The Issue is the Revolution

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog 

“There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” mobs of college students chant at terror rallies.

What is there to ‘revolt’ against in New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago? The Hamas rallies like the BLM, environmentalist and other radical rallies take place in cities run by mayors and city councils who support their efforts and sometimes even show up to their events.

Even before New York City and other municipalities paid out millions in voluntary settlements to the BLM rioters who had assaulted police officers, the dirty secret of the radical mobs was that the authorities were on their side. And will continue to be on their side no matter what they do.

The revolution is also the thing that it’s revolting against.

Democrats secured control of the country’s major cities only to be faced with the timeless leftist challenge of making the intensification of their rule look like revolution rather than totalitarianism. The USSR and Cuba directed the ‘revolution’ outward by invading, conquering and intervening in other countries. Democrat cities nationalized their politics, building entire campaigns around Trump, abortion and (to their eventual regret) declaring themselves to be sanctuary cities.

As long as Republicans existed anywhere, urban Democrats could not sleep soundly at night.

Democrat control of cities and states didn’t end bipartisan politics, just turned it into a somewhat real and somewhat fake grudge match between the party’s really crazy and less crazy wings. Craziness was a variable like ‘X’ that was defined not by the common sense brakes of intellectual diversity, but by how far the really crazy wing could push the less crazy wing.

In 2010, open borders, freeing all the criminals, men pretending to be women and support for Hamas were fringe positions of the really crazy wing. By 2024, they’re Democrat positions.

The difference between the really crazy wing and the merely crazy wing is not that they have fundamentally different beliefs, but different tactics and comfort zones. It didn’t take long for the next generation to come home for winter breaks and win over the Democrat moms and dads to police defunding, drag queen story hour and the mass murder of Jews. But first the cultural establishment had to make these horrifying things seem respectable and normal.

Had to fit banning cars and Hamas on a lawn sign right under “in this house, love is love”.

What will the really crazy wing of the party normalize next? Check the academic calendar for the next year, social media for the year after and then the protest calendar for the next five years.

The ‘revolution’ is just about the radicals running the streets getting the feckless ex-liberals running the actual show to adopt some horrendous policy derived from the ravings of a 19th century philosopher and then given a glow up by activist academics and public intellectuals.

Classic town hall politics, limited constitutional government, and checks and balances in a bipartisan system would have prevented American cities from turning into the Paris Commune, but urban politics had made a rapid transition from Tammany Hall political machines to corporate consultants to Marxist struggle sessions with little democracy to be found in any of it.

Cities aren’t run by voters but by ‘stakeholders’. Lifelong community activists and their community groups, municipal unions and their members, and a few political clubs harvest ballots, turn out votes and then end up running cities. That 1% actually runs our lives.

A new generation of young radical activists with dot com money backing and social media savvy like AOC found it easy enough to harness the power of hipster grad students living in $3K a month walkups to disrupt the system and carve out their own extremist slice of the pie.

The new red guard, like the old, however had to find something to do besides stealing money.

The lofty promises of universal health care require more money than is available even if the wings of the old crazy party and the new really crazy party stopped stealing all the money. Defunding the police by moving money from law enforcement to their leftist activist social allies is easier. And a good pogrom against Jewish stores and synagogues is a great distraction.

The revolution isn’t about killing Jews (or not just about killing Jews) but wiping out entire classes of people, reactionaries, shopkeepers and whoever else ended up in the killing fields of Siberia, Guangxi and Choeung Ek for the power and profit of a rising new political elite.

The less crazy party thinks it will never have to come to that, but as with its views on men showering with girls or exposing schoolchildren to violent pornography, this is subject to change.

Life as an urban/suburban bourgeoise with regular stops at Starbucks, Crate and Barrel, and Whole Foods before charging the Tesla in the driveway is pretty comfortable, but being a pol commissar with a dacha in the Outer Banks and the power to gulag your enemies might just be better. All of that will require not just one revolution but a cycle of intermittent revolutions.

The causes matter less than the trajectory. One day it’s the police, the next day it’s car owners and then it’s the Jews. (Say what you will, but the Jews are always a popular one.) The issue, as a certain Marxist once said, is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution.

Causes provide narratives. Berkeley professors and Wall Street personal assistants who have no idea where the river or the sea may be are chanting for the destruction of Israel because it’s a nice change of pace. Like all of us, leftists like to feel that they’re growing as people by embracing new murderous causes. Freeing all the criminals didn’t work so well, but freeing all the terrorists to kill Jewish people thousands of miles away feels both heroic and safe.

But the exoticism of chanting for an “intifada” boils down to a call for revolution here and now.

Students for Justice in Palestine tweeted that the ultimate purpose of the anti-Israel BDS movement is “eradicate America as we know it.” Eradicating America as we know it might seem a bit off-putting to the suburban soy dads and wine moms who make up the middle class base of the party, but they’ll come around just like they did on turning Tim into Tammy and Tammy into Tim. What else are they going to do anyway: become Republicans and have people sneer at them in Whole Foods and risk their kids refusing to come home for the holidays?

The revolution is about eradicating America as we know it. A lot of it’s gone already, but there’s still plenty of work of destruction to be done until we’re all on the right side of history. Or dead.

Revolution is all about being on the right side of history. And the revolution consists of old liberals who are terrified of being on the wrong side of it, stammering their way through pronouns and handling popular critical race theory texts like they were the sacred scriptures of a religion they don’t believe in, and young radicals certain that they are on the right side of it.

But ‘revolution’ is also just dictatorship misspelled. As George Orwell wrote in 1984, “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” The dictatorship in urban and sub Democrat areas is already here.

The stream of monthly revolutions make the deepening totalitarianism, the higher confiscatory taxes, the daily government scrutiny of everything from trash content to social media posts (in cities where violent muggings earn thugs no more than a free therapy session) and the ideology tests for employment, seem like liberation. But that’s what the Russians called it too.

Each revolution makes us more enslaved and less free. We are not free to walk the streets, not free to think for ourselves and not free to even work for a living. We are however free to protest.

But only as long as it’s for the revolution of the political machine taking away all our freedoms.

The issue isn’t drug dealers shot while assaulting police officers. It’s not Israel. It’s not oil or illegals. Those are just the levers which make the dictatorships running our lives more extreme. They are also how those dictatorships pretend that there’s a vibrant system of political dissent.

The issue is not the issue. The issue is that the fake revolutions are a tyranny. The issue is that we have become the slaves of a system that keeps promising to liberate us from our freedoms.

The issue is that we cannot go on living this way.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

 

The Issue is the Revolution

“There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” mobs of college students chant at terror rallies.

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

What is there to ‘revolt’ against in New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago? The Hamas rallies like the BLM, environmentalist and other radical rallies take place in cities run by mayors and city councils who support their efforts and sometimes even show up to their events.

Even before New York City and other municipalities paid out millions in voluntary settlements to the BLM rioters who had assaulted police officers, the dirty secret of the radical mobs was that the authorities were on their side. And will continue to be on their side no matter what they do.

The revolution is also the thing that it’s revolting against.

Democrats secured control of the country’s major cities only to be faced with the timeless leftist challenge of making the intensification of their rule look like revolution rather than totalitarianism. The USSR and Cuba directed the ‘revolution’ outward by invading, conquering and intervening in other countries. Democrat cities nationalized their politics, building entire campaigns around Trump, abortion and (to their eventual regret) declaring themselves to be sanctuary cities.

