As a pastor, I spent several weeks in Philadelphia some years ago. I drove through the neighborhood described in this article, and tried to minister to some of its residents. I saw then what the author describes today. It hasn't changed.
The poverty rate and true unemployment rate in these West Philly neighborhoods exceed 50%. Over 80% of the children are born out of wedlock. The crime rate is off the charts. The residents are functionally illiterate and completely dependent on the state for their sustenance. Drug dealing is the main form of commerce. There are as many vacant boarded up, dilapidated, crumbling fleapits as there are occupied eyesores. I’ve witnessed some of these pigsties fall down after a heavy rain. The steady deterioration of West Philly continues unabated as Democrat welfare policies encourage dependency, ignorance, sloth, and depravity.
Sink holes appear and are ignored for months by the less than pro-active government drones. They dig holes to fix whatever sewer or water line has broken underground, but feel no obligation to refill the holes. Gaping chasms in the middle of streets remain for months, as incompetent, uncaring, union government workers and their bureaucrat paper pushing apparatchik bosses care more about their gold plated pension plans and retaining their bennies than serving the public. Exploding water mains flood entire neighborhoods on a regular basis as city taxes are funneled to corrupt politicians and their cronies, rather than basic infrastructure needs.
. . .
Democrat politicians in West Philly and hundreds of other urban shitholes throughout the country ... [have] no intention of helping blacks succeed. Keeping them chained on a welfare plantation ensures their votes to keep their free shit coming. So they are left living in neighborhoods like this ... This is what 50 years of Great Society welfare programs and rule by Democrat politicians has wrought. Bombed out German cities after World War II looked better.
There's much more at the link, including more photographs.
I've had the opportunity to minister to inner-city communities in several US urban areas, in states such as New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, South Carolina, California, and others. In all of them, I saw approximately what the author describes in West Philadelphia. It's mind-boggling to see such squalor and hopelessness in the middle of the richest country in the world . . . but it's a reality.
People in these neighborhoods have no conception of working for what they get. They either take what they want (by stealing it, or committing crimes to pay for it), or they demand that the government (local, state or federal) give it to them. If the "gravy train" of government handouts dries up for any reason, they feel absolutely justified in taking what they want from anyone and everyone within reach - including wholesale looting, if necessary.
I've personally witnessed a West Philly neighborhood store get emptied of food within half an hour by shouting, screaming "welfare ninjas" who couldn't wait for their next infusion of government (read: taxpayer) cash. One woman just stormed in and started helping herself, screaming at the storekeeper that he was "a racist piece of ****" who exploited them for their welfare benefits, so now he was going to help her, whether he liked it or not. As he called the police (from behind the bulletproof glass partition that surrounded the till area), others standing around outside suddenly decided to join in, and started stripping the shelves of anything they wanted. More arrived as word spread. By the time the cops arrived, the store was denuded of its stock. I saw grown men running down the streets, cramming entire bags of candy into their mouths, throwing the empty packets away, shouting unintelligibly at each other with their mouths full, laughing and posturing at their "success". Others offered "high-fives" in congratulation, running alongside the thieves and holding out their hands for their share of the loot.
Those of us who believe in the rule of law, who work for a living, and who take pride in providing for our families, are living in a different world to these people. If push comes to shove, they'll be along to take whatever they want from us - and they'll scream at us for being racist, and selfish, and anything else they can think of, if we resist or dare to "push back".
Welcome to the low-hanging fruit of the "welfare state" - the "entitlement society".
Peter
After Katrina, I realized there are many people that not only expect to be taken care of, they can be outright nasty in their quest for what they expect.
ReplyDeleteThere is no easy solution to this problem, and resolving it is more than necessary.
I'll never forget driving through Northside Pittsburgh at midnight on a truck route the last week I drove for a company. I know there were WORSE areas, but it was bad enough. Plywood over all the downstairs windows of the houses and guys with boom-boxes dancing in the streets, while others sat on the curb and smoked and watched them and moved to the music. That was many years ago; I don't know what the place is like now.
ReplyDeleteSooner or later a latter-day Stephen Paddock with biochemistry rather than accountancy in his resume is going to stumble across John Ringo's Black Tide books and he will realize that the people in the West Philly's and South Bronxes are much more susceptible to pandemic than those in Stockbridge or Coeur d'Alene.
ReplyDeleteWash your hands.
Rangora and the plagues.
DeleteTake care
Ferran
Where can a guy pick up some claymores?
ReplyDeleteI think we may need some.
then the businesses close and there are no groceries within reach because the criminals have destroyed.
ReplyDeletethen we are treated to the complaints that business owners are 'racist'.
no. they are just practical.
i don't know that there is any cure for pig ignorance.
"Circling the drain" is an apt description of the downward spiral some portions of our society, and our cultures, self-inflict.
ReplyDeleteA number of years ago Safeway, at considerable rehab-and-remodel expense moved into retail space in one of Washington, D.C.'s "less desirable" areas, in response to multi-year clamoring by D.C.'s so-called "home rule government" that there were insufficient grocery options in the inner city (most groceries were sold by small, owner-operated neighborhood stores that, necessarily, had high prices caused by the inability to obtain quantity discounts from distributors and the need to cover a high theft rate and high taxes with sufficient profit to stay in business).
The Great Safeway Experiment lasted just over a year; Safeway closed the store because the theft rate, both from customers and employees, and the salaries of multiple security guards prohibited any possibility of profit.
No grocery retailer has considered, much less attempted, a repeat performance.
When the culture is sufficiently self destructive no amount of outside assistance will be of any help.
ReplyDeleteI notice that they are quite fond of burning and looting in or near the very neighborhoods they live in.
