This remains one of the dumbest and bonkers racist thing ever attempted, but I’ll admit Noah’s paragraph on anarchy not being a form of welfare is probably a fairer take on the minds of the progressives.
The gangs are not very organized,so you just cant use RICO and conspiracy laws to bring them down like the cartel or mob. Two kids can be in the same gang,and not even know each other. There is no central point of control.
Sounds like Chicago gangs have the same kind of cellular structure that terrorist organizations use to confound the authorities: why aren't all criminal gangs organized like that?
You need the hierarchical structure to funnel all the funds to the top. The goal isn't crime for crime sake, but to selfishly profit off crime. A less centralized structure might be more robust against law enforcement but also probably doesn't generate as much money for the leadership.
The thing with militarized approaches to organized crime is that they lead governments to militarize the rest of society, including the political institutions. Eventually you find yourself in a soft authoritarian police state or you spark an actual war with armed gangs like in Colombia and Mexico.
<One could argue that the loss of civil liberties and authoritarianism is worth it.>
True, but that's basically what the Chinese Communist Party (and many other dictators in the Global South) argue: we provide prosperity in exchange for political control. I'm not unsympathetic to this argument, but this line of reasoning kinda undercuts Joe Biden's "democracy v. autocracy" shtick as well as Noah's warnings about an expansionist "Axis of Evil." International human rights don't mesh well with a permissive attitude toward modernizing dictatorships; just ask the ruling communists in China and Vietnam.
Chicago is the one with the pension problem he mentioned - IIRC it's actually a state level issue, but once it comes due their budget is toast unless they default on it.
For the moment though, it actually has lower levels of the other problems; housing is pretty cheap, it's nice enough downtown, you can touch the Bean.
Ironically, one of the reasons Silicon Valley exists is California overpromising on their pensions. It means CalPERS had to accept tons of risk and invest in tech startups.
I understand the impulse, but bear in mind that (A) hardly anyone ever campaigned on "decriminalizing crime" (unless your talking about lighter penalties or decriminalizing drug consumption, in which case you should be more precise in your language) and (B) most of the impetus behind criminal justice reform came from black and brown intellectuals like Michael Eric Dyson and Michelle Brown Alexander. White liberals (and leftists) largely hopped on the criminal justice reform bandwagon because they take their political/social cues from the intellectual/educated strata of minority populations.
“White liberals … take their political/social cues from the intellectual/educated strata of minority populations.”
The ethnic activist types claiming to represent the people while holding views that are FAR to the left of those very people they claim to represent, and the white progressives going along with this charade and telling themselves they have the consent of the XYZ people because the clowns at XYZ-studies department agreed with them, is not some minor mistake. It is exactly kind of the cultural elitism being refuted right now.
It kills me that some of those very far left intellectuals who have an outsized voice may not even vote, they have no solutions to any of the problems they pose either, but they can sure spend all day waxing poetic about problems and who is at fault. It's like they love the moral superiority but don't actually care about governing, or care about the real-world impact of their suggested policy stances. For what it is worth I think Michelle Alexander is not nearly as bad as Ibram Kendi, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say.
I'm not saying it's a minor mistake. I'm saying white progressives didn't cook this stuff up by themselves (or even originally). I'm assigning some responsibility onto upper-middle class minority intellectuals, who by and large are the very "ethnic activists" you seem to be criticizing. This is mainly because many critiques of woke politics lazily criticize white progressives for being too woke without properly identifying WHY they became so woke in the first place.
It's actually a self-perpetuating, elf-reinforcing symbiotic cycle.
Those minority "spokespeople" tapped for membership in the "cognitive elites" get their recognition (and their tenure) from their sponsors -- in academia, publishing, and the same sorts of foundations that sponsor NPR. And THEN their white counterparts (or acolytes) -- the "junior division" -- are ready and waiting to sign on (with guest appearances and glowing reviews).
What else are ANY of these people expected to do with a double major in Nonprofit Management and Ethnic Studies?
SF has a love hate relationship with tech. They love the tax revenues from tech booms but when people in tech are fed up with poor governance and urban disorder and want changes, progressives in charge want them to mind their own business. Progressives continue to demonize the tech industry while using us as their piggy banks.
Sounds like the conservative backlash in FL against Disney for being too "woke". GOP policies against Disney--a rather prominent US corporation, mind you--reduced its profits, and also hurt direct investment in the FL economy.
Or what about the anti-Gay push by the GOP in North Carolina a few years ago? That smart move ended up costing the state literally billions in lost investment.
Being unwilling to reopen the state hospitals and fill them with those folks who have proven unable to care for themselves isn’t an economic issue. IIRC the cost of doing so in SF is several 10s of thousand of dollars less than is currently being spent on the problem. It’s a matter of politicians being captured by activists ideologues who are out of touch with reality.
Are you saying we need to involuntarily commit anyone who is "homeless"? The number of homeless that have nothing to do with mental illness or addiction is very high (and yes, I have worked with the homeless in a semi-rural city). Providing easy to use housing does help the homeless and reopening the hospitals to provide that is a good idea, but dubious about the "proven unable to core for themselves" part.
“The number of homeless that have nothing to do with mental illness or addiction is very high (and yes, I have worked with the homeless in a semi-rural city)”
IIRC 90% of the homeless are homeless for less than a week. They are very often people who have just fallen on hard times, had some kind of crises, etc. Then we have the chronically homeless who have been on the street for +1 years - essentially all of them have substantial mental heath and or substance abuse problems.
Yep. The sleight of hand where one quotes a statistic about all people without a permanent address, then acts as if it refers to perpetual sidewalk or subway dwellers, isn’t fooling anyone anymore.
> IIRC 90% of the homeless are homeless for less than a week.
Not only that, but they can be in a home and yet homeless. i.e. they could be sleeping on a friend's couch, or in a relationship they don't like but can't afford to break up.
Yeah I think that this is truly a big part of the story. People just don't buy that the current problem with homelessness and disorder isn't an economic one. But it isn't! It's a political problem. We have this issue in the well-to-do small city I live in. We have a very high per capita income, and can afford a wide array of solutions to this problem. But everyone here is also very progressive, and a very small subset of those solutions that we can afford, are ones that voters and politicians will actually support.
Hmm, seen the same problem in some small cities that are quite red as well - more a function of folks generally being somewhat NIMBY IF it protects their property values (or is perceived to protect them)
I dunno, in the red cities in my state, they don't struggle with it as much, because they are more willing to just arrest people. But that makes everyone mad in progressive cities.
