Including this now ex-Washingtonian:
During the last night in my condo in DC, I had to walk my dog an extra lap around the block because a crazy person was outside screaming obscenities. I wasn’t afraid. I just didn’t feel like getting into it with him or having to listen to his story—his “Let me just tell you something,” attempt to get money from me. It was 1 A.M., and I was tired from a night out—but more so, just tired in general. Tired of it all.
“Woke” people are blind to their own elitism, and one way that elitism has manifested itself in “urban renewal,” with the accompanying “gentrification.” What they didn’t realise is that a great deal of that renewal was buttressed by a police force with the training, weaponry and mandate to enforce the law rigidly. Now that woke mayors and other officials basically let protestors run wild, that renewal is pretty much history.
With that we’re back to the 1960’s and 1970’s, when high crime was routine in urban centres (how conveniently my fellow boomers forget!) and people didn’t want to go there. My brother used to say there were certain parts of Houston where the police didn’t go, and we’re back to that too. A product of that volte-face in American life (we seem to specialise in those too) is that people who have the opportunity to leave will do so. (My experience “on the bus” tells me that the people who can’t get out aren’t any happier about the crime, irrespective of their race.) And one pillar of wokeness will be tumbled down.
Another one which is in trouble is higher education, but that’s another post…seems like there’s a Sampson running through our society:
And when their heart was merry, then they said, Call Sampson out of the prison-house, and let him play before us: and they called Sampson out of the prison-house, and he played before them; and they smote him with the palms of their hands, and set him between the pillars. And Sampson said to the young man that held his hand, Suffer me to feel the pillars on which the house rests, and I will stay myself upon them. And the house was full of men and woman, and there were all the chiefs of the Philistines, and on the roof were about three thousand men and woman looking at the sports of Sampson. And Sampson wept before the Lord, and said, O Lord, my lord, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, O God, yet this once, and I will requite one recompense to the Philistines for my two eyes. And Sampson took hold of the two pillars of the house on which the house stood, and leaned on them, and laid hold of one with his right hand, and the other with his left. And Sampson said, Let my wife perish with the Philistines: and he bowed himself mightily; and the house fell upon the princes, and upon all the people that were in it: and the dead whom Sampson slew in his death were more than those whom he slew in his life. (Judges 16:25-30 Brenton)
Positive Infinity 