Monday, November 4, 2019

The collapse of America's cities into Third World conditions


It's infuriating to be living in the leading nation in the First World, the largest or second-largest economy in the world (depending on who's measuring, and how), and the most powerful nation in the world, and yet see Third World levels of filth, infrastructural breakdown and dysfunctional government invade many of our cities.

The headlines over the past few years tell a horrifying story to anyone who values the achievements of civilization.  I won't bother linking to actual reports here;  there are so many that simple Internet searches will find an abundance of them.  Consider these areas of concern:
  • Public urination and defecation;
  • Homeless encampments invading city streets, inconveniencing businesses and passersby;
  • Partisan city governments choosing sides in political debate, to the extent of deploying their law enforcement agencies to support one side and muzzle the other;
  • Crimes being incorrectly reported, and low-level crimes being deliberately ignored so as to "better allocate" scarce police and prosecution resources;
  • Politically correct criteria being used to define who is "good" or "bad" on any particular issue, and use city resources accordingly to support or block them;
  • The wholesale waste of taxpayer money on politically correct projects, or those aiming to enrich the "privileged few", while ignoring the ever-increasing burden being placed upon taxpayers;
  • The use of pension promises to enrich those working for city governments, without making provision to actually pay what has been promised.

There are many other elements and criteria one could use, but they merely contribute more to the same result - the breakdown of our cities.  Daily examples may be found in San Francisco's infamous "poop map", Chicago's crime statistics, and other sources.  They tell the same story in different words.

What I find most infuriating (and most incomprehensible) is that so many Americans appear willing to just let this go on.  Why is there not a massive public outcry against so great a breakdown of the standards in which most of us were raised?  Why are we not demanding that our local governments act to clean up our cities?  In the final analysis, if our local authorities refuse to take action, why are we not doing so ourselves?

I've lived in Third World countries.  I've seen cities like Kinshasa in Congo, Nairobi in Kenya, and Harare in Zimbabwe.  I've even been in real hell-holes like Massawa in Eritrea, and some of the ports in West Africa during the worst of the unrest there.  American cities are nowhere near that bad yet . . . but they've fallen a long way from the pinnacle to which they'd climbed.  If you took a resident of San Francisco, or Chicago, or Baltimore, or Philadelphia, in the 1950's and 1960's, and dropped him into the same cities today, he'd be horrified, outraged and disgusted to see how his home town had deteriorated.

Why have we tolerated this, and why are we doing nothing to reverse it?  It's no good blaming our politicians.  We elect them.  If we persist in electing such feckless, useless nonentities, it's on us, not them.




Peter

22 comments:

McChuck said...

Why do you keep trying to be nonpartisan? Every single item ion your list is a Democrat problem that essentially doesn't exist in majority Republican areas.

The reason why people put up with it is simple. Democrats are taught to rely on government for everything, literally from birth. Why do you think they keep pushing for "early education" and government run daycare centers?

Obama laid out the whole scheme with the "Julia" ads.

Bob G said...

Don’t forget the crime waves in those cities. San Francisco leads the nation in property crime, due to non-enforcement. A person can steal something under $950, and the cops don’t make an arrest unless they see the crime being committed. A small business can’t afford daily shoplifting on this scale, and many are fleeing.

I was born in SF and left Calif in 1990. I was working in downtown SF for Bechtel Corp. I thought it was bad with the homeless “boom” when Diane Feinstein was mayor. Now it’s much, much worse. I doubt California can recover. I won’t return.

Aesop said...

The instinct to be law-abiding is deeply ingrained, and it's both simply illegal and not yet in fashion to start shooting the politicians who do this.

But it will come to that, and nothing less will suffice.

A Reader said...

The numb-nuts who are in the process of going Full San Francisco in Austin don't even think I'm human. They wouldn't listen to me even if I could vote in Travis County.

They lay down with dogs, so it's only fair to let them get up with fleas. It's a pity and a shame, but you can't help people until they know they need it.