So yes, the root causes have a lot to do with nimbyism / housing policies, but different places respond to the immediate effects differently.
I can't help thinking that the Great Recession helped screw up blue city governance, as what Noah said about "progressive cities are operated for the benefit of the people who get the money instead of the people who get the stuff" sounds like they were viewing city services as a jobs program.
The things you have been saying recently are really just what most people would call common sense. It's kind of shocking that so few people in politics are saying them. A question I can't seem to answer is why isn't that what we get? A majority of Republican voters and Democrat voters agree, but why isn't that what we get when we elect Democrats or Republicans?
Because people hate problems, and they also hate solutions. Examples:
1. To fix disorder, you need to give the police and citizenry a longer leash to fight back. This inevitably will result in videos of bad stuff (police abuse; security guard killing or being killed by a shoplifter.) The public revolt against this and then we're back where we started.
2. Same as above for fixing public psychosis and drug use - inevitably, there will be stories of people committed that shouldn't be, and abuses within the committing facilities.
3. Immigration - same. You have to make illegal immigration painful to stop it - this inevitably results in bad stuff happening to sympathetic people.
4. Spend issues are even harder - unions, gov't workers and non-profits will not tolerate reductions in $ headed their way without a massive fight, and all of these groups have the power to create real problems for citizens.
None of these are easy problems to solve. I think the only way you solve them is getting a very, very strong head of state (Giuliani, Bloomberg, Trump) who isn't afraid to make a lot of enemies. Progressives, in particular, are not usually comfortable with this style of governance.
It’s worth noting that Giuliani and Bloomberg were not creatures of the NY Democratic machine. They did not owe any favors to unions, government employees, and, in the 90s, declining but still influential mafia connected interest groups. In previous administrations, raids on the South street would have been pointless, because someone in the sprawling Democratic machine would have tipped someone off. Giuliani was a successful prosecutor who came to power through a coalition of outer boroughs types + democratic voters who were sick of crime. Ignoring Al Sharpton, union demands, etc.. was a feature, not a bug. Bloomberg is an insanely wealthy technocrat who ran as a Republican because it was easier, and he could never win in the democratic machine. The city GOP is a joke of an organization; Bloomberg could use it for ballot access but otherwise it was useless. The return of the Democratic machine, under De Blasio, was seen by many within that machine as overdue, with the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations as aberrations. They tried to make up for lost time with the new union contracts and so forth.
Agreed 100%. People want quick and easy solutions to complex problems. Additionally, one of my main gripes with the progressive movement is that they are definitely willing to let perfect be the enemy of good all the time.
One interesting thing about the phrase "common sense" is that it only really appears in conservative writing, and there it appears a lot. It's an extremely right coded phrase and concept. As a quick reality check of my claim compare mentions of the phrase in the NY Times vs the NY Post:
The NY Times used to have a column called Common Sense but it's not really published anything since 2020, and it's a column about business - i.e. a conservative/right coded thing. Beyond that the next results Bing serves me are an article from 2022 titled "A debate over 'common sense' gun legislation" - the concept is so awkward to the left wing ear that they put it in scare quotes. The next result after that is, "A defense of common sense" from 2005 (which is about physics), and then "The trouble with common sense" (2011) and then "The limits of common sense" from 2005 again. Even discussion of the concept is rare, and when it does appear it's treated as a highly debatable thing that probably isn't legitimate at all.
The NY Post in contrast has results like: "How a lack of common sense is killing civilization" (2023), a story from October ("Scientist who battled for COVID common sense over media and government censors wins top award"), an op-ed from Douglas Murray from January ("Argentinian prez Javier Milei kills ‘em with common sense as he scolds Davos elites") and so on. Way more prevalent and used in political contexts.
To some extent this is just the way different tribes use language as a marker, but it's also a real reflection of differences in beliefs. Is wisdom and knowledge spread out, or is it concentrated in a small elite? Believe the latter and you become a leftist, believe the former and you become a libertarian-leaning rightist.
So when you ask "why is there so little common sense in politics", it's kind of an ideologically loaded question. In blue cities the very concept of common sense isn't talked about, and if you did talk about it you'd be viewed with suspicion. The problem is that an ideology which valorizes intellectuals must also reject ideas that anyone could have come up with, and thus be very prone to capture by clever sounding nonsense, because almost by definition intellectuals must stand apart from what's common. Otherwise they have no value.
The majority of people in both blue and red cities are all highly educated. To make it seem like people in blue cities don't talk about the very concept of common sense is really reductive. I think most of us have way more in common from a beliefs perspective than we have that makes us different. You really think if made a comment that included "common sense" in a blue city you'd be looked at with suspicion? What is this Nazi Germany?
Like I'm not disagreeing that self-proclaimed intellectuals think that the world can be so easily figured out and they are overly idealistic and think they alone can solve complex problems, but the idea that if you say "common sense' or anything like that you'd be viewed with suspicion is a bit much, like that might be true for people in your circle that you met at one time in your life but it is certainly an over generalized comment.
I think if you went to a meeting of a San Francisco local government committee, and objected to a proposal on the grounds that it violated "common sense", or made a proposal and justified it by saying "this is obviously common sense", then the leftists would treat you with suspicion because you'd sound like a Republican. Yes. Try it and see.
Because modern America is based on J.S. Mill and Nietzschean postmodernism.
Mill's insists that regulating human behavior (via any means: social, legal, or economic) is legitimate only to prevent physical harm to someone else. Much of what Noah and you (rightly) call "common sense" is really an assertion that moral standards of some kind exist and can reasonably be enforced by the state. But doing that requires overturning Mill.
Collective definitions of virtue (the common good) also run contrary to postmodernism, which claims that laws in support of "the common good" are really just tools for the powerful to enforce racial or sexual or [fill in the blank] oppression. Postmodernism is the de-facto religion of our elites; the quintessential political dividing line of our day -- "what is a woman?" -- is a question that can only make sense under postmodernism. Besides, if reality is a social construction, then crime is too. (I'm not being facetious; this logic was common during BLM.)
That's why the Democrats (and plenty of old-school Never-Trump Republicans) can't just "adopt common sense" as you suggest. Because they don't believe in the common and they've been indoctrinated into a philosophy that is utterly nonsensical.