As long as Republicans existed anywhere, urban Democrats could not sleep soundly at night.

Democrat control of cities and states didn’t end bipartisan politics, just turned it into a somewhat real and somewhat fake grudge match between the party’s really crazy and less crazy wings. Craziness was a variable like ‘X’ that was defined not by the common sense brakes of intellectual diversity, but by how far the really crazy wing could push the less crazy wing.

In 2010, open borders, freeing all the criminals, men pretending to be women and support for Hamas were fringe positions of the really crazy wing. By 2024, they’re Democrat positions.

The difference between the really crazy wing and the merely crazy wing is not that they have fundamentally different beliefs, but different tactics and comfort zones. It didn’t take long for the next generation to come home for winter breaks and win over the Democrat moms and dads to police defunding, drag queen story hour and the mass murder of Jews. But first the cultural establishment had to make these horrifying things seem respectable and normal.

Had to fit banning cars and Hamas on a lawn sign right under “in this house, love is love”.

What will the really crazy wing of the party normalize next? Check the academic calendar for the next year, social media for the year after and then the protest calendar for the next five years.

The ‘revolution’ is just about the radicals running the streets getting the feckless ex-liberals running the actual show to adopt some horrendous policy derived from the ravings of a 19th century philosopher and then given a glow up by activist academics and public intellectuals.

Classic town hall politics, limited constitutional government, and checks and balances in a bipartisan system would have prevented American cities from turning into the Paris Commune, but urban politics had made a rapid transition from Tammany Hall political machines to corporate consultants to Marxist struggle sessions with little democracy to be found in any of it.

Cities aren’t run by voters but by ‘stakeholders’. Lifelong community activists and their community groups, municipal unions and their members, and a few political clubs harvest ballots, turn out votes and then end up running cities. That 1% actually runs our lives.

A new generation of young radical activists with dot com money backing and social media savvy like AOC found it easy enough to harness the power of hipster grad students living in $3K a month walkups to disrupt the system and carve out their own extremist slice of the pie.

The new red guard, like the old, however had to find something to do besides stealing money.

The lofty promises of universal health care require more money than is available even if the wings of the old crazy party and the new really crazy party stopped stealing all the money. Defunding the police by moving money from law enforcement to their leftist activist social allies is easier. And a good pogrom against Jewish stores and synagogues is a great distraction.

The revolution isn’t about killing Jews (or not just about killing Jews) but wiping out entire classes of people, reactionaries, shopkeepers and whoever else ended up in the killing fields of Siberia, Guangxi and Choeung Ek for the power and profit of a rising new political elite.

The less crazy party thinks it will never have to come to that, but as with its views on men showering with girls or exposing schoolchildren to violent pornography, this is subject to change.

Life as an urban/suburban bourgeoise with regular stops at Starbucks, Crate and Barrel, and Whole Foods before charging the Tesla in the driveway is pretty comfortable, but being a pol commissar with a dacha in the Outer Banks and the power to gulag your enemies might just be better. All of that will require not just one revolution but a cycle of intermittent revolutions.

The causes matter less than the trajectory. One day it’s the police, the next day it’s car owners and then it’s the Jews. (Say what you will, but the Jews are always a popular one.) The issue, as a certain Marxist once said, is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution.

Causes provide narratives. Berkeley professors and Wall Street personal assistants who have no idea where the river or the sea may be are chanting for the destruction of Israel because it’s a nice change of pace. Like all of us, leftists like to feel that they’re growing as people by embracing new murderous causes. Freeing all the criminals didn’t work so well, but freeing all the terrorists to kill Jewish people thousands of miles away feels both heroic and safe.

But the exoticism of chanting for an “intifada” boils down to a call for revolution here and now.

Students for Justice in Palestine tweeted that the ultimate purpose of the anti-Israel BDS movement is “eradicate America as we know it.” Eradicating America as we know it might seem a bit off-putting to the suburban soy dads and wine moms who make up the middle class base of the party, but they’ll come around just like they did on turning Tim into Tammy and Tammy into Tim. What else are they going to do anyway: become Republicans and have people sneer at them in Whole Foods and risk their kids refusing to come home for the holidays?

The revolution is about eradicating America as we know it. A lot of it’s gone already, but there’s still plenty of work of destruction to be done until we’re all on the right side of history. Or dead.

Revolution is all about being on the right side of history. And the revolution consists of old liberals who are terrified of being on the wrong side of it, stammering their way through pronouns and handling popular critical race theory texts like they were the sacred scriptures of a religion they don’t believe in, and young radicals certain that they are on the right side of it.

But ‘revolution’ is also just dictatorship misspelled. As George Orwell wrote in 1984, “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” The dictatorship in urban and sub Democrat areas is already here.

The stream of monthly revolutions make the deepening totalitarianism, the higher confiscatory taxes, the daily government scrutiny of everything from trash content to social media posts (in cities where violent muggings earn thugs no more than a free therapy session) and the ideology tests for employment, seem like liberation. But that’s what the Russians called it too.

Each revolution makes us more enslaved and less free. We are not free to walk the streets, not free to think for ourselves and not free to even work for a living. We are however free to protest.

But only as long as it’s for the revolution of the political machine taking away all our freedoms.

The issue isn’t drug dealers shot while assaulting police officers. It’s not Israel. It’s not oil or illegals. Those are just the levers which make the dictatorships running our lives more extreme. They are also how those dictatorships pretend that there’s a vibrant system of political dissent.

The issue is not the issue. The issue is that the fake revolutions are a tyranny. The issue is that we have become the slaves of a system that keeps promising to liberate us from our freedoms.

The issue is that we cannot go on living this way.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.

Crime Prevention Isn't Racism

By Rich Kozlovich 

For forty years I was an exterminator, which means running a route, so I spent a lot of time in my truck.  Radio degenerated, and got really tired of the music, and the talk shows with so many nitwits spouting off about things they clearly didn't understand. 

So I bought some great tapes from old radio shows, and books by Louis L'Amour.  Louis L'Amour loved the Texas Rangers.  One of them he talked about, who before he became a Ranger, was a horse rancher.   

Three men came onto his ranch and stole his horse herd taking off to Mexico with them.   His friends wanted to form a posse and go after them but he said they’d be in Mexico before that, so he took off after them alone.  He rode night and day until he caught up with them.  A shoot out entailed with him killing two of them and arrested the third. 

When he returned with the herd and told what happened, they asked where’s the prisoner?  He said since he’s been riding day and night he was exhausted and falling asleep in the saddle.  The rustler told him when he fell asleep he was going to kill him and take the herd to Mexico.  He realized the truth of that and decided he needed to find a way to secure him for the night so he could finally get some sleep, safely.

So he tied his hands behind him, put him on his horse, threw a rope over a tree branch tied it off and tied the other end around his neck, and went to sleep.  When he woke up in the morning he said wouldn’t you know it, that darned horse walked off and left him in the middle of the night.

Well, that’s not what happened.  He just hung the man.  They knew he hung the man.  And they didn’t care because they were going to hang the man anyway.   

So, what’s the moral of this story.  It’s important to know the difference between right and wrong, and what needs to be done about it.  

On August 31, 2024 Michael Letts posted this article, The politics of police defunding, saying: 

 

The “defund the police” campaign that started over four years ago has done catastrophic damage to our country.  In the wake of said campaign, a number of politicians -- including President Joe Biden -- have pushed for the removal of funds from police forces, diverting them elsewhere in an effort to “teach a lesson,” as it were.

