Turn Left for Chaos! Part 2
About 8 months ago I wrote an article in Medium titled “Turn Left for Chaos”. In it I looked at the impact of decades of the poor, inept and misguided leadership by Democrats in the once great city of San Francisco. It came from my personal observations from living in the San Francisco Bay Area for several decades and seeing what had happened to the City combined with evidence of that impact provided by the City itself. I did not paint a pretty picture because the picture was not pretty. San Francisco was a mess.
How is it that one of the world’s great cities became littered with homeless encampments, used hypodermic needles and human feces; infested with crime and criminals? Things don’t get to such places without cause. They don’t just happen. The answer is that situation was simply a reflection of the decisions and action of those who governed in the years leading up to that point. In the case of San Francisco that was decades of pretty much uncontested Democrat control of power. Control that included such political characters as 30+ years representing San Francisco in the US House of Representatives and now Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, one-time Mayor of San Francisco and now California Governor Gavin Newsom, one-time Mayor of San Francisco and now US Senator Diane Feinstein and one-time District Attorney of San Francisco and now US Senator Kamala Harris and others of their political ilk. The evidence was undeniable. They were in charge, they were making the decisions and setting the priorities. The outcome rests at their feet. I finished that piece by pointing out that “All the evidence, a huge pile of evidence, says if we continue to follow their lead we can only expect to end up in that same chaos; in our cities, in our states and in our country.”
Fast forward to May 2020. Since the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer a bright spotlight has been placed upon many of Americas great cities. Sadly, but not surprisingly, many of them display the same symptoms of decades of misguided and inept Democrat leadership that were so obvious in San Francisco. Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and many others have fallen prey to the same onslaught of homelessness, crime and corruption. I won’t bother to cite a bunch of facts or statistics, we all know it is true, it’s easy enough for anyone to find that evidence in the web.
In each of these big cities I mention, Democrats have had the controls for long periods of time. In each of these big cities the citizens have recently expressed their outrage and anger at where they find themselves; as they should. In each of these cities those Democrat “leaders” have sought to deflect the blame attached to the follies of their efforts, shunting it off to whoever is unlucky enough to be nearby. Some claim it is because of misbehavior of their Police departments. Others say it’s because of the President or the Federal government. But blame who they might, the reality is that all of this happened on their watch. Mayors are responsible for what goes on in their cities. It should not be a surprise, the evidence has been mounting for a long time. Unless the citizens of those cities recognize the cause of their horrible dilemma is their Democrat leadership and take action to change that they have no reason to expect it will get better any time soon.
I’ll close this message with just one thought, one statement of reality. The Mayors of Minneapolis, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles and other Democrat strongholds have taken to blaming their Police forces for all their ills. They have been caving in to a few loud voices assailing everything about every police officer. They have abandoned the rule of law and their sworn duty to uphold that rule and protect the lives, livelihoods and property of their citizens they were elected to serve. Though some change in some policing practices in some cities is no doubt warranted, filling the air with anti-police rhetoric and embracing the leadership ignorance of an idea like “Defunding the Police” is lunacy and simply their way of deflecting blame from themselves and their policies, the actual problem, on to others.
So, think about this. The Police departments of those cities report to and work for those Mayors. Cities and city leaders are fully empowered to assure that their Police departments reflect their views and behavioral expectations. That their policing practices, including things like choke-holds and non-lethal crowd control tools, have been known to them. They at least allowed, if not supported and embraced those policing procedures, practices and capabilities. Thus, where they find themselves, in spite of attempts at deflection, is responsible for the mess they created.
As Mayors, if they did not know the policing realities in their city, they are guilty of dereliction of sworn duty. If they did know and accepted those practices as valid and reasonable, they are complicit in the creation of the problem they now assail at the expense of others. In either case, these things came to pass on their watch, while they had the reigns of power and the power for change, yet they did nothing. As long as that sort of leadership behavior is allowed to persist, those sort of leftist policies and principles are allowed to be in place, there is no reason for any of us to expect a different outcome. If the rest of the country wants to follow in their footstep the directions are simple. Just Turn Left for Chaos.