Who are these elites and Democrats, or even Never Trump Republicans that all ascribe to postmodernism? So, you are you saying that the only people who have got it all figured out are Trump and the MAGA people like MTG?
Come on Brian this is just an over sensationalized and overgeneralized take you've got here. Half the people who you are probably describing as "elites" and Dems are probably people who you know that still think about common sense and believe reality is not a social construct. Talking about "what is a woman" in abstract philosophical terms or regards to humanism is not same that we can't define a woman biologically.
I don't mean this as a defense of blue-city's terrible track record of building housing but charts like those "apartment completions, share of existing inventory" always feel a bit misleading to me. Because it doesn't really feel fair to compare, say, Pittsburgh with Phoenix. Pittsburgh is old and built-out. Founded in 1758 and a major city more or less from the beginning with a population density of 5,400 people per square mile. All the low-hanging fruit has been taken. Phoenix was founded in 1867, over 100 years later, and famously was a nothing town (only 65,000 people in 1940; Pittsburgh was something like 600,000 people are that time) until air-conditioning became widespread. And even today after all that explosive growth the population density of 3,100 per square mile is still just half of Pittsburgh.
Having lived in both cities there is just a lot more easy wins in Phoenix for housing. Pittsburgh took all the easy wins in the late 1800s. And you start to see this with Phoenix's skyrocketing housing prices as they hit natural & legal barriers. If you go to Google Maps and switch to a terrain view you can see that modern Phoenix has sprawled out to hit all the surrounding regional parks and mountains (and Indian Reservations!) It still has some areas to the northwest past Surprise and southeast past Chandler but all the local areas are soon going to run into the same issues of existing residents not wanting buildings torn down so that denser/taller apartment buildings can be built. Once you get a few blocks away from the downtown of Phoenix I'm not sure I saw anything more than 2 stories tall.
Yes it does seem to me that the red state cities are partially coasting on the fact that they have more room still available to grow. Note that Miami doesn’t make this list of fast growing cities.
And infill densification will never be able to compete on price with suburban sprawl built on virgin land even if all the NIMBYs were blasted from the face of the earth.
Not price per square foot, but it can absolutely compete on price to desirability. Buying a house in freshly built sprawl usually means you have to drive 45 minutes to work.
Which probably explains why anti-sprawl activists tend to be stereotyped as people childless by choice: having kids makes square footage far more important.
It's the parents who decide where to live though (often before the kids are even born): is it (would-be) mothers in particular who are drawn to the big suburban house over the well-located city apartment?
Miami will be under water in thirty years. As will New Orleans. Long-term real estate investment in either locale is not advised.
But it would be interesting to see how enthusiasm for Urbanism (e.g., tall-ish mixed use building centred on transit hubs) plays in terms of Red vs. Blue political affinity.
Maybe you should look up the population densities of NY, Chicago, Boston, Philly, etc and compare to Pittsburgh before claiming “the work is done”. I lived for several years in a city with 40,000+ people per square mile with the majority of housing being only 3-4 stories high. The work is not done. And people live in outlying areas because they prefer suburbs to central cities (which are generally horrible places to raise a family unless one is wealthy and can afford private schooling, overpaying for groceries and basic essentials and eating out at expensive restaurants), not because Phoenix and Pittsburgh won’t build high rises.
But if there is demand for high rises and converting duplexes to apartment blocks- let it happen
You do temporarily displace people when you replace their building with a new one, but you can pay them off and give them right of return, which helps.
Lots of great data as usual, but it does not explain the election results.
Blueprint 2024's post-election interviews of 3262 voters found "Democrats are bad at running the places they control" and "Kamala Harris is too soft on crime" ranked #17 and #18 on a list of reasons voters voted as they did, both for all voters and for swing voters.
The #1 reason for swing voters was "Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class", and this was the #3 reason for all voters, behind inflation and illegal immigration.
That is why my three posts about lessons from Trump's victory were about the things you just mentioned.
Remember, as I said in the post, the main reason to fix blue cities is for the benefit of the people who live in those cities (and the benefit of people who *could* live in them, if they built more housing). National politics is a secondary consideration.
I agree completely about the need to fix blue cities.
Your previous three election pieces did not mention the trans issue at all. I suppose you want to say that it was implicitly included in the "elites are out of touch" piece, but it was the trans issue specifically that broke my 50 year streak of supporting Democrats, and the data shows that I was not alone. If the Democrats ever want to win again, ignoring the #1 issue for swing voters is not a good plan (though most of them certainly seem to want to stick to that plan, look what's happening to poor Seth Moulton!).
And you did write here that "OK, I think I have one more election post-mortem post in me" and "at the national level, the urban revolt against probably helped usher in another four years of Donald Trump", so I think I can be forgiven for thinking that you were arguing that this was a fourth reason for Trump's win.
I promise to write something about the trans issue. But I ignored it completely for so long that it'll be a while before I have anything useful to say.
as a person who failed out of community college several times before getting my degree. I would like you to further comment on your "the non college do not have the time, talent, study habits or funds to go to college."
Because I find it insanely offensive and just flat out wrong. You talk of as every college is Stanford with vibrant night lifes, community support, students living in dorms, engaged faculty, etc. When in reality most people attend commuter colleges that has none of those things.
The graduation rate for public universities is 60%. Could you imagine any business accepting this kind of failure rate? But no, its the workers who are lazy/non talented despite going on to have productive lives and hold down demanding jobs, have families, and start businesses.
Maybe college is not a good investment for the majority of Americans as currently constructed.
Sterilizing, desexing, and mutilating thousands of gay kids each and every year in this country, on the basis of pure medical quackery, is an ongoing crime against humanity, and every Democrat in office fully supports this form of violent homophobia. In Europe, where they have not-for-profit healthcare systems that can evaluate evidence without political bias, this crime is being stopped. Not so (yet) in the US.
> Sterilizing, desexing, and mutilating thousands of gay kids each and every year in this country, on the basis of pure medical quackery, is an ongoing crime against humanity, and every Democrat in office fully supports this form of violent homophobia. In Europe, where they have not-for-profit healthcare systems that can evaluate evidence without political bias, this crime is being stopped. Not so (yet) in the US.
Mark, you do realize you think and talk more about trans issues more than anyone I've ever met right? Why is it you are obsessed with gender studies or people who are experiencing gender dysphoria, depression or may be trans?
