you haven’t learned the latest in the leftist lexicon:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2896690/white-house-savaged-for-calling-illegal-immigrants-newcomers/
And even the Red Press can’t stop themselves from using inaccurate terms:
They are not illegal immigrants, they are illegal aliens.
https://www.fairus.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/IssueBrief_Illegal-Alien-is-the-Correct-Term.pdf
Ain’t that the truth.
The entire article is full of useful information about the deliberate introduction of the new “popular” terminology to obfuscate the fact that “undocumented immigrants” are lacking legally enabling documentation because they are not legally immigrants.
@ Rufus > ‘Gam zeh ya’avor.”
(I had to look up the translation)
Certainly that is true, but after it passes, what will we have left?
Neo,
Yes, car break-ins are a huge problem in San Fran and even worse in Oakland, where sometimes the thieves will break a car window while you’re stopped at a stoplight. I now keep my bag down by my feet, not on the passenger seat. Well hopefully we’ll recall the absolutely horrid DA, Pamela Price.
Cities would rather die than vote for a Republican. Republicans will not come out in numbers due to ostracism. Visiting regularly Chicago and NY, NJ and Conn. it really is a state of mind and mental illness. They will not change.
Confused?
“Appeals Court Reinstates Hold On Texas Immigration Law”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/appeals-court-reinstates-hold-texas-immigration-law
Well, you shouldn’t be…because we’re all living in Biden-World (AKA Down The Rabbit Hole…).
The elephant in the room — am I the only one who sees it?
I’m betting I’m not the only one.
There is an article in City Journal about how the early 20th century progressives supported measures to improve urban life and today’s progressives are only making life in cities worse.
If we had a healthy political society, a collection of local businessmen and professionals would put together a slate and run these cretins out of office.
That is something like what happened with the progressives of the last century. What’s different today is that truly local businesses have less power in an economy dominated by large corporations. It wasn’t just the disgruntled shopkeepers who got together. There were also the local owners of factories which sold their goods widely but were still family-owned and tightly controlled. Today those factories are either gone or owned by much larger corporations with no local roots. If corporate leaders aren’t actively supporting destructive policies, they can always pick up and move out.
The universities professionals graduated from have a very different and destructive ethos today. America was a melting pot in the 1910s, but aside from the Irish and the Germans, most groups were only beginning to be politically active and effective, so those in politics generally had a common origin and a common national (and local) ethos, and didn’t come to power by pitting group against group.
Much has improved over a hundred years, but lately the country and its cities have been on a downward swing. There are also plenty of articles about the urban (and national) “death spiral.”
What’s different today is that truly local businesses have less power in an economy dominated by large corporations.
==
You’re not telling me why local businessmen and professionals are not running for office and organizing campaigns. BTW, I grew up in a town where the largest employer was Eastman Kodak, then a large and publicly traded corporation. There was no shortage of business executives who spent their life in town and retired from there.
==
Some years ago, I spelunked around for biographies of the Minneapolis City council. There were 12 members at the time, one seat vacant. One member owned his own business. Another was a town planner, a public sector position but one which requires distinct training and some math chops. A couple had children, among them the town planner. (Two were men cosplaying women). The rest of them were all childless people whose admitted job history consisted of stints on the staff of one or another NGO. The mayor from 2013 to 2017 was one Betsy Hodges. From 1990 to 2013 she had never worked for a commercial employer or a public agency (leaving out her time on the council itself). These bloody clots manage to get themselves elected? Why not someone more capable than they are. ‘More capable’ is a term that would certainly apply to the majority of the adult population.
==
The situation is roughly the same in other places I’ve looked, though you also see a scatter of small-time lawyers, social workers, and schoolteachers. An abnormally large share of white males on these councils are homosexuals.
definitely eloi
https://twitter.com/scarlett4kids/status/1770303198449852524
“The elephant in the room — am I the only one who sees it?”
