Collapsing Civilization Might Not Be Entirely Popular

Especially if you're living in the middle of it.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the degrading of everyday life when normal standards of safety, decency and accountability are left on the sidewalk (along with drug needles and human waste, among other delightful items). The story to which the post referred was about the fraying of civilized life in New York City, helped along by the “criminals-are-martyrs” policies of DA Alvin Bragg, who’s got plenty of time to gin up a Rube Goldberg indictment against Donald Trump but not enough time to pay even slight attention to the rampant theft, drug use and vagrancy that’s destroying commercial and civic life all around him.

It will come as no surprise that the far Left policies that afflict New York are doing the same thing in the equally bad (or worse) environs of Oakland, CA. But at least there, some right-wing elements have noticed and are sounding the alarm. Here’s what they have to say. Their op-ed goes on for a while; I’ll give you the first six paragraphs verbatim because it’s a first-hand account:

Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities. Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland. We call on all elected leaders to unite and declare a state of emergency and bring together massive resources to address our public safety crisis.

African Americans are disproportionately hit the hardest by crime in East Oakland and other parts of the city. But residents from all parts of the city report that they do not feel safe. Women are targeted by young mobs and viciously beaten and robbed in downtown and uptown neighborhoods. Asians are assaulted in Chinatown. Street vendors are robbed in Fruitvale. News crews have their cameras stolen while they report on crime. PG&E workers are robbed and now require private security when they are out working. Everyone is in danger.

Failed leadership, including the movement to de-fund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals. If there are no consequences for committing crime in Oakland, crime will continue to soar.

People are moving out of Oakland in droves. They are afraid to venture out of their homes to go to work, shop, or dine in Oakland and this is destroying economic activity. Businesses, small and large, struggle and close, tax revenues vanish, and we are creating the notorious doom-loop where life in our city continues to spiral downward. As economic pain increases, the conditions that help create crime and criminals are exacerbated by desperate people with no employment opportunities.

We are in crisis and elected leaders must declare a state of emergency and bring resources together from the city, the county, and the state to end the crisis. We are 500 police officers short of the number that experts say Oakland needs.

Our 911 system does not work. Residents now know that help will not come when danger confronts them. Worse, criminals know that too.

Did I mention that the the op-ed was written by right-wing elements? April fool! It was actually written by Cynthia Adams, President of the Oakland Branch of the NAACP, and Bishop Bob Jackson, Senior Pastor, Acts Full Gospel Church.

When the usual pillars of the Left’s Received Wisdom sound roughly like Bill Barr being interviewed on Fox News, you know things are at a low ebb.

They’re no better right across the Bay in San Francisco. The owner of a department store that’s been serving the city for one hundred sixty five years says that safety and sanitation have deteriorated to the point that there seems to be no choice but to shutter or move.

Hence this story from the SF Standard:

The owner of Gump's, one of San Francisco's most storied department stores, issued a scathing rebuke to city leaders this weekend over business and street conditions Downtown.

John Chachas, who acquired Gump's following a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018, paid for ad space in the print edition of Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle to run an open letter decrying the state of the city's Downtown, and what he sees as dereliction of leadership from Mayor London Breed and the city's Board of Supervisors, as well as California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

"Gump's has been a San Francisco icon for more than 165 years," he wrote in the ad. "Today, as we prepare for our 166th holiday season at 250 Post Street, we fear this may be our last because of the profound erosion of this city's conditions."

The specifics are depressing but not surprising.

[T]he effects of "the tyranny of the minority" of people occupying sidewalks, selling drugs and defiling public spaces led Chachas to publish the letter.

The letter asked the governor, mayor and city supervisors to clean up the streets, remove homeless encampments, enforce laws and bring San Francisco back to "its rightful place as one of America's shining beacons of urban society."

On Sunday, Chachas told The Standard he has received nothing but support through the comment section on Gump's website.

"No one's told me, 'Oh my, how uncaring you are toward the homeless,'" he said. "I received multiple responses saying 'truth to power,' 'You're saying exactly what everybody believes.' It's just that no one listens."

I respectfully dissent on that point. It’s not that no one listens. It’s that no one in a position to do anything cares. Newsom and the rest of the far Left know exactly what’s going on. The reason they won’t even try to fix it is not ignorance. They view America as a racist cesspool, a capitalist, militarist blight upon the earth, and if this is what it gets, well, it has it coming. Indeed, it’s had it coming for a long time. This is our deserved reckoning.

Ringside readers know that I view Donald Trump as a reckless, lawless and painfully self-absorbed man who has neither the ethical grounding, discipline or sobriety to be trusted with power. But life is choosing, and if the other choice is the political party that holds hands with (and perhaps will nominate) Gavin Newsom and the rest of that crowd — in other words, a party that hates the country and actively promotes its decline — then I fear that history’s gun is pointed at my head.