Once they have destroyed their own habitat things will get real interesting.
Thankfully their effective range is limited.
" they'll be along to take whatever they want from us - and they'll scream at us for being racist, and selfish, and anything else they can think of, if we resist or dare to "push back" "
ReplyDeleteThat might work on their inner city plantations . You know how that crap will work out for them out here where I live .
Unfortunately the denizens of these hell holes are being exported to small and medium sized cities and towns with the help of the federal government. The ruling class in metro areas realize these dregs are actually squatting on very valuable real estate. Money, lots of it, can be made on their revitalization if they can send the residents elsewhere. They tear down the projects and dilapidated housing and move the residents into public and section 8 housing in small and medium sized cities. They bring with them the crime, dysfunction and uncivilized "culture". They then proceed to turn areas where you didn't need to lock your doors into places where you need security systems. A recent trip back to a small town where I lived for many years I discovered that the new housing development going up is going to be a gated community. No one wants to risk building or buying in town proper where your new neighbors might be Section 8 refugees from Chiraq. It's crazy. A gated community. In a town of 11,000. In freaking Iowa. All because of an influx of diversity from urban Illinois hell holes. They're getting culturally enriched really hard.
ReplyDeleteHey Peter;
ReplyDeleteI don't know what it will take to fix it, this problem is both generational and cultural. You have to fix both to solve the problem and unfortunately we have tried for the past 60 years. This is where a huge chunk of our national debt has come from. At this stage, as a society we may have to write this area off to save the rest of society and that doesn't sit well with my Christian upbringing. Now the Obama HHS using the furthering the "fair" act, they have been moving the inner city dwellers to places that are "white enclaves" to further diversify them. I don't know what can be dome but we as a society have shot ourselves in the foot figuratively speaking.
Seeing this in New Orleans too. Used to be that the hard-core "professional poor" lived in six public housing complexes around the city. But now the city has torn those down and replaced them with Section 8 vouchers that pay a little above market rent and now corporations are buying up vacant houses all around the city and doing just enough rehab to pass Housing inspection and then plunking the welfare folks down in the middle of pretty much every other decent working class neighborhood in the city. And the old ladies and single moms immediately open their doors to dope-dealing grandsons and felon baby daddies and all of the neighborhoods are blighted now instead of just six small pockets. Got 'em on my street now and this was a nice neighborhood once. But the players behind the scenes are all getting paid.
ReplyDeletePeter one of my other favorite online commentators is James Lafond. Unlime yourself however he is not a daily read however, mainly because its too depressing. Hes been documenting the decline of Baltimore for more than 20 years now and is one of the few who does so without any sugarcoating. Though your attitudes are very different, many of your observations are the same.
ReplyDeletePhiladelphia - "The City Of Bodily Harm."
ReplyDeleteGuess the race. Must have something to do with slavery. And rampant white racism. You don't believe it? Just ask them........
ReplyDeleteSad to say but some people won't help themselves short of starvation.
ReplyDeleteYou should see the rentals these people vacate. Did repair and cleanup on a dozen or so over a couple summers. That show hoarders comes to mind. Actual garbage dumped wherever it happened to land inside and outside. One duplex had the entire basement used as a dumpster even though the landlord provided a free dumpster behind the units. Roaches were endemic. The one that shocked me most was a husband and wife and two teenage kids who moved from someplace in NJ I think. Nice looking family, the father was an MD and the wife was an NP who worked in hospital administration. The boy got in trouble with the law and they packed up one weekend and skeedaddled. The house was a very nice McMansion being rented due to sitting unsold. They trashed the place. Floors were covered in dog excrement, garbage everywhere, disgustingly stained mattresses left in the bedrooms. They also wrecked pretty much anything wreckable. Cabinets had doors torn off, holes punched in walls, the kids rooms spray painted and they even made off with some plumbing fixtures for some inexplicable reason. We just walked through the place shaking our heads. I mean wtf? These people were pulling down a couple hundred grand a year!
ReplyDeleteSection 8 as a landlord scares me. To many horror stories.
ReplyDeleteAnd new apartment developments in Los Angeles have 20% of their stock reserved for low income / section 8.
I worked security in an inner city hospital for a couple of years.
ReplyDeleteIt really is that bad. (Or actually, even worse.)
I'd tell stories, but I prefer to forget.
I'm afraid large quantities of blood are going to be shed, and sooner than later. I'm convinced fear of this is a major reason for the gun control obsession in blue areas. Sure, they want to dominate us out in the hinterlands and rub our nose in our subjugation. But they're really not scared of us (not even to the extent that they should be). It's the threat of the savage hordes in the festering inner cities that keeps them up nights. (But they can't say that. It even think it. Because that would be raaaaacist. Even if the whites living there aren't any better than the blacks.)
I think this is also the main part of the impulse to break up enclaves and disperse them. It wasn't just that Cabrini Green was sitting on valuable property in Chicago. It was that it was a powderkeg, and a direct threat to the major shopping and tourist areas of the Magnificent Mile and Navy Pier.
"You have to fix both to solve the problem and unfortunately we have tried for the past 60 years."
ReplyDeleteNo, we haven't tried to fix anything. Quite the opposite. The Democrats have been screwing it up since CW2.
Actually, the genesis for the black problem was the Redlining back in the early 20th Century. IIRC, that was a bipartisan effort to damage the black culture. Very effective. It certainly wasn't the whole problem, though. That asswipe president Wilson screwed everyone, but singled out blacks for special attention. Wish we could dig him up and hang him to make a point.
Philly has been a waste since the 60's, at least. Hated to go into that dump back then, and it's been going downhill ever since!