Pete said...

The instinct to be law-abiding is deeply ingrained, and it's both simply illegal and not yet in fashion to start shooting the politicians who do this.

But it will come to that, and nothing less will suffice.


You nailed it with big frigging nails!

C. S. P. Schofield said...

Why aren't the citizens doing something about it?

1) In the majority of the Democrat enclaves where these conditions persist, the Democrat Party is deeply entrenched, and has a well established political machine well versed in how to commit massive vote fraud.

2) Where the Democrats run things, the citizens are typically disarmed.

3) Where the Democrats run things, trying to do something effective about, say, the Homeless is usually blocked by Democrat action, unless it meets Democrat requirements. Indeed, it is often illegal.

Need I go on?

Unknown said...

The city-dwellers are liberals who are brainwashed and unable to question their progressive "leaders".

stencil said...

It may well be that these conditions are viewed as a necessary expense, an investment whose payoff will be an urban society in which the accredited are airgapped from the obedient scum by the void formerly occupied by the deplorables. Those latter will all have gone to Hell or Connaught, or maybe Texas.
Hey, it's worked before. For a while.
.

Bob G said...

I firmly believe that the problems in Blue cities are seen not as actual problems, but as a means of pushing demand for more programs, more funding and more DemocRATs hired in bureaucratic agencies that, once created, NEVER go away. It would be bad to solve the problems, as we then couldn't fund -- and run -- the "solutions."

Urban crime and violence like we have in SF also gives them an excuse for more regulations that will generate fees or fines from those who still word and pay taxes. They also give an excuse for more gun control, knife control, anti-self-defense laws, etc. to put more weight into the boot that's on the throat of the middle class.

SiGraybeard said...

It's no good blaming our politicians. We elect them.

Peter, I used to think this but I think that's really illogical. It's like saying you're responsible if you hire a contractor to work on your house and they rip you off. You chose the best contractor you could given who you had to choose from. If he screws you, it's not your fault. It's solely his.

In the case of elected officials, you ordinarily have a choice of two people to vote for. After your due diligence, you pick the lesser of two evils. Politicians lying about what they promise to do is so common it's expected. Politicians screwing us over is solely their fault.

There's a saying about people get the government they deserve. What's happening is those places are getting that. The problem with elected government is getting what the other voters deserve.

HMS Defiant said...

The ones in charge aren't working to alleviate the problems of the cities, they are working hard to make them worse. In Californiastan they continue to import people from the most violent cities in the world and assume that they'll 'integrate' into American society, and so they do, in the new urban American society created, managed and directed by liberals.
As you can see, for liberals, there are no bad people, only bad laws and their answer in just about every case is to do away with the 'bad' laws.

kurt9 said...

I live in Vancouver, WA, across the river from Portland, OR. I can tell you that the homeless problem is definitely out of control in Portland. They are everywhere and, yes, I do not understand why more Portland voters are not demanding sensible action from the city council. We go downtown for dining regularly. However, Vancouver is now getting many more decent restaurants and craft breweries (previously it was all family stuff like "Red Robin" etc.) and we find ourselves going to Portland a lot less often. Vancouver does not have the homeless problem that Portland does.

callingcrow said...

"....If you took a resident of San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, or Philadelphia, in the 1950s and 1960s, and dropped him into the same cities today, he'd be horrified, outraged, and disgusted to see how his hometown had deteriorated." Interesting to me since I wrote a book on this, Van Ripplewink: You Can't Go Home Again, in 2016. Nobody gives a damn. Can't get anyone to read it, can't get anyone to review it. https://www.amazon.com/Van-Ripplewink-Cant-Home-Again-ebook/dp/B01I45FTOY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=CDZUE4CGJX67&keywords=van+ripplewink+you+can't+go+home+again&qid=1572892176&s=books&sprefix=van+ripple%2Caps%2C210&sr=1-1

Angus McThag said...