 

Well....  shocker of shockers ..... crime is destroying those cities.  Imagine that, and Oakland, California's Chief of  Police Floyd Mitchell is asking for the public to help them.  

 

The public did help, they paid taxes, authorizing the hiring of tough men with guns to protect society, and gave them the power to enforce the law.   Let's not delude ourselves here.  Most of these cities are run by radical, race hustling, black Democrat politicians catering to the black criminal element claiming they're being arrested because of racism.  

 

If the public want's security, it first needs to dump the halfwits they put in charge, and state clearly these misfits are thugs being arrested for committing crimes, not racism. The problem isn't white racism, it's black culture. 

 

Eight monsters abducted, tortured, raped a young mother and then murdered her, and these monsters even videoed the whole vile event. Her name was Mahogany Jackson.  What did they have in common? They were all black. 

 

There are entirely too many people, black and white, who sympathize and justify what all  these black criminal thugs are doing!  Fortunately there are some prominent blacks who see this for what it is.  Sharika Soal addressed this horror by saying:  Stop Sympathizing With Black Criminals – It Harms Americans.  

Please review, Central Park Rape: The Secret File, and take some time to review my .  Also, Mychal Massie's commentary, If America is so bad, blacks – why stay?

So, if the citizens fail to take responsible action in cities like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Portland, New Orleans, Baltimore, and all the other major cities in America the Democrats have destroyed, most of which are run by blacks, then...... schadenfreude.   Oh, yeah, I forgot, Chicago with some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Double schadenfreude!

 

What We're Seeing is Irreversible in America's Major Cities, Part III

By Rich Kozlovich

Of all the sites I visit in my morning search, my favorite is American Thinker.  Great articles covering just every topic. Great writers, and a great comments section.  There seems to be a much higher level of knowledge and intelligence among these commenters than I see elsewhere, albeit, they have their trolls also.  

Andrea Widburg, one of my favorite writers, published this piece today, San Francisco schadenfreude, saying: 

I grew up in San Francisco and lived just north of it for many years. Overall, I spent two-thirds of my life in or near the city. I know it well and remember it when it didn’t have a skyline dominated by Manhattan-esque skyscrapers. Even with those skyscrapers, though, one of the loveliest views in the world is driving south through the Robin Williams tunnel and suddenly seeing the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay, and the San Francisco skyline spread before you. Dig a little deeper into the city, though, and it’s a hellhole…which is exactly what its citizens deserve because it’s precisely what they voted for.

San Francisco had its last Republican mayor in 1963. Beginning in January 1964, it’s had only Democrat mayors, including nationally known leftists Dianne Feinstein and Gavin Newsom. Its most recent Democrat mayor, London Breed, won against three other Democrats. Republicans don’t even try.

In my article,What We're Seeing is Irreversible in America's Major Cities, I listed Daniel Greenfield's 2021 worst mayors in the nation saying, "They were all black, and/or far left lunatics, but they were all Democrats, and each and everyone of of them were race baiting hustlers shouting America is institutionally racist, among other things, but clearly they all hate America and are destroying the cities they lead, or led."

Part I: Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot.
Part 2: LA’s Eric Garcetti.
Part 3: DC’s Muriel Bowser.
Part 4: KC’s Quinton Lucas.
Part 5: SF’s London Breed.
Part 6: Philly’s Jim Kenney.
Part 7: St. Louis’ Tishaura Jones.
Part 9: Seattle’s Jenny Durkan.
Part 10: Minneapolis’s Jacob Frey.
Part 11: Charlottesville’s Nikuyah Walker.
Part 12: Portland’s Ted Wheeler.
Part 13: Atlanta’s Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Part 14: NYC’s Bill de Blasio.

And while some of the names have changed, that's all that's changed as the destructive downward spiral continues, just more rapidly.   

This piece in AT today by Jerold Levoritz is, in my opinion, insightful and instructive beyond Gaza and Israel, Money For Nothing: The Radical Growth of the Gaza, which I think perfectly describes the future of San Francisco, New York, Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, Portland and every Democrat controlled city in the nation, and every leftist controlled nation in the world.  

The only difference is there won't be any money.  I'm expecting to see a massive worldwide economic downturn starting in 2025, and be full blown by 2030.  Understand this. The debt load of the world's nations is massive, over three hundred trillion dollars, and it's not possible for the world's nations to repay it, and once defaults start, they create a cascading domino effect.  

However, the exception to that rule is America, because the federal government has 150 trillion dollars in assets. More than enough to pay off our national debt.

For a nation to survive what I believe is coming will require five things beyond debt control. 

1. The ability to feed themselves
2. Fuel themselves
3. Arm themselves
4. Defend themselves
5.  Create their own internal market

There's only one nation that can to that, and it's America, but that can't happen until their are serious changes in America's leadership, and government.

Final thought. This isn't 1930 where passage of the Smoot Hawley tariff was the "real beginning" of the great depression by creating an international trade war that shot unemployment up from 8% to 15%. The world's economy is different now, and the world needs America, America doesn't "need" the world.

Please take some time and view:  

• What We're Seeing is Irreversible in America's Major Cities,
• What We're Seeing is Irreversible in America's Major Cities, Part II,
• Along with 

America's Cities are a Disaster, and Democrats Own it All

By Rich Kozlovich 

Theodore Dalrymple once said of egalitarian propaganda:

 “When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”

 

For my regular readers it's known I have a massive "draft" file where I've saved articles on every issue that impacts humanity, and while some articles I'm linking are dated, the thought content remains valid. 

The words Democrat and leadership should never appear in the same sentence unless it's to decry the lack thereof, since it's abundantly clear, 'Democrat Leadership' is an Oxymoron.  Let's start with this unimpeachable fact:  

1% of Democrat Counties Make Up 42% of America’s Murders Democrats desperately trying to spin high crime rates caused by their pro-crime policies began falsely claiming that crime was a Republican problem. The media began running articles with headlines like, “Red States Have Higher Murder Rates” and “Republicans Like to Talk Tough on Crime — But They’re the Ones with a Real Crime Problem”......There isn’t a red state murder problem, red states have a Democrat crime problem......

America is not a dangerous or crime-ridden country. Unfortunately Democrat cities are overrun with criminals and the politicians who cater to them. The Democrats became an urban party and, after jettisoning the white working class and the small business middle class became the party of criminals. From police defunding to the Black Lives Matter riots to mass jailbreaks and the legalization of drugs and shoplifting in major cities, they embraced pro-crime policies that unleashed a massive crime wave. And now they pretend not to know what’s causing the crime.

Daniel Greenfield also posted this article dealing with illegal immigration entitled, LA Mayor: Our Cities are a Mess Because of a Republican Conspiracy, quoting that intellectual giant, Mayor Karen Bass, accusing the Republicans for L.A's disaster saying:

 “What they’re trying to do is destabilize cities … it’s the narrative that these are Democratic-run cities and that we don’t know how to govern and that everything is chaotic here,”.......... “We live in a city that welcomes immigrants, and so I think we have been able to handle it, but I am fearful that any day planes could start coming.”

So, it's the Republicans who are destabilizing these Democrat controlled cities, and in spite of that, they're handling it?  Really?  Well, I have a question.  Why is it reality and Democrat rhetoric are always so out of harmony?  Because they're stupid, incompetent, lying, and nothing's their fault.  So, let's take a look at their rhetoric versus their reality, the reality they refuse to acknowledge.  And since they're incapable or unwilling to recognize that reality, they will not fix it.  Let's start with California.  