Do you have a source for any of this that isn't a NY Post article? Like an actual data source? I've shared the below multiple times with you and yet you still overgeneralize and use exaggerated data. There is nothing wrong with getting medical treatment or support for gender dysphoria, in fact it can help prevent issues and actually in most cases prevents people from wanting to go through any type of surgery. The link you usually provide that references the Post ignores.
There are not thousands of kids that are being mutilated or sterilized each year. It was less than a thousand kids a year according to the Post article (https://nypost.com/2024/10/08/us-news/over-5700-americans-under-18-had-trans-surgery-from-2019-23/) you share a lot that leaves out a lot of context and focuses on 2 de-transitioners. You can advocate for all the things you support and still not think that gets should get surgery. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
It is just flat-out false Mark for you to claim that every person who votes Democrat fully supports surgeries or doesn't know the difference between gender and sex or intersex. Also, these same things were happening in 2016 when Trump was President. You are engaging in bad faith rhetoric. If you want to talk about facts, or how more studies need to be done, or how certain things should be banned after a certain age that is fair, but not every kid getting gender affirming care is gay let alone are they getting surgeries. That is like the last resort. Russia is the only EU country that bans gender affirming care. However, there are other countries that limit puberty blockers, HRT, etc and we can and should have honest conversations about the impact of these treatments and effectiveness for sure. However, the first line of defense is a healthy community that isn't stigmatized and psychological support. GOP politicians wanting to ban all gender affirming care isn't helpful either.
I'm aware of the Reuters data from 2017-2021, numbers are higher now, but here are the key Reuters results:
>The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021.
>Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket..
>At least 14,726 minors started hormone treatment with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2017 through 2021, according to the Komodo analysis.
The NYPost article sites its sources, the results are broadly consistent with the Reuters results.
Note that hormone treatment is sterilizing, and 14,726 divided by 4 years is 3681; that's thousands per year.
I'm obsessed with this because it's an ongoing crime against humanity that is being perpetrated by my tribe, the blue tribe: I've been a registered Democrat for 50 years. Because of that, I feel personally responsible to help stop it.
Whatever you think about the topic (I seriously don't know, there should be way more research before policy decisions), pediatric transitions are serious stuff and it's understandable that people care about it.
You got propagandized my friend. Nothing about "the trans issue" was part of the Democratic campaign this year. You just watched a bunch of Trump ads and flipped your vote based on that. Bummer for you that you're so easy to manipulate.
Republicans campaign on crazy and then dial it back in office. Democrats are sneaky and act reasonable during the campaign, then when they get into office out comes the crazy. IMO anybody who believes that men should play in women's sports is disqualified from holding office due to mental insanity. If I thought Democrats would actually govern the way they campaign, I would actually vote for them.
This is certainly a live culture war issue, but it just isn't part of the Democratic party's platform at the national level. It's totally fine to care about this, but dumb for it to drive your vote in a national election.
I provided a source for the Biden administration ordering schools to allow men to compete in women's sports. How can you possibly claim this isn't a part of the Democratic party platform at a national level.
IMO, anyone who thinks that the issue of whether trans women should be allowed to compete in women's sports is an issue that needs to be resolved legislatively should be disqualified from voting due to "mental insanity," and for thinking that there are forms of "insanity" that are not "mental."
I see you're one of the people who won't admit to supporting it, but will strongly object to anybody trying to make a rule against it. Your comment shows two classic attributes of lefties. Dishonesty and pedantry.
In SF during Covid, the school board focused on renaming schools and eliminating rigorous curriculum rather than making sure kids got educated and schools were reopened asap. Some of the progressive insanity helped generate a groundswell to replace several school board members.
Re-opening the schools, let alone offering algebra, was deemed racist by the progressive cabal, and anyone even daring to suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, all races would benefit from schools being re-opened was canceled with extreme prejudice.
Honestly, progressives need to stay in their echo chambers sometimes. I never understood wanting to get rid of testing or math.... Again not all school systems did this, but I'm not really sure how they thought kids would have better outcomes based on that.
The way highly educated people with backgrounds in science and engineering have been bullied into compliance by social justice warriors in HR departments is one of the most shameful chapters in progressive politics. We're supposed to go all in on climate change because of science but also cannot speak up against all kinds of unscientific claims when it comes to trans.
Yes, I have been a STEM professor for 40 years. I used to believe that my party, the Democratic Party, was the party of science. That this is utterly false came as a terrible shock.
Both parties are theological now. Which isn't surprising if you understand human psychology. As Chesterton said, "if you give up on God, the danger isn't that you'll believe in nothing but that you'll believe in anything."
Your choices going forward are between a right-wing, common-sense, post-Christian theology and a Left-wing, militant, secular, woke theology. Pick your poison.
Democrats who were so terrified of a Christian-Republican theocracy in the 90's were letting a postmodernist theocracy grow right under their nose.
“How can we be nice to black people?”
“Oh I know, let’s decriminalize crime!”
This remains one of the dumbest and bonkers racist thing ever attempted, but I’ll admit Noah’s paragraph on anarchy not being a form of welfare is probably a fairer take on the minds of the progressives.
"Learn to govern San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles."
I see Noah left Chicago off the list. That's a hard nut to crack.
Chicago has a gang problem that really just can't be fixed. They do a pretty decent job on housing, and the homeless situation is not really that bad
Why is the gang problem in Chicago intractable in a way that gang problems in other cities are not?
The gangs are not very organized,so you just cant use RICO and conspiracy laws to bring them down like the cartel or mob. Two kids can be in the same gang,and not even know each other. There is no central point of control.
Sounds like Chicago gangs have the same kind of cellular structure that terrorist organizations use to confound the authorities: why aren't all criminal gangs organized like that?
You need the hierarchical structure to funnel all the funds to the top. The goal isn't crime for crime sake, but to selfishly profit off crime. A less centralized structure might be more robust against law enforcement but also probably doesn't generate as much money for the leadership.
Here in El Salvador they managed to sort out a way worse gang problem with way fewer resources.
The thing with militarized approaches to organized crime is that they lead governments to militarize the rest of society, including the political institutions. Eventually you find yourself in a soft authoritarian police state or you spark an actual war with armed gangs like in Colombia and Mexico.
El Salvador is a poor country that needs structure to promote economic development.
One could argue that the loss of civil liberties and authoritarianism is worth it.
I don’t think there’s an appetite in the US for that tradeoff.