It’s not a White elephant, correct?
this was an engineered state of decay, it looked like in the 90s, that there was a consensus about the ‘broken window’ theory of policing, wilson and kelling, the
excess of welfare on social stability, then what happened, those who wanted to wreck the country like Soros, got to work, the forever war, served as a backdrop to the matter,
I’m pretty sure I see that elephant. As do millions. There are reasons not to mention it.
well explain larry krasner, that san francisco twit or gascon, if they were any whiter they would be translucent, same with newsom, no prog idiocy is not color coded just stupid coated,
miguel+cervantes on March 20, 2024 at 12:30 pm said:
Guess I’m a little slow on the uptake, or just was not reading carefully. But, if I understand the corellation being proposed with “race”, understood as a proxy for culture, then a case could probably be partly and with serious provisos established with allowances for both views accurately reflecting historic states of affairs.
So, on the one hand you have the obvious counter examples of rule of law collapse obtaining in “white” Frisco, Portland, Seattle, and at a critical point Minneapolis.
On the other hand it is probably indisputable that the “great migration” of surplus rural agricultural labor occasioned by the late blooming mechanization of agriculture in the South, had serious negative effects on some northern metropolises.
And just as political machines had made use of illiterate and behaviorally volitile Irish in the 19th century, Democrat politicians in the North, leveraged minority support into the politically advantageous but civilizationally destructive phenomenon we see today.
Mayor Jerry Cavanaugh of Detroit, being a prime innovator in that area.
Of course you can argue from any number of perspectives, and I am always left asking, “Who was it that invited Attila in, in the first place?”
At least in the case of San Francisco the seeds of its devolution were sown in the 1960’s when they traded blue-collar industries for tourism and white collar corporate jobs. Long-time neighborhoods were broken up as middle and working class families were forced to move out to find work and to find affordable housing.
While it is a failure of Dem voters to change their voting habits, it’s also a failure of enthusiastic young Republicans to run good campaigns, with good educational aspects, especially the superpower of democracy.
Throw the bums out.
All Reps in all Dem cities should be on repeat: “the problem of crime will only be fixed by voters who stop voting for Democrats. Everybody who votes Dem, votes for crime, votes for more illegal aliens, votes for more inflation.
Voters who want solve these problems have to stop voting for Democrats.”
Lots of Black workers & Hispanic workers will stop their Dem voting habit this year.
Maybe.
Hopefully it will get better, tho it can keep getting worse.
This is not directed at you personally Neo, just to be clear.
But and so
… for those who are not resigned to letting cities and their self-determining populations either,
– self-destruct,
Or, more plausibly and demonstrably
– totter on corruptly until they inevitably overreach legally and then reach out socially and geographically as they are now doing, in order to dominate or to incite an actual, violent, social war,
… what is to be done?
I assume that moving in preemptively is out of the question; as the inhabitants are presumptively not yet admitted as existential enemies … not formally anyways, though they have published enough declaring it, to eradicate any doubt as to who is an outright enemy of your lifeways and even existence: it being them by a plurality at least.
So what to do, Mr. Rogers? What now, now that it is no longer a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and they have proclaimed no interest in being your friend?
How do you propose to negotiate with implacable stalinists elected democratically? What modus vivendi, do you see as workable, since even constitutional limitations are seen as scoff worthy by them? In fact all limits on the satisfaction and gratification of their welling sovereign urges are seen as such, and admitted by them as being seen as such, i.e. invalid.
Yet conservatives, who have managed to conserve almost nothing and pathetic creatures that they traditionally are, remain trapped in a web of rules and taboos and comittments – and mostly faith based concerning the redeemability of the opposition – a concept which the opposition sees as comical and deploys against them as Rule Number 4.
Yet, the sensitive conservative keeps clasping the proudly, the self-proclaimedly, soulless viper to its breast: and chanting “I do believe, I do believe,” over and over. And sometimes, albeit rarely and insignificantly, getting all worked up like a true sensitive conservative, when the progressive’s life value is measured against the yardstick which it has itself designed.
Yeah? You secular salvationists who are so reluctant to admit that at base this is an anthopological question, you believe in what resolution, exactly? And what do you expect it will cost to obtain it?