Andrea Widburg who lives in California published this piece, This story of San Francisco’s continuing degradation hits close to home saying: 

I grew up in San Francisco’s Sunset District, a once thriving working- and lower-middle-class neighborhood. An important place in that neighborhood was Stonestown, one of America’s first shopping malls, where generations of children shopped with their mothers and, when older, hung out on their own. It was safe, and there was food. Today, as San Francisco’s government continues its commitment to social Marxism, Stonestown is turning into a violent gang hangout, making it a microcosm of what’s happening to leftist cities across America.........

How things have changed. Thanks to San Francisco’s radical left turn, a once-safe community hub has become dangerous.........San Francisco Police Department has been battered by staffing shortages in recent years,........“San Francisco is on the precipice of a potentially catastrophic police staffing shortage, and there are too many public safety problems we’ll be helpless to solve if we don’t start solving SFPD’s understaffing crisis first,” Dorsey said in a statement earlier this year.  Mayor London Breed redirected $120 million from law enforcement to fund other city initiatives in 2020 as crime continued to surge in the city – with homicides increasing by 20% in 2020 compared to 2019. Homicides also increased 17% in 2021 compared to the previous year, according to city data.

So, that's how that Democrat administration considers handling that?  Remarkable!

On September 19th this article appeared, DA Sues Sacramento Over 'Collapse Into Chaos' saying:

He says city has failed to take action to get homeless people off the streets. A Sacramento prosecutor is suing California's capital city over its failure to clean up homeless encampments. Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho says his office asked the city to enforce laws around sidewalk obstruction and to create additional professionally operated camping sites. He announced the suit Tuesday during a news conference in Sacramento. Ho said the city is seeing a "collapse into chaos" and an "erosion of every day life," the AP reports. Sacramento County had nearly 9,300 homeless people in 2022, based on data from the annual Point in Time count. That was up 67% from 2019. Roughly three-quarters of the county's homeless population is unsheltered.

So, that's how Democrat administrations "handle" it?   Well, here's the reality of California, and  how Democrats are "handling" it.  Will the last one to leave please turn out the lights:

Living in the land of denial doesn’t automatically come with a passport. It does, however, require a commitment to suspend reality. Take California… please..........it has managed to create its own mythology and then live according to its own set of fantasy-based rules......Californians were like the proverbial frog that's being slowly boiled to death one degree at a time. A few more taxes here and few more regulations there became a lot more taxes here and a lot more regulations there. Many California homeowners found themselves being squeezed by rapidly-increasing property tax rates and onerous and costly environmental regulations while their communities were frantically trying to fund enormous unfunded liabilities like sky-high pensions guaranteed to municipal workers. No one wanted their ox gored. So, when it became clear that no economic or ideological turnaround was in the cards, the 'great Californian exodus' began.

So, their solution is to "handling it" is to make taxpayers who are sick of the insanity, including "extended school closures, suffocating business closures and rigid vaccine mandates served to drive families and business owners out of the state in droves in search of schooling and a better business environment."  So, once everyone leaves California except those who are government employees, those on government dole, leftist radicals, rioters, criminals and illegal aliens, California will be utopian.  

 

Oakland is reaching ‘state of emergency’.  All due to the weak response to criminal activity, the situation is deteriorating beyond repair.  You can't eliminate the police forces in America's cities and expect crime to diminish.  That's foundational.  How stupid can these political hacks possibly be?  How fundamentally stupid can voters in these cities be?  Apparently, there's no boundaries for stupid, and now, "it has gotten so bad that there is a call in Oakland, CA, to declare a “state of emergency.”

 

Imagine that.  Well guess what, ten years ago the consequences were obvious to the most causal observers:

 

In 2013, The The state of California, which was once a symbol a middle-class paradise, is now all but insolvent. The city of Stockton has declared bankruptcy and Hispanics are now a plurality in the “All America City.” That city’s situation might be preferable to that of Bell, where the almost entirely Hispanic city has seen practically its entire government arrested for corruption. The mayor’s defense is that he did not know what he was doing, because he is illiterate. Hundreds of thousands of Californians are fleeing the state, the first time there has been “white flight” from an entire state. The left-libertarian magazine Reason, an enthusiastic cheerleader for illegal immigration, blames it all on “big government.”

In Democrat controlled St. Louis it's no better.  As a result of a leftist, racist, radical, who was a notorious Soros backed pro-criminal Circuit Attorney, representing the people of the State of Missouri as their chief prosecutor for state-level crimes in the City of St. Louis, she was notorious for misusing her office to go after political opponents, but utterly failed to do what was necessary to defend the people of St. Louis, and the state of Missouri, against criminals of every ilk, and this car accident is just one example of the vileness of leftist criminal justice policies.  Eventually she was forced to resign on June 1, 2023.  

In 2020 the violent and corrupt Black Lives Matter rioted in Philadelphia, and what is race pandering Mayor Jim Kenny's administration's solution for "handling" this?  Philadelphia agreed to pay $9.25 million to over 200 rioters who claimed to have been injured by police during the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, because "of the pain and trauma ..... the rioters experienced, and claiming that the racism allegedly caused by the police is “immeasurable.”   

Hello people, are you stupid?  They were rioting!!! Rioting is a violent activity!!!  They should have pain and trauma, that meant the police were doing their jobs, and I could care less how "immeasurable" all that might be for them, it was their choice!  And why were the police racists?  Because most of the rioters were black, so doing their jobs to prevent the mayhem these black rioters were perpetrating was racist?  Get real, that's so stupid it borders on insanity!  What's worse, those riots had nothing to do with anything going on in Philadelphia.  It was "following the fentanyl overdose death of George Floyd", a thug and a criminal in  Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

The article went on to say:

In addition to the financial compensation, the city has also agreed to stop participating in a federal program that provides the police department with extra military equipment. The city will also pay about $500,000 for counseling services for residents of the 52nd Street corridor, located in West Philadelphia, where most of the violence occurred..............Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw also issued a statement declaring that the department would change its approach to rioters in the future."

I think it worthwhile to point out at this time:

Both George Floyd and Tyre Nichols both died in Democrat cities with Democrat Police Chiefs, Democrat Mayors, Democrat City Councils, and Democrat Congressmen. Yet Dems are saying this is white supremacy?! No, this is another tragic example of *Democrats* destroying black communities. ........When the writing on the wall is this clear, the only recourse for people desperate to cover up their sins is to blame something or someone other than themselves. The radical left in general is forced to play dumb on a daily basis as news incessantly erupts from Democrat-controlled cities that clearly demonstrates their leftist policies are failing the people miserably. They also know that the victims of their failed policies are their biggest voting block.

Well, since that's how they "handle" things, I think they can be assured there will be "rioters in the future". 

In March a riot broke out in Atlanta's over their plan to build a new police training facility with bricks and Molotov cocktails being thrown at police, even burning patrol cars, all done by "far-left organizations, including Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and multiple environmental groups."  The article goes on to say:

 A prior riot broke out at the construction site in January when a 26-year-old terrorist shot and injured an Atlanta police officer, and was subsequently killed by return fire. The crowd turned to violence following his death, including attacks against police and the site itself.

Atlanta resides in Fulton County Georgia.  Okay, so, in order to get an insight over the mentality of those responsible for dealing with criminals in Atlanta, I ask:  Who's the prosecutor for Fulton County? Fani Willis, the same Fani Willis who wants to charge Jim Jordan with obstructing her prosecution  because he's had the nerve to question her motives and ethics by demanding "she turn over all documents related to the prosecution of the former president and 18 of his allies."