<One could argue that the loss of civil liberties and authoritarianism is worth it.>
True, but that's basically what the Chinese Communist Party (and many other dictators in the Global South) argue: we provide prosperity in exchange for political control. I'm not unsympathetic to this argument, but this line of reasoning kinda undercuts Joe Biden's "democracy v. autocracy" shtick as well as Noah's warnings about an expansionist "Axis of Evil." International human rights don't mesh well with a permissive attitude toward modernizing dictatorships; just ask the ruling communists in China and Vietnam.
How is life under Presidente Dude Bro? Better than before?
Way better.
Chicago is the one with the pension problem he mentioned - IIRC it's actually a state level issue, but once it comes due their budget is toast unless they default on it.
For the moment though, it actually has lower levels of the other problems; housing is pretty cheap, it's nice enough downtown, you can touch the Bean.
Ironically, one of the reasons Silicon Valley exists is California overpromising on their pensions. It means CalPERS had to accept tons of risk and invest in tech startups.
And my understanding was that Silicon Valley was originally built mainly on defense spending!
I understand the impulse, but bear in mind that (A) hardly anyone ever campaigned on "decriminalizing crime" (unless your talking about lighter penalties or decriminalizing drug consumption, in which case you should be more precise in your language) and (B) most of the impetus behind criminal justice reform came from black and brown intellectuals like Michael Eric Dyson and Michelle Brown Alexander. White liberals (and leftists) largely hopped on the criminal justice reform bandwagon because they take their political/social cues from the intellectual/educated strata of minority populations.
“you should be more precise in your language”
Nah I’m good bro
“White liberals … take their political/social cues from the intellectual/educated strata of minority populations.”
The ethnic activist types claiming to represent the people while holding views that are FAR to the left of those very people they claim to represent, and the white progressives going along with this charade and telling themselves they have the consent of the XYZ people because the clowns at XYZ-studies department agreed with them, is not some minor mistake. It is exactly kind of the cultural elitism being refuted right now.
It kills me that some of those very far left intellectuals who have an outsized voice may not even vote, they have no solutions to any of the problems they pose either, but they can sure spend all day waxing poetic about problems and who is at fault. It's like they love the moral superiority but don't actually care about governing, or care about the real-world impact of their suggested policy stances. For what it is worth I think Michelle Alexander is not nearly as bad as Ibram Kendi, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say.
I'm not saying it's a minor mistake. I'm saying white progressives didn't cook this stuff up by themselves (or even originally). I'm assigning some responsibility onto upper-middle class minority intellectuals, who by and large are the very "ethnic activists" you seem to be criticizing. This is mainly because many critiques of woke politics lazily criticize white progressives for being too woke without properly identifying WHY they became so woke in the first place.
It's actually a self-perpetuating, elf-reinforcing symbiotic cycle.
Those minority "spokespeople" tapped for membership in the "cognitive elites" get their recognition (and their tenure) from their sponsors -- in academia, publishing, and the same sorts of foundations that sponsor NPR. And THEN their white counterparts (or acolytes) -- the "junior division" -- are ready and waiting to sign on (with guest appearances and glowing reviews).
What else are ANY of these people expected to do with a double major in Nonprofit Management and Ethnic Studies?
Name a single West Coast DA that did not campaign on decriminalizing crime. It was the foundation for their candidacies.
SF has a love hate relationship with tech. They love the tax revenues from tech booms but when people in tech are fed up with poor governance and urban disorder and want changes, progressives in charge want them to mind their own business. Progressives continue to demonize the tech industry while using us as their piggy banks.
Sounds like the conservative backlash in FL against Disney for being too "woke". GOP policies against Disney--a rather prominent US corporation, mind you--reduced its profits, and also hurt direct investment in the FL economy.
Or what about the anti-Gay push by the GOP in North Carolina a few years ago? That smart move ended up costing the state literally billions in lost investment.
Visible decay and homelessness are not things you normally see when the economy is doing well. No wonder people are sceptical.
Being unwilling to reopen the state hospitals and fill them with those folks who have proven unable to care for themselves isn’t an economic issue. IIRC the cost of doing so in SF is several 10s of thousand of dollars less than is currently being spent on the problem. It’s a matter of politicians being captured by activists ideologues who are out of touch with reality.
To what extent are those activist ideologues also grifters?
Are you saying we need to involuntarily commit anyone who is "homeless"? The number of homeless that have nothing to do with mental illness or addiction is very high (and yes, I have worked with the homeless in a semi-rural city). Providing easy to use housing does help the homeless and reopening the hospitals to provide that is a good idea, but dubious about the "proven unable to core for themselves" part.
“The number of homeless that have nothing to do with mental illness or addiction is very high (and yes, I have worked with the homeless in a semi-rural city)”
IIRC 90% of the homeless are homeless for less than a week. They are very often people who have just fallen on hard times, had some kind of crises, etc. Then we have the chronically homeless who have been on the street for +1 years - essentially all of them have substantial mental heath and or substance abuse problems.
Yep. The sleight of hand where one quotes a statistic about all people without a permanent address, then acts as if it refers to perpetual sidewalk or subway dwellers, isn’t fooling anyone anymore.
> IIRC 90% of the homeless are homeless for less than a week.
Not only that, but they can be in a home and yet homeless. i.e. they could be sleeping on a friend's couch, or in a relationship they don't like but can't afford to break up.
Arrest them when they commit crimes (including trespassing, if they refuse to move); let them plead insanity if that's their condition.
I've been destitute and homeless. There's ALWAYS someplace else to go -- and another way to approach life.
Yeah I think that this is truly a big part of the story. People just don't buy that the current problem with homelessness and disorder isn't an economic one. But it isn't! It's a political problem. We have this issue in the well-to-do small city I live in. We have a very high per capita income, and can afford a wide array of solutions to this problem. But everyone here is also very progressive, and a very small subset of those solutions that we can afford, are ones that voters and politicians will actually support.
Hmm, seen the same problem in some small cities that are quite red as well - more a function of folks generally being somewhat NIMBY IF it protects their property values (or is perceived to protect them)
The answer is simple: bus all the homeless to Blue states and cities! That's been a tried-and-true GOP tactic for years now.
I dunno, in the red cities in my state, they don't struggle with it as much, because they are more willing to just arrest people. But that makes everyone mad in progressive cities.
So yes, the root causes have a lot to do with nimbyism / housing policies, but different places respond to the immediate effects differently.
