American cities are rotting. In particular, cities run by Democrats. And they all go the same way, steeped in the same problems as violence, drugs and homelessness.
In the country’s capital, the problem of homelessness has been visible since entering the city. Arriving in DC was a great pleasure, with the visitor immediately thrown into the center of the big capital. Today, the lawns in front of Union Station, which greet the passenger, are covered with tents. This is only the first of the homeless camps that visitors now face throughout the city. Almost every green space in the District of Columbia is already covered with tents, a constant reminder that America seems to be rotting from the center out.
Although DC may be the most painful example, the zero of this experiment in urban degeneration is San Francisco.
There was a time when San Francisco could be considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world – blessed with its position on the bay and the magnificent weather. But as Michael Schellenberger described in his book San Francisco last year, the city was destroyed by a series of horrific policies. In particular, left-wing politics have destroyed this nirvana.
For example, homeless people have already been attracted to San Francisco because of the weather. But over time, the city eventually subsidized them and then supported them. It has become a network that attracts people from other countries. The left did not know what to do except give more provisions to the homeless. Today, the city has a maximum monthly total support allowance of $ 588 per person, compared to $ 183 in New York. San Francisco now spends about 6 percent of its annual budget on the homeless.
Of course, all this raises and leads to other problems. The legalization of drugs was aimed at solving many problems in San Francisco. In fact, it has sharpened them. Marijuana was originally allowed for “medical reasons.” Then doctors can be found to “prescribe” it for each disease. It was then legalized. Today, the city is covered with advertisements for delivery services that can bring marijuana right to your door. It was as if the city needed easier access to drugs.
The stench of drugs is everywhere, as in other American cities. The left sees this as a matter of “rights”. But they ignore the fact that this is clearly exacerbating the mental health problems painfully displayed on the streets of America. They also ignore the fact that people who smoke the drug are virtually unable to perform normal daily work in almost any profession.
Thus, drug abuse and homelessness are ultimately encouraged. And the result is cities that feel increasingly insecure – where people can be seen shooting heavy drugs in broad daylight and where honest taxpayers end up wondering why the hell they are subsidizing this miserable descent.
Sometimes an attempt is made to do something about these problems. But political responses seem blocked. Gavin Newsom is the former mayor of San Francisco who managed to help destroy the city before moving to the larger California state and implementing the same policies. Last year, he suffered the humiliation of a “recall” election. But he calmly won the battle against conservative contender Larry Elder. All Newsum and the Democrats campaigning for him (including Barack Obama) had to do was say that Elder was something of a black Trump to bring News back to power.
It is true that there have been other downloads that have worked. The San Francisco Attorney General was recently recalled and removed from office. But the problem is that Democrat-ruled cities and states are democrats by habit. Even when the party’s representatives have ruined their seats with their policies, it seems that there are still the same motives. Democrats say they just need to push harder with their policies. The rich just have to pay more, they say. That’s just one of the reasons 1% of Californians left the state last year.
The American left could change its disastrous policy if there is any political pressure to do so. But it doesn’t work. The party is terribly captivated by the radical left, just as the Republican Party is still terribly captured by Donald Trump and his legacy. And it doesn’t help that the top of the party is so far away from what’s going on at the bottom.
Joe Biden is approaching 80 and is not in a position to steer his party in a more centrist direction. Democrats are still pretending that he will run in the next election, without bothering to wonder if the free world really should be led by people approaching the 1990s. Nancy Pelosi (now Speaker of the House) is 82 years old and has spent decades as a congressman in San Francisco. During her decades in Congress, she managed to acquire personal wealth that stretched to hundreds of millions of dollars. Apparently through stock trading. But like so many other politicians, she has become rich at the same time, leading an area that has become immeasurably poorer and where the lives of citizens are constantly worse.
What’s wrong with the vicious grip that eight-year-olds have on the Democratic Party? One explanation is that they are the last people who can keep the party from the radical left wave that is undoubtedly coming. People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now speak as if they were the founders of the Democratic Party. And in many ways they are. The radical young congresswoman was asked this week if she would support Biden to be nominated for the presidency by Democrats next time. In an interview with CNN, she said: “If he runs again, I think I, you know, I think we’ll look at him.
It was quite an incredibly humiliating and authoritative way for a young congresswoman to talk about her party leader and incumbent president. But the AOC and other radicals know that push and momentum are on their side. They know that Biden and Pelosi will be tempted to swing at them. They have no intention of moving towards them.
Because the young radicals in the Democratic Party are not like their older colleagues. The spirit of cooperation that some older Democrats – including Biden – can sometimes still draw on is anathema to them. Young Democrats – like some of their Republican counterparts of the same generation – have grown up treating politics as a war. It is not enough to defeat your opponents. You have to destroy them. It is not enough to win this cycle. You have to win for all time.
Only one of the victims of this is the spirit of self-criticism. You cannot admit that a policy is a mistake if you know that your opposing numbers expect just such a concession – hoping to use it to destroy their political enemies. And so Democrats can’t acknowledge – or correct – things that went wrong while watching.
Instead of rethinking their drug policies, they are doubling them. Instead of rethinking subsidies and other policies that have led to homelessness, they say the problem does not bring in enough money for it. And even when curfews are being introduced for young people in cities like Chicago to try to stop the peak of gang violence, they are trying to pretend that it is not their policies that have led to this, but “institutional racism.”
America is full of problems. But if the whole place doesn’t turn into a giant homeless camp, the left will have to recognize where they went wrong and deal with it. Unfortunately, he is still waiting for politicians who could.
Douglas Murray’s latest book is The War of the West
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