This pandering to criminals isn't new, in this piece, Murderers Walk Among Us, Coddled by the Left the author describes a murder that took place 30 years ago, where a "jury of 12 men and women decided even though this 18 year old monster "had loaded his gun and departed with it from his house"...he murdered a 26 year old newly married woman by shooting four times a close range, and then, "as she lay quivering, Simpson hovered over, and at close range, fired a fifth bullet that literally blew off her head", but it wasn't premeditated murder.  

In their disgraceful judgement, he only deserved a "second degree" murder conviction, which made him eligible for parole after ten years.  After all, he wasn't all that bad!  He "only had several infractions while incarcerated including violent and sexual transgressions".  He's been out for many years since then, and I wonder what damage he's done.

The author goes on to note:  

In 30 years, has anything in this realm improved? Actually, the situation has gotten worse. Along with woke juries, every day George Soros-funded district attorneys in 20% of the major cities across America allow bona fide murderers to walk around freely.

Can any civilized society tolerate such insanity and survive?  No! 

Overall, Texas is considered a bastion of conservative values.  With all this illegal immigration and migration from leftist sewers, how much longer that will go on is debatable.   However, Texas, you have a problem.   Austin has already fashioned itself, on the order of "San Francisco and Los Angeles. The city was among those leading the charge during 2020’s big #DefundPolice movement and the results have been bad. They’re about to get worse".

An Austin Police Department source told Fox News Digital this week that 40 officers have filed their retirement papers following a 9-2 city council vote a few weeks ago to scrap a four-year contract that the city had previously agreed to in principle and instead pursue a 1-year contract that the police union’s board has rejected. That move is believed by many to be due to intense pressure from anti-police activists in the city who look to hold off a long term deal until after voters decide on competing ballot initiatives dealing with “police oversight” that go before voters in May “It’s my opinion that the radicals and activists in the city have such a grip on our elected officials that at some point in time over the last year or so their plans changed,” the source, who is an Austin Police Department officer, said.  “They said O.K. now we’re going to get signatures for this ballot initiative in May and switch gears and put pressure on city leadership to move away from a four-year deal to a one-year deal because the four-year is detrimental to what we are trying to accomplish.”

Let's not delude ourselves.  Any "police oversight" group will not be a law and order group.  They're political hacks with no experience in law enforcement, nor do they care about anything except to pander to the worst elements of society in finding the police are all racists and need to be controlled by leftist rhetoric.  What happens then?

The police tell them to shove it by either leaving, of simply refuse to the job they're supposed to do, and guess what happens then?  Thugs, murderers, thieves, rapist, and all the dregs of society move in and take over. That destroys everything of value in a community, and they keep voting those who created these disasters into office.  Austin's citizens are getting what they deserve. 

In New Orleans a recall election of an incompetent and corrupt Mayor, LaToya Cantrell, with unanswered "crime waves, issues with street projects and garbage pick-up.... [who] has also faced speculation regarding her travel expenses, with the City Council investigating her use of public funds."  In spite of all that, the recall failed because they couldn't get enough valid signatures.  The fact is the Democrat party is destroying Louisiana, offering "a poor economy, substandard public schools, dilapidated infrastructure, and a reputation for dishonest politicians."

In Chicago, a city with strong gun control laws by the way, crime, including murder on a massive scale has turned that once great city in to a sewer of misery for it's citizens, who are also the enablers of that misery. As this piece notes:

 The decision to commit a crime in Chicago has never been easier. Criminals are almost guaranteed to profit because the chances of getting caught and punished have collapsed to near-zero,”........“The chance of getting arrested in Chicago for a major crime collapsed to just 5 percent in 2022.....“The arrest rate for criminal sexual assault? Just 3 percent. Ditto for Motor Vehicle Thefts. Burglaries were at only 4 percent and Robberies, 5 percent. “For thefts over $500, the chance of getting busted is even lower, at just 1 percent. There were just 201 arrests out of 20,041 crimes reported last year. And you’ll avoid arrest 96 times out of 100 across any form of theft, which The New York Times recently reported.

Amazingly, the possibility of getting caught and facing prison time....has become so insignificant in the Windy City that it is no longer a serious consideration.

• Nearly 20 Shot Friday into Sunday Night in Chicago
• ‘Criminals Will Run Wild’: Illinois Becomes First State to Abolish Cash Bail

The article goes on to note regarding Seattle:

Meanwhile, in Seattle, the picture is every bit as bleak. On Aug. 31, the Seattle Police Department stated that the Pacific Northwest city had reached 50 homicides for the year, with four months remaining on the calendar. Seattle had 52 homicides in all of 2022.........Criminals “no longer fear the police because they understand that the police are literally handcuffed for being able to effectively do our jobs so they’re emboldened,” Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) President Mike Solan told KOMO radio.  “Officials with the SPOG estimate the department has lost around 600 officers since 2020,”.......

Well, this is a story that gets more interesting all the time.  One of the biggest Defund the Police nitwits was a woman named Shivanthi Sathanandan, who at the time was "the 2nd Vice Chairwoman for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, i.e., the Democratic Party." screaming for "social justice", exhorting her listeners, “Say it with me. Dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” she wrote in a Facebook post at the time. “It has ‘systematically failed the black community,’ so it’s ‘time to build a new infrastructure that works for all communities.’”  But, “Social justice” preening can be an emotionally rewarding experience for leftist political figures. But, as has been stated in the past, being mugged can make a substantial change in perspective, just "like a punch to the face."

It turns out she was “violently carjacked”, along with her children, and this was done right in her own driveway by four armed young men, who beat her badly, even threatening the neighbors who wanted to help, unarmed neighbors. She ended up with "a broken leg, deep lacerations on my head, bruising and cuts all over my body".  And now,  guess what?  She has rage.  Imagine that. 

Conclusion?  Democrat elected mayors and district attorneys are dangerous to your heath, and living an those cities is dangerous.  Other than the cities already discussed, let's include Albuquerque, Baltimore, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Memphis, and Milwaukee. 

America's major cites are now “War Zones”:

Crime rates are soaring all over the nation, and this is especially true in heavily populated urban areas.  The complete and utter lawlessness that we are witnessing has caused many pundits to describe our largest cities as “war zones”, and unfortunately that is not an exaggeration at all.  In fact, there are some zip codes in Chicago where young adult males are more likely to be shot and killed than U.S. soldiers were during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq…

Crime-infested municipalities run by Democrats are far from a new phenomenon.  

"In the past decade alone, I've written numerous columns detailing the crime and violence that plague the parts of America where the politics of Democrats reigns supreme and virtually unchallenged.  As Fox News reported just last month, in 2020, 73% of all murders in America took place in just 5% of U.S. counties." The ten counties with the most murders were

• Cook County, Illinois, 775 murders
• Los Angeles County, 691 murders
• Harris County, Texas, 537 murders
• Philadelphia County, 495 murders
• New York City's five counties, a combined 465 murders
• Wayne County, Michigan, 379 murders
• Shelby County, Tennessee, 311 murders
• Maricopa County, Arizona, 299 murders
• Baltimore City County, 291 murders
• Dallas County, 281 murders

"Guess what each of the counties have in common.  If you said, "Democrat leadership," you are correct!  And it's not even close!"  