I can't help thinking that the Great Recession helped screw up blue city governance, as what Noah said about "progressive cities are operated for the benefit of the people who get the money instead of the people who get the stuff" sounds like they were viewing city services as a jobs program.
I think you might mean the Great Depression rather than the Great Recession. This stuff goes back at least that far, and more likely to the mid-1800s.
The things you have been saying recently are really just what most people would call common sense. It's kind of shocking that so few people in politics are saying them. A question I can't seem to answer is why isn't that what we get? A majority of Republican voters and Democrat voters agree, but why isn't that what we get when we elect Democrats or Republicans?
Because people hate problems, and they also hate solutions. Examples:
1. To fix disorder, you need to give the police and citizenry a longer leash to fight back. This inevitably will result in videos of bad stuff (police abuse; security guard killing or being killed by a shoplifter.) The public revolt against this and then we're back where we started.
2. Same as above for fixing public psychosis and drug use - inevitably, there will be stories of people committed that shouldn't be, and abuses within the committing facilities.
3. Immigration - same. You have to make illegal immigration painful to stop it - this inevitably results in bad stuff happening to sympathetic people.
4. Spend issues are even harder - unions, gov't workers and non-profits will not tolerate reductions in $ headed their way without a massive fight, and all of these groups have the power to create real problems for citizens.
None of these are easy problems to solve. I think the only way you solve them is getting a very, very strong head of state (Giuliani, Bloomberg, Trump) who isn't afraid to make a lot of enemies. Progressives, in particular, are not usually comfortable with this style of governance.
It’s worth noting that Giuliani and Bloomberg were not creatures of the NY Democratic machine. They did not owe any favors to unions, government employees, and, in the 90s, declining but still influential mafia connected interest groups. In previous administrations, raids on the South street would have been pointless, because someone in the sprawling Democratic machine would have tipped someone off. Giuliani was a successful prosecutor who came to power through a coalition of outer boroughs types + democratic voters who were sick of crime. Ignoring Al Sharpton, union demands, etc.. was a feature, not a bug. Bloomberg is an insanely wealthy technocrat who ran as a Republican because it was easier, and he could never win in the democratic machine. The city GOP is a joke of an organization; Bloomberg could use it for ballot access but otherwise it was useless. The return of the Democratic machine, under De Blasio, was seen by many within that machine as overdue, with the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations as aberrations. They tried to make up for lost time with the new union contracts and so forth.
Neither did Jerry Brown.
Agreed 100%. People want quick and easy solutions to complex problems. Additionally, one of my main gripes with the progressive movement is that they are definitely willing to let perfect be the enemy of good all the time.
One interesting thing about the phrase "common sense" is that it only really appears in conservative writing, and there it appears a lot. It's an extremely right coded phrase and concept. As a quick reality check of my claim compare mentions of the phrase in the NY Times vs the NY Post:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22common+sense%22
https://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Anypost.com+%22common+sense%22
The NY Times used to have a column called Common Sense but it's not really published anything since 2020, and it's a column about business - i.e. a conservative/right coded thing. Beyond that the next results Bing serves me are an article from 2022 titled "A debate over 'common sense' gun legislation" - the concept is so awkward to the left wing ear that they put it in scare quotes. The next result after that is, "A defense of common sense" from 2005 (which is about physics), and then "The trouble with common sense" (2011) and then "The limits of common sense" from 2005 again. Even discussion of the concept is rare, and when it does appear it's treated as a highly debatable thing that probably isn't legitimate at all.
The NY Post in contrast has results like: "How a lack of common sense is killing civilization" (2023), a story from October ("Scientist who battled for COVID common sense over media and government censors wins top award"), an op-ed from Douglas Murray from January ("Argentinian prez Javier Milei kills ‘em with common sense as he scolds Davos elites") and so on. Way more prevalent and used in political contexts.
To some extent this is just the way different tribes use language as a marker, but it's also a real reflection of differences in beliefs. Is wisdom and knowledge spread out, or is it concentrated in a small elite? Believe the latter and you become a leftist, believe the former and you become a libertarian-leaning rightist.
So when you ask "why is there so little common sense in politics", it's kind of an ideologically loaded question. In blue cities the very concept of common sense isn't talked about, and if you did talk about it you'd be viewed with suspicion. The problem is that an ideology which valorizes intellectuals must also reject ideas that anyone could have come up with, and thus be very prone to capture by clever sounding nonsense, because almost by definition intellectuals must stand apart from what's common. Otherwise they have no value.
The majority of people in both blue and red cities are all highly educated. To make it seem like people in blue cities don't talk about the very concept of common sense is really reductive. I think most of us have way more in common from a beliefs perspective than we have that makes us different. You really think if made a comment that included "common sense" in a blue city you'd be looked at with suspicion? What is this Nazi Germany?
Like I'm not disagreeing that self-proclaimed intellectuals think that the world can be so easily figured out and they are overly idealistic and think they alone can solve complex problems, but the idea that if you say "common sense' or anything like that you'd be viewed with suspicion is a bit much, like that might be true for people in your circle that you met at one time in your life but it is certainly an over generalized comment.
I think if you went to a meeting of a San Francisco local government committee, and objected to a proposal on the grounds that it violated "common sense", or made a proposal and justified it by saying "this is obviously common sense", then the leftists would treat you with suspicion because you'd sound like a Republican. Yes. Try it and see.
Why not Soylent Green as a solution to homelessness? That certainly makes sense, doesn't it?
Because modern America is based on J.S. Mill and Nietzschean postmodernism.
Mill's insists that regulating human behavior (via any means: social, legal, or economic) is legitimate only to prevent physical harm to someone else. Much of what Noah and you (rightly) call "common sense" is really an assertion that moral standards of some kind exist and can reasonably be enforced by the state. But doing that requires overturning Mill.
Collective definitions of virtue (the common good) also run contrary to postmodernism, which claims that laws in support of "the common good" are really just tools for the powerful to enforce racial or sexual or [fill in the blank] oppression. Postmodernism is the de-facto religion of our elites; the quintessential political dividing line of our day -- "what is a woman?" -- is a question that can only make sense under postmodernism. Besides, if reality is a social construction, then crime is too. (I'm not being facetious; this logic was common during BLM.)
