It’s the People, Stupid

More than half the voters at San Francisco City Hall registered on Election Day - ABC7 San Francisco — San Francisco voters at the polls

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…” Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 1947

But, dear Winston, what happens when the people vote for lunacy, or vote into power an autocracy of the self-important who happen to be the missionaries of the lunacy? It stays and never seems to go away until the place becomes a ghost town. Such is the bane of our times.

To borrow another line from the demagogic James Carville in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Rework it a bit and you would uncover another truism: It’s the people, stupid. The civilizational rot in our deepest blue places did not originate in a foreign lab. It was homegrown by our citizenry voting for lunacy and lunatics. No coup put into power in Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Albany, practically the entire Bos-Wash corridor, such a homogeneous grouping of the daft. They were freely chosen by the residents who decided to show up at the polls in those jurisdictions-turned-asylums.

We know it to be lunacy because . . . just look around. It’s littered all over the ground in these places, in the abandoned store fronts, empty commercial buildings, the gauntlet of the homeless/needles/feces, business flight, the lawlessness, the eviscerated economy from the eco-fanaticism. Of recent note, here’s a few examples of the dégringolade (civilizational decline).

The people of California, in the grip of the decarceration schtick of the Obama years, passed Prop 47 in 2014. It tweaked the state’s criminal code to reduce many felonies to misdemeanors, under the moniker “nonviolent”, especially property crimes with damages under $950. Probably, the only benefit from the change is that it improved the math skills of some of the state’s worst students. Understandably, rushing down the aisles of Nordstrom grabbing everything hither and yon and being able to produce a running – literally running – total of under $950 will sharpen anyone’s math intellect.

“Smash and grabs” have become the latest thing for many urban youths in the Golden State. Watch the ransacking below of a Nordstrom in Topanga, Ca., Saturday, August 14. Brazenness has become commonplace in the post-Prop 47 world of California. It (Prop 47) was billed as a sensible response to overzealous prosecutors. Instead, it produced A Clockwork Orange. All of it democratically chosen.

Don’t think that’s the end of it. Up and down the state, the mania is sweeping high-end shopping centers. That venerable mouthpiece of “decarceration”, NPR, in a rare sign of awareness of reality, stated, “Saturday’s robbery was the third Nordstrom heist in California in less than two years.” Days before, an Yves Saint Laurent store in Glendale was hit. San Francisco is famous for it.

Walgreens, San Francisco, chains their freezer boxes. Convenience shopping at a Walgreens or CVS is harder to come by since many have closed. One shoplifter at a SF Walgreens when asked by a reporter why he didn’t pay, as he nonchalantly walked out of the store, responded casually, “It’s San Francisco, Bro.” Watch the ABC 7 report here:

Seattle turned itself into a basket case. Remember CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone – ergo, no cops allowed) from that 2020 summer of riotous “fun”? In a recent Household Pulse Survey, Seattle residents’ disapproval of their own city ranks it ahead in the misery index of such metropolitan disaster zones as Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York City. 600,000 residents were queried and half cited “rent increases” while a quarter of them pointed to “unsafe neighborhoods”. Not a good look if you’re trying to keep or attract people. And the policymakers that made it all happen were duly elected, and may get elected again.

Oregon, in the grip of the inmates of the Willamette Valley urban asylums, passed with a 60% majority Measure 110, drug decriminalization and stepped-up treatment programs. Drug decriminalization occurred, but the measure’s treatment programs grotesquely floundered, so much so that the program’s director, Angela Carter, resigned one year later. The state is a druggies’ haven with overdose deaths and crime skyrocketing and the public square filthy and littered in homeless encampments.

A self-described “left of center” Portland resident and restaurant owner, Lisa Schroeder, expressed her regrets, “If I could turn back time and repeal Measure 110 tomorrow, I would do it.” Some are trying. Clackamas County Board of Supervisors, which encompasses some of Portland’s suburbs, approved a resolution requesting the state to do just that. Don’t expect that to happen any time soon. Other popularly elected representatives stand in the way.

At root is the prevalence of a mindset – left, right, and center – that an individual’s problems are somebody else’s fault, or the costs of their misbehavior will be borne by an abstracted “other”, not by them. They are not their own fault . . . when, in fact, they are!

This mentality is growing on the right. The anti-racists’ “privileged” (whites) are not so privileged – look at the opioid and meth deaths among poor whites – and these destitute whites are acquiring the outlook that they too are victims of faceless, nameless “others”. The lack of agency is as profound as the ingrained excuse-making among the youths rampaging a Nordstrom in California and their left-wing abettors in positions of power. The it-can’t-be-my-fault is resplendent in Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” tune. It’s gone viral. Some lyrics:

I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away

Sorry, but here’s a guy who needs to get off his ass. Bull**** pay? You know, he may have to walk around the homeless encampments, but he could go to school and pick up a skilled trade rather than fret about “bull****” pay while he “drown[s] [his] troubles away”. Watch the full ditty:

That’s the problem: too many people have bought into system-mongering. The “system” is said to be working against them, whether the panderers are talking about blue-collars in depressed areas or the deepest blue precincts who see a racist under every rug. You see, it’s the “people” who believe in things that aren’t true. In a democracy, a deranged people create a deranged government. It’s time that we put the blame where it belongs – on the people – and stop the pandering.

RogerG

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