In less than a decade Denver, turned from being the Rocky Mountain High to Rocky Mountain Hellhole:

 

Denver is becoming America’s crime capital”.......Now it’s raining crime, drugs, homelessness, illegal immigrants, and many other big city urban blights.........is now worse than New York City or Chicago, and growing increasingly dangerous as the new year begins........Auto theft is now an epidemic in Denver and the second highest in the nation”, according to Denver Police Department data. Nearly 100 vehicles are stolen every day in Denver and rather than “rainin’ fire in the sky”, Colorado is raining car thieves, now leading America in auto thefts per capita..........“Growing troubles with elevated property and violent crime, low first responder recruitment, high homelessness concentrations, and growing drug overdoses played large roles in the low ranking.”...........

 

 Colorado has a Democratic trifecta and a Democratic triplex. The Democratic Party controls the offices of governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature.” Colorado’s woes sit exclusively at the feet of the donkey party.............Does Democrat leadership correlate with high crime? Yes, it does. The Daily Signal found, “27 of top 30 crime-ridden cities run by Democrats.........

 

The article also mentions how so many former residents of California moved there and brought their stupidity with them.   

• More Proof That the Reparations Hustle Is All About Greed and Inciting Race War

Let's finish with this piece by Victor Davis Hanson entitled, Life Among the Ruins.  

The few sowed the wind, and the many reaped their whirlwind..........We are suffering an epidemic of premodern barbarism...public defecation, urination, fornication, and injection continue unabated. Progressive urban pedestrians pass by holding their noses, averting their gazes, and accelerating the pace of their walking........All accept that defunding the police, no-cash bail, Soros-funded district attorneys, and radical changes in jurisprudence have destroyed deterrence. The only dividend is the unleashing of a criminal class to smash-and-grab, carjack, steal, burglarize, execute, and assault—with de facto immunity. Instead we are sometimes lectured that looting is not a crime, but lengthy incarceration is criminally immoral.........

When the law enforcers are the criminals, who will enforce the rule of law?  When the national leaders are engaged in treason, who will save the nation? 

Crime Calculus a Catastrophe in Democrat Cities

It all adds up to misery for residents, and now the menace is affecting those who enabled it.

By: Joe Schaeffer September 12, 2023 @ Liberty Nation News

Numbers are being crunched along with the bodies, and the woes for citizens living in Democrat-controlled cities racked by runaway crime just keep multiplying.

An Illinois website called Wirepoints laid it out plainly on Sept. 5. “The decision to commit a crime in Chicago has never been easier. Criminals are almost guaranteed to profit because the chances of getting caught and punished have collapsed to near-zero,” the research and commentary site wrote. The authors were willing to show their math.

Odds Overwhelmingly With Lawbreakers

“The chance of getting arrested in Chicago for a major crime collapsed to just 5 percent in 2022. It was already a low 10 percent just four years ago,” Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner observed. “More than 68,000 major crimes were reported in Chicago last year. Only 3,228 of them resulted in arrests. Wirepoints’ calculations are based on the Chicago City Data Portal: Crime – 2001 to Present.”

Wait, there’s more:

“The arrest rate for criminal sexual assault? Just 3 percent. Ditto for Motor Vehicle Thefts. Burglaries were at only 4 percent and Robberies, 5 percent.

“For thefts over $500, the chance of getting busted is even lower, at just 1 percent. There were just 201 arrests out of 20,041 crimes reported last year. And you’ll avoid arrest 96 times out of 100 across any form of theft, which The New York Times recently reported.”

Amazingly, the possibility of getting caught and facing prison time — a traditional deterrent for those mulling committing a crime — has become so insignificant in the Windy City that it is no longer a serious consideration. This means it is truly open season on law-abiding residents of the third-largest city in the United States.

Crime Pandemic by the Pacific

Meanwhile, in Seattle, the picture is every bit as bleak. On Aug. 31, the Seattle Police Department stated that the Pacific Northwest city had reached 50 homicides for the year, with four months remaining on the calendar. Seattle had 52 homicides in all of 2022.

Criminals “no longer fear the police because they understand that the police are literally handcuffed for being able to effectively do our jobs so they’re emboldened,” Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) President Mike Solan told KOMO radio.

“Officials with the SPOG estimate the department has lost around 600 officers since 2020,” the station reports......Public safety is on the precipice of falling further behind and I think our community is really at risk here,” Solan added.

While woke Chicago may be unwilling to enforce the law, progressive Seattle is flat-out unable to, no matter how it may feel about “criminal justice reform” at the moment, due to the severe manpower shortages caused by the wave of officer departures.

The effects are the same.

“There’s people out there that think that they’re not going to get caught,” Jim Fuda of Crime Stoppers Puget Sound told KOMO. “I mean, you see it in the robberies that are going on and even the children that are stealing cars, and now the home invasion robberies are up.”

More than 3 million people, the combined populations of these two leftist cities, are being left completely vulnerable to every form of crime imaginable, from the vexing annoyances of everyday theft to the unspeakable horrors of sexual assault and murder.

Where does it stop? Sadly, nothing is going to change until this plague hits those responsible for allowing it to fester where they live. We take no joy in relating that a highly placed Minnesota progressive political official has just received such a dose of hard medicine.

‘In the Driveway of Our Home’

“Look at my face. These criminals will not win. We need to take back our city. And this will not be the last you hear from me about this.” So wrote Shivanthi Sathanandan, the 2nd Vice Chairwoman for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, i.e., the Democratic Party, in the North Star State.

Sathanandan said she was “violently carjacked” on Sept. 5 while with her children “in the driveway of our home in Minneapolis.

“Four very young men, all carrying guns, beat me violently down to the ground in front of our kids. The young men held our neighbors up at gunpoint when they ran over and tried to help me. All in broad daylight,” Sathanandan exclaimed.

“I have a broken leg, deep lacerations on my head, bruising and cuts all over my body. And I have rage.”

But where was this rage when you and your fellow Minneapolis Democrats were putting the regular citizenry in harm’s way? Yes, Sathanandan was among the progressives who fashionably called for the elimination of the Minneapolis Police Department in the wake of the death of George Floyd in 2020. “Say it with me. Dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” she wrote in a Facebook post at the time. “It has ‘systematically failed the black community,’ so it’s ‘time to build a new infrastructure that works for all communities.’” “Social justice” preening can be an emotionally rewarding experience for leftist political figures. But reality strikes like a punch to the face.

Unfortunately, Sathanandan has now received that punch and much worse. It will likely have to be this way in modern war zones such as Los Angeles and San Francisco as well. It seems those seeking to turn America into Brazil to satisfy radical and/or elitist political agendas won’t be pulled away from their self-satisfying agendas until the blood starts to wash up on the luxury vehicles parked inside their gated communities.

 

Read More From Joe Schaeffer

ICYMI: 14 American Cities Aim to Ban Meat, Dairy, Private Cars by 2030

By Ward Clark August 21, 2023

In a move that is just downright daffy, not to mention leaning hard into totalitarianism, 14 American cities are aiming at what is sure to be an elusive target: banning meat and dairy consumption and the use of private automobiles - in just seven years...............There is, of course, one thing all of those cities have in common; indeed, it's the same thing most major urban areas have in common.............Just to belabor the obvious, these people are elitists of the worst sort. There is an apocryphal quote attributed to the Duke of Wellington, who supposedly opposed the development of passenger railroads. The Duke supposedly claimed that these railroads would "promote unrest by allowing the lower classes to travel too freely about." That is, as you can see, precisely the mindset we see in play here...........To Read More....