That's why the Democrats (and plenty of old-school Never-Trump Republicans) can't just "adopt common sense" as you suggest. Because they don't believe in the common and they've been indoctrinated into a philosophy that is utterly nonsensical.
Who are these elites and Democrats, or even Never Trump Republicans that all ascribe to postmodernism? So, you are you saying that the only people who have got it all figured out are Trump and the MAGA people like MTG?
Come on Brian this is just an over sensationalized and overgeneralized take you've got here. Half the people who you are probably describing as "elites" and Dems are probably people who you know that still think about common sense and believe reality is not a social construct. Talking about "what is a woman" in abstract philosophical terms or regards to humanism is not same that we can't define a woman biologically.
I don't mean this as a defense of blue-city's terrible track record of building housing but charts like those "apartment completions, share of existing inventory" always feel a bit misleading to me. Because it doesn't really feel fair to compare, say, Pittsburgh with Phoenix. Pittsburgh is old and built-out. Founded in 1758 and a major city more or less from the beginning with a population density of 5,400 people per square mile. All the low-hanging fruit has been taken. Phoenix was founded in 1867, over 100 years later, and famously was a nothing town (only 65,000 people in 1940; Pittsburgh was something like 600,000 people are that time) until air-conditioning became widespread. And even today after all that explosive growth the population density of 3,100 per square mile is still just half of Pittsburgh.
Having lived in both cities there is just a lot more easy wins in Phoenix for housing. Pittsburgh took all the easy wins in the late 1800s. And you start to see this with Phoenix's skyrocketing housing prices as they hit natural & legal barriers. If you go to Google Maps and switch to a terrain view you can see that modern Phoenix has sprawled out to hit all the surrounding regional parks and mountains (and Indian Reservations!) It still has some areas to the northwest past Surprise and southeast past Chandler but all the local areas are soon going to run into the same issues of existing residents not wanting buildings torn down so that denser/taller apartment buildings can be built. Once you get a few blocks away from the downtown of Phoenix I'm not sure I saw anything more than 2 stories tall.
Yes it does seem to me that the red state cities are partially coasting on the fact that they have more room still available to grow. Note that Miami doesn’t make this list of fast growing cities.
And infill densification will never be able to compete on price with suburban sprawl built on virgin land even if all the NIMBYs were blasted from the face of the earth.
Not price per square foot, but it can absolutely compete on price to desirability. Buying a house in freshly built sprawl usually means you have to drive 45 minutes to work.
Which probably explains why anti-sprawl activists tend to be stereotyped as people childless by choice: having kids makes square footage far more important.
Sure, but as a city kid the idea that I somehow missed out by not growing up in sprawlsville seems ridiculous.
It's the parents who decide where to live though (often before the kids are even born): is it (would-be) mothers in particular who are drawn to the big suburban house over the well-located city apartment?
Miami will be under water in thirty years. As will New Orleans. Long-term real estate investment in either locale is not advised.
But it would be interesting to see how enthusiasm for Urbanism (e.g., tall-ish mixed use building centred on transit hubs) plays in terms of Red vs. Blue political affinity.
Maybe you should look up the population densities of NY, Chicago, Boston, Philly, etc and compare to Pittsburgh before claiming “the work is done”. I lived for several years in a city with 40,000+ people per square mile with the majority of housing being only 3-4 stories high. The work is not done. And people live in outlying areas because they prefer suburbs to central cities (which are generally horrible places to raise a family unless one is wealthy and can afford private schooling, overpaying for groceries and basic essentials and eating out at expensive restaurants), not because Phoenix and Pittsburgh won’t build high rises.
But if there is demand for high rises and converting duplexes to apartment blocks- let it happen
Where did I say the work is done? Talking on the internet is exhausting when people willfully misunderstand.
There is no such thing as "old and built out." They still build new buildings in Rome. Right on top of the ancient ruins of the old ones.
You do temporarily displace people when you replace their building with a new one, but you can pay them off and give them right of return, which helps.
Lots of great data as usual, but it does not explain the election results.
Blueprint 2024's post-election interviews of 3262 voters found "Democrats are bad at running the places they control" and "Kamala Harris is too soft on crime" ranked #17 and #18 on a list of reasons voters voted as they did, both for all voters and for swing voters.
The #1 reason for swing voters was "Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class", and this was the #3 reason for all voters, behind inflation and illegal immigration.
https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8/
That is why my three posts about lessons from Trump's victory were about the things you just mentioned.
Remember, as I said in the post, the main reason to fix blue cities is for the benefit of the people who live in those cities (and the benefit of people who *could* live in them, if they built more housing). National politics is a secondary consideration.
I agree completely about the need to fix blue cities.
Your previous three election pieces did not mention the trans issue at all. I suppose you want to say that it was implicitly included in the "elites are out of touch" piece, but it was the trans issue specifically that broke my 50 year streak of supporting Democrats, and the data shows that I was not alone. If the Democrats ever want to win again, ignoring the #1 issue for swing voters is not a good plan (though most of them certainly seem to want to stick to that plan, look what's happening to poor Seth Moulton!).
And you did write here that "OK, I think I have one more election post-mortem post in me" and "at the national level, the urban revolt against probably helped usher in another four years of Donald Trump", so I think I can be forgiven for thinking that you were arguing that this was a fourth reason for Trump's win.
I promise to write something about the trans issue. But I ignored it completely for so long that it'll be a while before I have anything useful to say.
as a person who failed out of community college several times before getting my degree. I would like you to further comment on your "the non college do not have the time, talent, study habits or funds to go to college."
Because I find it insanely offensive and just flat out wrong. You talk of as every college is Stanford with vibrant night lifes, community support, students living in dorms, engaged faculty, etc. When in reality most people attend commuter colleges that has none of those things.
The graduation rate for public universities is 60%. Could you imagine any business accepting this kind of failure rate? But no, its the workers who are lazy/non talented despite going on to have productive lives and hold down demanding jobs, have families, and start businesses.
Maybe college is not a good investment for the majority of Americans as currently constructed.
The "trans issue" is what turned you against the Democrats? Were that not so pathetic, it would be hilarious.
Sterilizing, desexing, and mutilating thousands of gay kids each and every year in this country, on the basis of pure medical quackery, is an ongoing crime against humanity, and every Democrat in office fully supports this form of violent homophobia. In Europe, where they have not-for-profit healthcare systems that can evaluate evidence without political bias, this crime is being stopped. Not so (yet) in the US.