Now as for me? I don’t know the future. Maybe people will lose their fear of being marginalized, labeled, and mocked, and will simply start speaking up and showing some spine. And then, maybe the problem itself will just evaporate away, on the political level at least, with the election of a fearless chief executive dedicated to liberty.
Maybe. But I would not count on it.
I live in a small town, economically in pretty good shape, culturally conservative, politically middle of the road.
But I know a goodly number of folks who, afaict, think as the voters of blue cities seem to think and vote.
They vote for the warm&fuzzy no matter how obviously a catastrophe it will be. And when it turns out to be the predicted catastrophe….somebody else’s fault.
And they’ll do it again.
At least, they think that way. So far, thank heaven, such issues have been rare and things have gone the right way in the end.
And if I make an argument, I’m asked, “How do you know that?” It’s not that they think I’m a real encyclopedia. It’s that they’re annoyed I stepped on their righteous indignation. Can’t have that.
People have asked why Chinese-American businessmen don’t run for office in San Francisco and run the city as efficiently as Singapore. Well, they’re businessmen and not into politics. Lawyers and NGO activists are doing politics all the time. They have access to the political and bureaucratic powerholders in the city — and the woke rich who like spending money on political campaigns — so they have the inside track.
But is there really that much disagreement between businessmen and woke politicians? Yes, the businessmen want derelicts and human waste kept out of their neighborhoods, but if you think politics and government are an impossible labyrinth of corruption and incompetence, you would appreciate someone knowledgeable who could guide you through the maze and get you want you want — and you’d appreciate it all the more if they were from your neighborhood, shared your background, and spoke your language. If woke politicians and their staffers have any shrewdness at all, they realize the importance of constituent service and can satisfy local businessmen, so there’s no necessary opposition between the two.
What made the early 20th century’s urban reform movement possible was Protestant moralism and local pride. Not all of the urban progressives were Protestant, but they did share a belief in old fashioned rectitude, and most of them were native-born Protestants. That’s one group that’s rare in American cities nowadays, and Protestant moralism has morphed into wokeness. In blue cities college-educated local elites share the beliefs of their universities and the national corporate, media, and political elite.
At least in the case of San Francisco the seeds of its devolution were sown in the 1960’s when they traded blue-collar industries for tourism and white collar corporate jobs.
March Hare:
Not sure if I’m on your point, but as a long-time resident of SF (1982-2016) I discovered there was once a thriving amusement park at Ocean Beach below the Golden Gate called Playland.
On weekends throngs of ordinary San Franciscan families would ride the wooden roller coaster, eat cotton candy, and enjoy the usual such amusements.
By the time I got to SF that was all gone but for a few remnants. There was a wonderful exhibit called the Giant Camera which used an optical effect to display the 360 degree beach area in real time, but everything else (not much) was sad and dilapidated, yielding no insight of the glory which went before.
___________________________________
It’s hard to imagine now, but for the majority of the 20th Century the most visible feature on the San Francisco coastline was a sprawling amusement park that stretched across Oceaqn Beach north of Golden Gate Park…
During its peak from the 1930s to 1950s, Playalnd was a charming collection of rides, a 1914 Carousel, fun houses, arcades and food — including the first stands to serve It’s It ice cream sandwiches.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/visuals/playland-at-the-beach/
___________________________________
If you don’t know what an It’s It is, you never lived in San Francisco or you weren’t paying attention.
Oh god! the Giant Camera…
–“The Family Business: Behind the Lens of San Francisco’s Camera Obscura”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioZ_pHZsFc8
Only 4:19 long and one of the most beautiful indie films I’ve ever watched.
The Giant Camera or Camera Obscura took a major storm hit in January 2023, closed for a while, but is presumably back full-time.
Really, this is a hidden treasure of San Francisco. Should you ever find yourself there and close to Ocean Beach, it’s more than a worth a visit.
https://secretsanfrancisco.com/camera-obscura-sf/
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