David Strom takes a look at this increasingly dangerous city, and its self-inflicted travails:
But the ideological shift from very liberal to truly leftist has eviscerated Washington’s ability to even protect the rich and powerful, and that is something new.
This shift is, I believe, caused by the increasing reliance of the Elite on the activist Left to maintain their power. While the Democrats and the Left developed a marriage of convenience in the ’60s and ’70s, the exit of the working class from the Democrat coalition meant that the money and power people needed the support of the socialists and revolutionaries to stay at the top of the pyramid.
And the activists want things to collapse. They do everything they can to force that collapse.
They hate the forces of order. The decline of D.C. is an inevitable result. The rich and powerful made a fool’s bargain with the revolutionaries–they fund their nonprofits, mouth their pieties, and even sell out their fellow Americans to maintain their grip on power. And in the process, they have handed over our cities to crazy people.
When it comes to "elites", ours are pathetic. It's a terrible thing to be lorded over by idiots. It's like having a clown shoe placed firmly on the collective neck.
When I was in intermediate school and ninth grade we lived in Vienna, VA. My father was assigned to the Bureau of Personnel, in the old Navy Annex building in DC.
ReplyDeleteVienna at the time was half suburban, half rural. There were still working farms surrounding the town. It was not part of the solid mass of Beltway bedroom communities that have since metastasized around DC, filled with parasitic life forms.
It was a half century ago... and may as well have been another country.
The last time I was in Vienna, VA - probably six or seven years ago - there was still a nice little town area, and some beautiful residential neighborhoods, but any hint of its rural past was gone.
ReplyDeleteI go into DC once a week now and telework the other days. Fortunately, I have an express bus from close to my house to a bus stop right outside my office. Even with that, my wife is worried. A co-worker recently moved to Salt Lake City to telework, partly because of crime in the neighborhood in which he lived in DC. Somehow I do not think that he will stop voting for the kinds of people who enable the criminals.
ReplyDeleteIf we do go into DC otherwise, we tend to take my stick shift car. There was actually a recent case in Arlington where carjackers left a car because it was a stick shift!
It was also amusing to read about the woman who drove five blocks because of concerns for he safety. Aren't these the same people who promote concerns with climate change?
There was actually a recent case in Arlington where carjackers left a car because it was a stick shift!
ReplyDeleteHilarious!
It was also amusing to read about the woman who drove five blocks because of concerns for he safety. Aren't these the same people who promote concerns with climate change?
I think political schizophrenia is a very real malady.
I used to catch the train at the Vienna Metro, and it dropped me off right across the street from my agency at the MacPherson Square station (this was the orange line). Miraculously, I never had any trouble with the criminal element. One evening, a guy got on the train - he was drunk and hostile - and almost immediately a plainclothes cop stood up from his seat, stood near him, and told him he was getting off at the next station - which he did, peacefully, and without further disturbance.
I think most of the trouble used to be on the red line, but it may have spread to the other lines by now, I don't know.
I consider myself extremely lucky.
My oldest brother worked for the FAA for about 35 years, and he worked in D.C. for most of the 1980s. I made several trips to visit them, and I would go to the nearest Metro station and ride into the station nearest the FAA building, and then start touring the museums along the Mall and then ride home with him at the end of the day. I don't remember ever having any though about my safety at the time.
ReplyDeleteYou couldn't pay me to do that now.
Not Washington DC, but my current residence of Walla Walla, WA ... ... we've seen an uptick in all sorts of crimes, including random shootings. And that's a medium sized city smack in the middle of the wheat fields, several hour drive from any of the blue cities that are clearly going into the toilet.
ReplyDeleteSo the infection, it is spreading.
We spent 1970 in Alexandria (Mr. H was in the military language school in Crystal City at the time), five minutes from the Pentagon, and I can tell you: D.C. and environs were a crime-ridden crap hole even then. Our car was broken into and the stereo stolen. We had packages go missing from our front door (and we lived on the second floor of a walkup). The neighborhood erupted in a riot over the shooting of a black shoplifter from the local convenience store that lasted for a couple of days. I was ecstatic to finally leave that place, and we never went back.
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