OPINION:
“We did this to ourselves,” said Dr. Mary Costantino. Her comment could be an epitaph for America’s cities.
Dr. Costantino is the Portland, Oregon, woman attacked by a homeless man who left her unconscious, with a face that looked like she’d gone six rounds with a heavyweight contender.
If a bystander hadn’t intervened, she’d probably be dead.
Once upon a time, cities were bursting with vitality. For out-of-towners, they were meccas of shopping and entertainment. They were nerve centers of business.
Today, they’re places to become a crime statistic, view vermin-infested encampments, and silently mourn the demise of what was once something great.
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Cities are drowning in a sea of lawlessness, homelessness, addiction, bloated budgets, failed schools, business flight and population decline.
In response to the horror unfolding, big-city voters rush from dumb to dumber.
This year, the Windy City went from Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who presided over the worst crime wave in 50 years (695 homicides in 2022) and gave rioters free rein, to Mayor Brandon Johnson, a shill for the teachers union.
After a riot in April in which two teens were shot, Mr. Johnson cautioned against “demonizing” youth who were “starved for opportunities.” When 400 starved-for-opportunities youths ransacked a convenience store on the South Loop last Sunday, he objected to the phrase “mob action” to describe the mob action.
“Woke” mayors are complemented by prosecutors supported by George Soros and police officers quitting or taking early retirement at a record rate, due to defunding and demoralization.
The San Francisco Police Department is down 30%. The District of Columbia has its smallest police force in 50 years. In Portland, the average police response time for high-priority calls is 24 minutes.
While cops are leaving, denizens of sidewalks are moving in. In Los Angeles, the homeless population increased 10% in the past year. Over 46,000 people call the streets of Los Angeles home. From Boston to Seattle, it’s the same.
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All they can do about crime is to ignore it, except for the most egregious offenses.
Boston no longer prosecutes shoplifting or breaking and entering. In some cities, authorities turn a blind eye to prostitution and the street sales of drugs. In San Francisco, public defecation is so common that the city distributes a “poop map” to aid pedestrians.
In Seattle, the sign on the door of a recently closed store told customers: “Small businesses (and large) cannot sustain doing business in our city’s current state. We have no protection or recourse against criminal behavior that goes unpunished.”
Those willing to confront reality are leaving in droves. From 2020 to 2022, 2 million fled our largest cities. In the 10 biggest cities, half the offices are vacant, according to data released by Kastle Systems.
The refugees aren’t gang members, parasites and street people. They’re productive and law-abiding, and they don’t want to raise families in an atmosphere of fear.
Thanks to technology, cities are as obsolete as the horse and buggy was 100 years ago. Given what they’re become, their demise is inevitable.
President Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party, hated cities, even though he lived in Paris for a time. The author of the Declaration of Independence observed: “When we get piled up upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.”
If he could only see the extent that his prophecy has come to pass.
In John Carpenter’s 1981 film “Escape From New York,” Gotham was turned into a giant maximum-security prison for the worst of the worst, walled off from the rest of society, where prisoners can do whatever they want to one another. Before being sent there, convicts were given the choice of being executed.
That’s where we’re heading. On this runaway train, the end of the line is almost in sight.
* Article From: The Washington Times
