Saturday, July 25, 2020

I can relate

Kind of. I've never been a "city" person, although I've lived in the city from time to time (including Detroit before it started to look like Dresden circa 1945). When I worked in Washington, DC, I commuted from Fairfax, VA, so I wasn't a resident, but, although I couldn't see myself living in the capital, I understood why it appealed to other people.

I understand how it could have appealed to Daniel Turner, for example. And I can also understand why he's calling it quits: "Goodbye, Washington DC."

5 comments:

Steve Skubinna said...

I used to really like Seattle. Now it's a cesspit. Back in the Eighties and Nineties I liked San Francisco. Also a cesspit now. San Diego used to be a pretty fun place to be, but I have not been down there since 2014. A few years ago they had a massive outbreak of Hepatitis. Too much poop on the streets. When my family lived in northern VA in the late Sixties we liked going into DC, for me the best places were both Smithsonian: Air and Space, and Museum of History and Technology. The Navy Museum at the Washington Navy Yard was also fun. You won't find me in DC again for the foreseeable future.

I suppose overseas there are still fun cities such as Singapore, Prague, and Tokyo, but having retired I have sworn off air travel as it's too much trouble. It seems Americans have given up on the idea of having livable cities.

rinardman said...

Well, one advantage to the way the big Dimocrat cities are run, is that they will soon be rid of all the dissidents like Daniel Turner, and will only be left with the mostly peaceful protesters, who only want to march, burn, and loot as they like without the condemnation of unwoke citizens. Or the police.

I've never lived in a big city, but I've spent some time visiting a few. About two weeks at a time was all I could stand. I used to venture over to the St.Louis area occasionally for shopping and dining, but I gave that up years ago as not conducive to my good health. Now I'm content to live in the edge of my corn field a hundred miles away.

RebeccaH said...

The DC metro complex and Munich, West(at the time) Germany are the biggest cities I've ever lived in, although I've lived near quite a few. I am not citified, and never wish to be. Daniel Turner seems like a hypocrite to me because he tolerated so much of big city living that I would find unacceptable and now in this woke age, it's become too much for him. The sad part is, he's moved to a smaller venue where he will probably vote for the same policies that created the problems in his beloved big city.

Paco said...

I don't know that he's a hypocrite. People who grow up as urban dwellers develop a tolerance for things that would drive me (have driven me) crazy: noise, traffic, sudden encounters with beggars and nutcases, knee-jerk liberal politicians and the knee-jerk liberals who put them in office. They can put up with that kind of thing because they're used to it, and there are certain pleasurable aspects of city-dwelling that, for people like Turner, compensate for the annoyances. But there's a breaking point for everybody, even for city folk, and it's not surprising that it's the complete breakdown of civility and order (and the right to not have to care; the progs are even trying to deny us that) that made him decide to move.

But city dwellers do tend to be lefty in their politics - or, if conservative, defensive, withdrawn and ineffectual.

JeffS said...

I lived in Cook County, with a job down in the Chicago Loop, for 4 years. This was after living in rural areas for most of my life. Prior to that, I lived in a college dorm (in South Dakota, so not "urban urban"), plus my military time (including a tour in Germany).

And I left Chicagoland as soon as I could. Ugh. Even in the 1980s, that area was a cesspool of corruption, crime, and tribalism, all with healthy dollops of ignorance, bigotry, and narcissism. Gang warfare was a major problem even then, for example, with no interest from the ruling class to tamp down the violence.

That said, I'm going to opine that Daniel Turner is not truly a hypocrite. I suggest that, as a lifelong urbanite, he's indifferent, self-centered, and self-indulgent. His perspective comes from living in an environment where he can live a good life without having to worry about anymore than whipping out a checkbook to pay for his desired services.

It's a good life, but most urbanites are insulated from the harsh realities involved with harvesting resources, producing goods, and getting them to the market. Little things like hard labor, government bureaucracies, environmental activists, bad weather, civil unrest, terrorism, and so on. And that's just within the USA; internationally, there's war, slave labor, internation tensions, terrorism, etc.

Most urbanites don't care what it takes to support them, they just want their hot coffee and tasty sandwich right now. They care only for their own needs, and if the outside world intrudes upon their safe space, they will pay indulgences to whatever cause they feel will atone for their "sins" -- BLM, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Democratic National Committtee, and so on. That inclujdes taxes, by the way.

Mr. Turner seems to avoided that pitfall (his bio implies that he has a direct link to reality in his job), and has correctly assessed the risk in continuing to live in the national capital.

Those who do not avoid that trap are likely beyond " indifferent, self-centered, and self-indulgent" -- they are decadent.

I do suspect that Mr. Turner enjoys a decadent life-style, but he's intelligent enough to know the difference between a hawk and a handsaw.