> Sterilizing, desexing, and mutilating thousands of gay kids each and every year in this country, on the basis of pure medical quackery, is an ongoing crime against humanity, and every Democrat in office fully supports this form of violent homophobia. In Europe, where they have not-for-profit healthcare systems that can evaluate evidence without political bias, this crime is being stopped. Not so (yet) in the US.
Mark, you do realize you think and talk more about trans issues more than anyone I've ever met right? Why is it you are obsessed with gender studies or people who are experiencing gender dysphoria, depression or may be trans?
Do you have a source for any of this that isn't a NY Post article? Like an actual data source? I've shared the below multiple times with you and yet you still overgeneralize and use exaggerated data. There is nothing wrong with getting medical treatment or support for gender dysphoria, in fact it can help prevent issues and actually in most cases prevents people from wanting to go through any type of surgery. The link you usually provide that references the Post ignores.
You can look at the data here: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/
There are not thousands of kids that are being mutilated or sterilized each year. It was less than a thousand kids a year according to the Post article (https://nypost.com/2024/10/08/us-news/over-5700-americans-under-18-had-trans-surgery-from-2019-23/) you share a lot that leaves out a lot of context and focuses on 2 de-transitioners. You can advocate for all the things you support and still not think that gets should get surgery. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
It is just flat-out false Mark for you to claim that every person who votes Democrat fully supports surgeries or doesn't know the difference between gender and sex or intersex. Also, these same things were happening in 2016 when Trump was President. You are engaging in bad faith rhetoric. If you want to talk about facts, or how more studies need to be done, or how certain things should be banned after a certain age that is fair, but not every kid getting gender affirming care is gay let alone are they getting surgeries. That is like the last resort. Russia is the only EU country that bans gender affirming care. However, there are other countries that limit puberty blockers, HRT, etc and we can and should have honest conversations about the impact of these treatments and effectiveness for sure. However, the first line of defense is a healthy community that isn't stigmatized and psychological support. GOP politicians wanting to ban all gender affirming care isn't helpful either.
I'm aware of the Reuters data from 2017-2021, numbers are higher now, but here are the key Reuters results:
>The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021.
>Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket..
>At least 14,726 minors started hormone treatment with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2017 through 2021, according to the Komodo analysis.
The NYPost article sites its sources, the results are broadly consistent with the Reuters results.
Note that hormone treatment is sterilizing, and 14,726 divided by 4 years is 3681; that's thousands per year.
I'm obsessed with this because it's an ongoing crime against humanity that is being perpetrated by my tribe, the blue tribe: I've been a registered Democrat for 50 years. Because of that, I feel personally responsible to help stop it.
That's an almost miraculously stupid take on the "issue." But thanks for confirming that you're hilariously pathetic.
Ah yes, responding with no facts and a personal insult, the go-to move of the left.
Whatever you think about the topic (I seriously don't know, there should be way more research before policy decisions), pediatric transitions are serious stuff and it's understandable that people care about it.
Porque no los dos?
You got propagandized my friend. Nothing about "the trans issue" was part of the Democratic campaign this year. You just watched a bunch of Trump ads and flipped your vote based on that. Bummer for you that you're so easy to manipulate.
Of course they didn't campaign on it because they know it's unpopular. But it is the policy of their party https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/03/29/report-rule-trans-athletes-delayed-until-after-election
Republicans campaign on crazy and then dial it back in office. Democrats are sneaky and act reasonable during the campaign, then when they get into office out comes the crazy. IMO anybody who believes that men should play in women's sports is disqualified from holding office due to mental insanity. If I thought Democrats would actually govern the way they campaign, I would actually vote for them.
This is certainly a live culture war issue, but it just isn't part of the Democratic party's platform at the national level. It's totally fine to care about this, but dumb for it to drive your vote in a national election.
I provided a source for the Biden administration ordering schools to allow men to compete in women's sports. How can you possibly claim this isn't a part of the Democratic party platform at a national level.
IMO, anyone who thinks that the issue of whether trans women should be allowed to compete in women's sports is an issue that needs to be resolved legislatively should be disqualified from voting due to "mental insanity," and for thinking that there are forms of "insanity" that are not "mental."
I see you're one of the people who won't admit to supporting it, but will strongly object to anybody trying to make a rule against it. Your comment shows two classic attributes of lefties. Dishonesty and pedantry.
Nope, not propagandized, fully informed. If you want to be, you can start here: https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report
Yeah, you really are an idiot.
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/integrity-project_cass-response.pdf
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-k-s-cass-review-badly-fails-trans-children/. [Be sure to follow the links, clown].
What does this report have to do with a national election in the United States?
In SF during Covid, the school board focused on renaming schools and eliminating rigorous curriculum rather than making sure kids got educated and schools were reopened asap. Some of the progressive insanity helped generate a groundswell to replace several school board members.
Re-opening the schools, let alone offering algebra, was deemed racist by the progressive cabal, and anyone even daring to suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, all races would benefit from schools being re-opened was canceled with extreme prejudice.
Honestly, progressives need to stay in their echo chambers sometimes. I never understood wanting to get rid of testing or math.... Again not all school systems did this, but I'm not really sure how they thought kids would have better outcomes based on that.
The way highly educated people with backgrounds in science and engineering have been bullied into compliance by social justice warriors in HR departments is one of the most shameful chapters in progressive politics. We're supposed to go all in on climate change because of science but also cannot speak up against all kinds of unscientific claims when it comes to trans.
Yes, I have been a STEM professor for 40 years. I used to believe that my party, the Democratic Party, was the party of science. That this is utterly false came as a terrible shock.
Both parties are theological now. Which isn't surprising if you understand human psychology. As Chesterton said, "if you give up on God, the danger isn't that you'll believe in nothing but that you'll believe in anything."
Your choices going forward are between a right-wing, common-sense, post-Christian theology and a Left-wing, militant, secular, woke theology. Pick your poison.
Democrats who were so terrified of a Christian-Republican theocracy in the 90's were letting a postmodernist theocracy grow right under their nose.
Ah yes, the "common sense" of imposing tariffs and cutting taxes to fight inflation. What were the woke Left-wing militants thinking!
Yes, a postmodernist theocracy complete with child sacrifice.
Child Sacrifice? That seems a little out there...
Over a thousand children, viewed as sacred by the new religion, are ritually mutilated every year here in Our Democracy.
A lot of words and group associations without any data to support it.