Who Didn't See This Coming? :: 05/26/2021

This headline in the New York Times tells you everything you need to know about the progressive mindset, “A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime.” Who didn’t know that demonizing police, cutting their funding, making it as clear as day that a city’s political leaders not only won’t defend them, but will actively throw them to the mob without any due process considerations might lead to problems for a city? Turns out pretty much every left-wing activist in the country. Worse, most of them still don’t care.

Crime is up, especially violent crime, in Democrat-run cities where the “defund police” movement found a receptive audience in government. Now, the Times reports, “The surge is prompting cities whose leaders embraced the values of the movement last year to reassess how far they are willing to go to reimagine public safety and divert money away from the police and toward social services.”

It’s hard to care, honestly. I grew up in Detroit, once the economic hub of the country destroyed through generational control by Democrats. John Conyers represented the city in Congress for 52 years, over which time his district deteriorated to the point that sections of it resemble a third world country. That didn’t happen overnight.

The thing about Detroit is the shell of what once was is still there. You can see the building, empty, architecture today’s craftsmen could not replicate at a price anyone could afford, towering over once beautiful neighborhoods that now resemble abandoned farmland. It’s depressing to see.

So why did the residents of Detroit give the party that orchestrated their demise unbroken power since 1962? Same reasons Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, etc., etc., have done it – they’ve been conditioned to think the alternative is somehow worse. How electing Republicans could’ve been worse for these cities is never explained, and defies rational thought. If Republicans wanted to destroy a city it’s unclear what they would do differently from what Democrats did under the guise of “improving” them.

It doesn’t matter, because leftist activists simply do not care. No amount of death, destruction, or economic depression matters. Los Angeles based liberal activist Helen Jones told the Times, “I don’t care how bad it gets — no one wants more cops. We don’t need tougher police, we need more alternatives to help people thrive.”

But the government can’t “help people thrive.” It never has, and never will. All the government should do is keep itself out of people’s way so they can make what they will with their lives while protecting their physical being and property in the process.

As cities like LA begin re-funding police, the Times is concerned. “It is a trend mirrored across the country,” their story goes, “where crime is skyrocketing in many big cities, putting liberal leaders under pressure to balance the demands of activists against the concerns of some residents about rising violence.”

This is part of the problem, the part the political class doesn’t have the underwear content to truly tackle – the activist class. They know how to chant, they know how to emotionally manipulate a swath of the public, but they have no concern about the consequences of their actions.

No amount of dead bodies bothers left-wing activists, they simply don’t care. And why would they care about generational economic depression when their objective is to destroy capitalism? Who cares if people can’t swim if you’re trying to blow up the pool?

The people elected in these areas change, oftentimes because they go to jail or die after years in office, so it’s not like there isn’t churn in leadership. A few years ago, when I was living in Baltimore, the new Mayor, who only became Mayor after the old Mayor was convicted of fraud, decided not to seek reelection. Half the City Council decided to give the big chair a shot. That freed up half the government for new blood.

While those seats were filled with new bodies, all those new bodies held the same bad progressive ideas. It doesn’t matter what the person in power looks like or does, it matters what they think. Race, gender, sexual orientation and all the other unimportant features of human beings Democrats obsess over don’t matter when the mindset is the same.

The joke definition of insanity is doing something over and over expecting a different result. Maybe it’s not a joke. Or maybe Democrat voters are the joke. The problem is the joke is on all of us. And if we don’t get people to realize how unfunny it is, even though it may not have impacted us yet, it will.

Defunding the police won’t spread, left-wing activists don’t have that kind of sway outside of these pockets. But violence will spread, economic depression will spread. Everyone can see that coming, but some people just don’t care.

Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2021/05/25/who-didnt-see-this-coming-n2589938