My Take - Just like that snob Wellington, the elitists are outraged that all these cheeky peasants keep getting uppity, and actually want good things in their lives.  Can you imagine that?  But, why should we be surprised?   That's exactly how the slave owners felt and how they treated their slaves.  Okay, now let's take a minute and ask ourselves this question:  To which political party did they belong to?  Why, ....they.. were.. all..., each and every one of them, Democrats!  Imagine that.  Tell me, do you know many slaves were owned by Republicans?  None!

What We're Seeing is Irreversible in America's Major Cities, Part II

By Rich Kozlovich

On May 31st, I posted this piece, What We're Seeing is Irreversible in America's Major Cities, noting how these leftist/racist Mayors are turning America's major cities into crime ridden sewers.  

Cleveland, a town I've loved for most of my life, is an example.  Recently nine people were shot on W. 6th Street.  About 30 years ago or so Cleveland restaurateurs started turning W6th into a "go to" area for fine food, and started turning it into a nightclub street, as they also did with E. 4th Street, and downtown was hopping.   

Things were really looking up for Downtown Cleveland, which has the second largest theatre district in the nation.  Then things changed and I noticed the nightclubs started drawing what can only be called an unsavory crowd, and businesses started failing.   I retired and didn't observe what must have been a downward spiral for Downtown Cleveland with these insane covid restrictions imposed by Governor DeWine, but it must have been devastating.  

A few days ago a man, with a long criminal record, decided to shoot nine people in that area, and at this point there doesn't seem to be a motive other than he just wanted to kill people. 

Then there was my take on Chicago saying, "We all know Lori Lightfoot as mayor of Chicago is gone (All due to racism, homophobia, and misogyny and her incompetence had nothing to do with it) and her replacement is even nuttier.  Will he fix Chicago's downward spiral?   Well, it turns out crime is so out of control in Chicago someone was murdered right across the street from his home, and 53 people were shot and 11 murdered over the holiday weekend.  So, I guess the answer to my question is, "no"'.   Well, clearly the answer really is no since crime is out of control in Chicago.

San Francisco is doomed, and it will never recover, as Paul Bois notes in this July 16th article, Tech CEO: Downtown San Francisco ‘Never Going Back’ to Pre-Pandemic State:  Death Spiral: Urges Mayor to Hire More Police.  "Downtown San Francisco will not be going back to its pre-pandemic state."

What we're seeing in San Francisco is a magnificent city being turned into a sewer.  The pandemic "launched a revolution of stay-at-home work, forcing major metropolitan areas like downtown San Francisco to become havens for vacant office buildings."  But crime so massive stores were taking such high losses large retailers like "Uniqlo, Nordstrom Rack and Anthropologie have left, toiletries like shampoo and toothpaste are locked up at pharmacies, and places like Gucci get hit by armed robbers in broad daylight."  Then there are the drug addicted lunatics and homeless people defecating and urinating all over the place. 

But here's the understated long term reason why America's major cities are doomed.   

"Last month, the owner of Westfield San Francisco Centre, a fixture for more than 20 years, said, “it was handing the mall back to its lender, citing declining sales and foot traffic. The owner of two towering hotels, including a Hilton, did the same."

Companies can't afford to be in cites where these race baiting Mayors and administrations refuse to deal properly with criminals, refusing to charge them for the crimes they've committed, and refusing to jail them, claiming that's what's needed to overcome white supremacy. 

They've also discovered they can function better, and cheaper, by not being in the big cities, paying those huge rents and high parking costs, but especially being able to avoid the unsavory people walking everywhere begging for money, and threatening they and their employees.

All over the nation these skyscraper office buildings are losing tenants, which means more and more owners of these buildings are incapable of paying the mortgages.  What do they do?  They default on the loans and the banks are stuck with large properties they can't sell for what they're owed, and I'm betting there's a huge number of them can't be sold at all.  End result?  These properties will deteriorate, and America's downtown commercial areas will turn into massive slums; banks are going to go belly up; and the national economy will suffer.  But these cities will never come back to what they were.   

What have we done to ourselves? We're facing a massive failure of culture because we've abandoned the foundational Judaic/Christian principles and values that keep a society stable, and no government program can fix that.  That must be changed at the family level, and the left is doing all it can to destroy the very concept of family. 

At some point society will have to embrace this principle as stated by Col. John Boyd. 

"One day you will come to a fork in the road. And you're going to have to make a decision about what direction you want to go..........To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?"

What We're Seeing is Irreversible in America's Major Cities.

By Rich Kozlovich

I've spent the bulk of my adult life in the Cleveland, Ohio area, and I love it here and I've loved Cleveland with all its ups and downs, but things have changed dramatically since 1965 when the population in Cleveland was 1,875,000. As of July of 2022 it was 361,607.  Whites make up only 38% of the population, blacks 47% and are still granted minority status, and has the power in Cleveland’s administration.  

Violent crime in Cleveland is 17.4 per 1000. In all of Ohio it's only 3.76 and nationwide it's 4. And let’s face it, crime statistics clearly show those crimes are mostly being committed by blacks, most of them the product of illegitimacy.   In America's major cities, this is the pattern throughout America.

Democrats are in charge in Cleveland, and in any city in which they're in charge they're driving these cities in a massively destructive direction.  Improved race relations are in the dumpster, and rampant anti-white racism is rampant, for which Barack Obama and the Democrat party are directly responsible.

In 1965 illegitimacy in black America was 24% and 3% in white America. In 1990 it was 64 percent for blacks and 18 percent for whites. In black America it’s now around 70%, and around 30% for white America. That's an obscene voluntary abandonment of men to their responsibilities, and a unbelievable and active acceptance by the women.   That’s massively destructive, and that destructiveness is spreading. That’s an abandonment of all the foundational values that create stable societies.

While there’s been efforts to restore Cleveland's neighborhoods, that required tearing down entire sections of the city to put up new buildings. As of right now, entire sections of Cleveland are either vacant lots with everything torn down, or have blocks of empty buildings, businesses and homes, that are rat infested holes surrounded by slums. And surrounding suburbs are equally impacted by all this, such as East Cleveland, which is a disaster. 

Driving down Euclid Avenue, Cleveland's main street, once known as "Millionaires' Row",  is deceptive.  Go a few blocks to the left or right, and reality sets in.

How can you revive any major city if the inhabitants live in a culture that’s undisciplined, irresponsible, refuse to be educated, and violent? One in which a huge percentage of the inhabitants of the city think that’s just fine and dandy.

I don't think that's possible because they've abandoned all the Judaic/Christian values that make a society stable.  If there is no stable moral foundation for a society, there is no stability, and then society becomes a mob.  

The worst mayors in the nation?  In 2021 Daniel Greenfield listed 14 of them, and they were all black, and/or far left lunatics, but they were all Democrats, and each and everyone of of them were race baiting hustlers shouting America is institutionally racist, among other things, but clearly they all hate America and are destroying the cities they lead, or led.  

Part I: Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot.
Part 2: LA’s Eric Garcetti.
Part 3: DC’s Muriel Bowser.
Part 4: KC’s Quinton Lucas.
Part 5: SF’s London Breed.
Part 6: Philly’s Jim Kenney.
Part 7: St. Louis’ Tishaura Jones.
Part 9: Seattle’s Jenny Durkan.
Part 10: Minneapolis’s Jacob Frey.
Part 11: Charlottesville’s Nikuyah Walker.
Part 12: Portland’s Ted Wheeler.
Part 13: Atlanta’s Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Part 14: NYC’s Bill de Blasio. 