Why aren't we doing anything about it?

Because of numerous rulings from liberal judges who tie the hands of anyone who wants to do even the most basic things to clear up the problem.

We want to fix it, we're going to have to have rulings that overturn the bleeding hearts.

Or just start ignoring the court's countracivilizational rulings! Won't anarchy be fun?

But civilization often rises from such chaos.

7916 said...

The original question is "why do we tolerate it?"

Because you've tolerated so many things to the point of tacit approval.

Because you're afraid of being called racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted, misogynistic, deplorable, reprehensible, unauthorized, extremist, ad infinitum.

Because now there are monetary and life impacting consequences for anyone plugged into modern social systems, from being deplatformed, kicked off of payment systems, terminated from jobs, suppressed and silenced from media, and life and limb type danger for thoughtcrime be it in the past or a minority report style potential for thoughtcrime in the future.

So, to answer, be intolerant. Structure your life to adapt to the punishments for thoughtcrime because you ain't seen nothin' yet. Call out virtue signalers to their face and never apologize.

I cannot remember the origin of the quote, but "The one hope for the doomed is not to hope for safety."

Roy said...

Peter? Where do you get this "we" shit.

I've NEVER voted for this. Indeed, I have voted against it multiple times. But unless I want to join the free-shit army, (good luck with that if you have an actual - job!), my only recourse is to vote with my feet by moving as far away from it as I can.

Dark Enlightenment said...

The reason they're worse is demographics, and you know it.

Aaron said...

Its not a matter of tolerate it, the Democrats basically push for it. It's The Curley Effect, done to shape the electorate to vote in their favor - Leaving the rich Democratic elitists and the poor dependent types while the middle class is driven out.

The permissive attitude to lawlessness, ignoring crimes and quality of life offenses, and raising taxes on the middle class even as the services to them decline with policies that actively punish them, it's not happening by accident, it's by design.

FredLewers said...

I grew up in a small eat Texas town in the 70s & 80s. I left in 1983. I moved back in 2010 and was dismayed to see that my hometown had developed a very seedy appearance. The oil field had played out so a lot of the middle class jobs were gone. And a lot of the nice owner occupied homes had been converted to rental properties. And there's a much higher percentage of immigrants. Legal and illegal. Immigration and cultural degradation is changing our country for the worse.
Both of the reasons for the coarsening of our country are controlled by the federal government...
Ceasar has broken covenant with the people. Our covenant obligations are pretty much non-existent at this point. Other than defenestration of the perpetrators as a warning to their replacements...
Too late to save the system and too early to shoot the bastards.

The Lab Manager said...

Go check out Stephen Moleuxs "Sunset in California" documentary. The voters in the early 90's passed a proposition to restrict schools and other public service to the illegal invaders and it passes with a bit of a majority. What happened? Leftist lawyers went to the courts to cry racism and other nonsense.

Earlier this year LA city council passes a resolution becoming a sanctuary city. There was one black lady who spoke and was very upset. Anyway, go watch the documentary.

Here in Texas, property owners can shoot if they feel their property or life is in danger. The homeless pest know this, and for the most part, behave better.

Sam L. said...

The Dems HATE us.

Phil said...

@ Kurt9 above specifically and for anyone else interested.
I am also in Vancouver and the homeless problem has spilled over from Portland to here, the politicians have just been more successful (so far) at hiding the problem.
There have been low profile news stories I have seen where the City AND the County workers have had to press the City Council about clarifying how they have to return property seized in Homeless Camp clean ups that were very eye opening as to the scope of the Homeless problems they have been encountering.
You won't see these stories on the local news programs.
I have also had conversations with business owners along the 164th Ave corridor who have said that the Vancouver City cops have been chasing the homeless from the down town area and they are now congregating along that stretch of real estate. The cops are putting them on one way bus trips and having them dropped off at the transit hub at 164th just above Highway 14.
The only mitigating factor right now is the weather.