We all know Lori Lightfoot as mayor of Chicago is gone (All due to racism, homophobia, and misogyny and her incompetence had nothing to do with it) and her replacement is even nuttier.  Will he fix Chicago's downward spiral?  

Well, it turns out crime is so out of control in Chicago someone was murdered right across the street from his home, and 53 people were shot and 11 murdered over the holiday weekend.   

So, I guess the answer to my question is, "no". 

The Left Has A Dream. I Call it a Nightmare! Chicago, Part III

By Rich Kozlovich

As we watch the insanity going on in America's cities it's important to define how this occurred, and who's responsible.  First, let's cut to the chase.  America's major cities are crime infested sewers, and the Democrats own that completely.  So, I've now given you the answer, here's the evidence, and we're going to view the evidence one city at at time, starting with Chicago.  

Stephan Moore in his April 11th article, The left has killed our great cities, points out:

Tuesday, April 4, as the night Chicago died.That's when we learned that Second City voters narrowly elected Brandon Johnson as their next mayor. This is a city that was flattened during the reign of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who lost in the first round of voting for Chicago mayor because she didn't finish in one of the top two spots. Lightfoot, elected in 2019 after a career as a federal prosecutor who then held several appointed positions in Chicago, shut down the city for more than a year during COVID-19. She also bankrupted small businesses, allowed rioters to burn down whole neighborhoods, presided over the worst crime wave in 50 years and let the schools go to hell............Now, the voters have selected Johnson..........The incoming mayor may turn out to be a worse mayor than Lightfoot...........The fact that Chicagoans have elected not a reformer, but a deformer, suggests that inner-city residents still don't get it -- or they don't care. Or they are all on the payroll of the city governments that are going bankrupt. Alas, our cities can't be saved if the voters in these metropolises don't want to be saved.

Well, it turns out Brandon Johnson is most likely going to be far worse than Lightfoot.  Last week rioting broke out, vehicles were burned, people were beaten, and had their lives threatened, and the police did nothing, and made it clear as long as Johnson was mayor, that was the way it was going to be.  The police are sworn to protect, but the left sent a message long ago, if they do what needs to be done, they're going to be prosecuted and possibly sent to prison.  In Seattle they've been told they have to offer a "sincere apology" for enforcing the law.  They're left with crossroads decisions daily; "to be or to do".  Guess which one they've chosen?  

Mayor Johnson's response to all this?  

In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend.  It is unacceptable and has no place in our city.

Okay, that makes sense, and it sounds like responsible thinking, but is it reality, or just nice sounding talking points?   Then he goes on to demonstrate what he really thinks by babbling irrationally saying:

However, it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.  Our communities must work together to create spaces for youth to gather safely and responsible, under adult guidance and supervision, to ensure that every part of our city remains welcome for both residents and visitors.  This is one aspect of my comprehensive approach to improve public safety and make Chicago livable for everyone.

He continued to blather this same nonsense, "In on-camera comments that Julio covered yesterday, the incoming mayor doubled down" saying:

Demonizing children is wrong.....they're children, and children sometimes make silly decisions...."

• Starved of opportunities?  Really?  What opportunities have been denied them and if so, who's responsible?  Democrat mayors have run Chicago for as long as I've been alive and longer (1931 the last Republican mayor left office) and Democrats have ruled Illinois for decades, so who is responsible for this alleged starvation of opportunities? 
  
• Silly decisions?  Really?  Choosing to commit violent crimes are "silly decisions"?  These aren't children, they're violent criminals and thugs, I don't care what their chronological age may be.  They are what they do.   Law enforcement in Chicago is expecting a lot more "silly" decisions as the weather warms, and yes it is right to demonize those who riot and commit crimes of property destruction, violent harm to others, and theft.
• Because of leftist insanity these aren't criminals, "they're misunderstood victims of an impoverished society", and people on the left, just like Mayor Johnson, are responsible for promoting this "entitlement" mentality, and are even pushing to legalize their criminal behavior.  

Here was another "silly decision" by a "mob" of thugs who violently beat a helpless woman in Chicago.  The video of this has been taken down, I wonder why?   Here's another piece about Johnson's "children", hundreds of them, making "silly decisions" as Violence Erupts in Chicago as Hundreds of Thugs Destroy Parts of the City:

 ..........smashing car windows.......at least one person in a car was attacked. Shots were fired near the corner of Madison and Michigan, and FOX 32 Chicago decided that it was unsafe to keep our news crew on the scene. A woman whose car was smashed by people jumping on the windshield said her husband was beaten as he sat in the driver’s seat.............Video posted on social media shows people standing on top of a CTA bus and dancing. The CTA said that some service through the downtown area was disrupted on Saturday night because of police activity........... a 14-year-old was shot.............

There are consequences for all this.  Migration, closed businesses, and a dropping tax base.  This is the starvation of opportunities Johnson blathers about, and his party is to blame.   Corporate America is leaving, even after so many of them grovelled in the sewer with Antifa, BLM, and totally embraced this insane Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Marxist economic suicide pact.  

As Silvio Canto, Jr. points out in his shoplifting article, with just the right amount of snarc:

Who knew that uncontrolled shoplifting and allowing criminals to run out of stores with jewelry and whiskey bottles would eventually translate into stores closing their doors for good?  Where did we hear that before? Of course, it's more than closing stores to shoppers.  A retail store hires people and pays taxes.  In many locations, it may be the only drugstore around. There are broad consequences to shoplifting.  As stores close in our cities, local governments will lose the tax base that pays for a lot of social services.  The bottom line is that the community will lose.  Are you listening, Democrats?

No, they're not because leftist ideology means you never have to apologize or change, it's always someone else's fault.  Well, Walmart has had it and is closing stores all over the country, including 4 Chicago Stores, because they've lost tens of millions of dollars, and the Democrats are outraged.

How dare they put their profits over the need of these Marxists have for their tax dollars?  Dollars they need to fulfill leftist demands and redistribute that money in order to keep being elected, in order to ultimately put them out of business.  Imagine that!

Well, Walmart isn't the only one seeing this insanity for what it is, as Dan Mitchell points out in his January 2022 piece, Chicago’s Downward Spiral:

The Chicago area saw an exodus of corporate headquarters in 2022, including investment firm Citadel, which moved to Miami along with its billionaire founder, Ken Griffin; Caterpillar, which relocated from north suburban Deerfield to Irving, Texas; and aerospace giant Boeing, which moved to Arlington, Virginia, after more than 20 years in the West Loop. The most recent high-profile departure was announced in November, when Lake Forest-based auto parts manufacturer Tenneco said it was shifting its headquarters to Michigan. …vacancy rates in the central business district rose to 19.6%, while the Chicago metro ticked up to 21.8%… Meanwhile, Citadel principals and employees generated billions of dollars in tax revenue for the city and state over the past decade, according to the firm, money that has also headed south.And why are businesses escaping?

The economic mismanagement of Chicago, and the entire state of Illinois, is getting worse, and this was before Johnson was elected.  The real hidden economic viper in the fruit basket?  Pensions!

Pension costs will consume more than $2.3 billion of the city’s budget, or 21.4 percent of its own source revenue, excluding state and federal grants. That’s more than a $967 million increase in pension spending since Lightfoot became mayor and $461 million more than last year alone.............To make matters worse, Chicago still has major problems with corruption.

• The Left Has A Dream. I Call it a Nightmare, Part I
• The Left Has A Dream. I Call it a Nightmare! California, Part II