Readers of this commentary know we here at TPOL are NOT lovers of urban areas. We imagine that the recent commentary on Chicago’s homicide record supports that understanding.
Indeed, as time goes on, our distaste for the places (including their “culture” and “society” and government) grows by leaps and bounds. Even the smaller cities of just 40 or 100 thousand or so. Not the cesspools with 500K or a million.
Fortunately, their days are numbered, in our opinion.
In addition to Chicago, consider San Francisco.
A few years back, Proposition 47, passed in 2014 by the Californian “democracy,” triggered a still-growing wave of shoplifting, especially in the woke and so-called progressive (regressive) City of San Francisco. It is not just that an increasing percentage of the city’s population is insane by (old) standards. The power-hungry politicians feed on the situation, promote it, and actually trigger it.
The shoplifting is just one symptom of the madness, but a highly visible one. A video on Twitter (I was referred to by a friend – not on that social media myself) shows a gang of ten people – ten criminals. Stealing handbags in broad daylight from a Neiman Marcus store in the heart of Babylon-by-the-Bay. Yes, they are wearing masks and they are running, but they know they have little or nothing to fear. Police do not even attempt to stop or arrest the perps – it would be just one more “catch and release.”
It is no wonder that a survey a while back reported that over 40% of San Franciscans want to and plan to leave the city (and perhaps even the State). (Although mainstream media and academia seem to be working overtime to refute this, according to a later story.)
The filthy condition (physical, mental, and moral) of San Francisco is perhaps extreme but different only in scale from those of dozens of other cities. And they are not limited to the Coasts: these conditions are found in the Heartland as well – in Flyover Country. We’ve seen it personally in cities in Colorado and New Mexico, and we’ve seen the conditions get steadily worse. (And it is NOT limited just to Democratic Party regimes.)
Nor to the urban core. It is NOT just Albuquerque, but Bernalillo and the other suburban towns around it in New Mexico. It is not just Denver, or even Denver and Aurora. It is both the inner and outer suburbs: Arvada, Golden, Greenwich Village, and increasingly the more remote farm-towns turned bedroom communities: Bennett and Strasburg, Sedalia and Parker, Hudson and more. Ramping-up (and increasingly unreported) “minor” crime like vandalism, petty theft, and more. Increased domestic violence. Vicious verbal attacks, sometimes turning physical. And as a result, overloading of the various response agencies.
Now, most of these places are really small towns: even as few as a thousand or two. But they are within easy driving and mass-transit distance of the bigger and nastier core cities and urban breeding grounds of mayhem, cruelty, and abuse. But it is the big core cities that are the pockets of infection that spread cancer-like to more and more areas.
Fortunately, American cities are dying. Indeed, they are killing themselves. It is NOT just a matter of government stupidity and actions. It is leaders, businesses, residents – and not just the underclass or the poor. I have met with and spoken with dozens of people fleeing inner suburbs for outer suburbs, or even to the “exburbs” – places like Bosque Farms and Sandia Knolls and Moriarity around Albuquerque. Places like Broomfield and Fort Lupton and Keenesburg around Denver. I am sure every urban area has such problems. People, especially with families, are fleeing to “safer areas.” But all too often these areas are still ruled by the very county (and State) governments that have turned their old neighborhoods into places of horror. And worse, they bring the infection with them. Directly or indirectly.
What is to be done?
Fortunately, with modern technology, we are not dependent on these monstrous urban areas for many essentials. At least, the capacity exists for the services they provide, and the goods produced there, to be provided in far smaller and much less densely populated areas. And not just rural hinterlands: true rural areas and even frontier areas.
So at least one thing that can be done is what is already happening: Abandon these dinosaurs. And avoid creating small versions of them. Don’t just flee Albuquerque for Santa Fe or even Farmington: instead go to places like Las Vegas (the New Mexico Las Vegas, NOT Lost Wages, Nevada), Raton, Vaughn, Gallup or Socorro. Don’t run to Colorado Springs or Pueblo or Grand Junction: search out places like Limon and Burlington, Poncha Springs, Kremling, and even Sterling and Brush. We don’t want to turn still-tolerable small urban areas (examples, at least to some, like Rapid City and Sioux Falls and Sioux City and Gillette) into copycat urban areas.
Another thing? Seek actively to decentralize: build futures for your children and grandchildren that do NOT encourage them to flock to the big urban areas. Whether for education or employment. Yes, the “big bucks” are enticing, but most of us can learn the price demanded in sanity, safety, moral and ethical soundness, and more – is just not something we want to pay. Or have our children pay.
And don’t let the current crop of people (belatedly) fleeing the cesspools like SF, LA, KC, DFW, etc. bring the same habits and attitudes that made those places stinking sewers to YOUR town: teach them early and quickly about liberty and freedom – especially freedom from government and privilege.
As with the destruction of urban cores being directly related to education – and the lack thereof, of true education? And directly related to the examples both children and adults see around them? So being taught by word and deed to be honest and peaceful – and yet able and willing to defend ourselves – can and does rub off on the refugees. But they need to be carefully decontaminated. Not easy, but necessary.
Think on these things!
The Price of Liberty 
Well OK. I grew up in the country and I fondly remember rambling through woods, shooting. 22s in my backyard, etc. But I also remember watching my neighbor’s barn burn to the ground because the volunteer fire department took forever to respond, and watching a guy die of a heart attack because the ambulance had to travel across the county. That’s not to mention having to wait a few days to have a new well dug when the old one ran dry, being snowed in for days at a time, and so on.
I then worked LE in and around Chicago for 30 years (notCPD), so I know a few things about cities and crime. One of them is that only about 20% of homicides have “legit” (i.e., non-criminal) victims, and they’re concentrated in certain neighborhoods and almost exclusively gang-related. CPD has a saying, “Today’s offender is tomorrow’s victim, ” and in nonfatal shootings, today’s victim is tomorrow’s offender. The city’s conveniences go a long way toward alleviating the hassles of living in the middle of nowhere.
And consider this: If everyone follows your advice, would you want those icky city people living near you and getting their city cooties on you? I don’t think so.
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Neat points and appreciate your counter-arguments. And agree with your analysis on where the homicides take place. I would disagree with you, based on personal experience from decades in both urban and rural areas, regarding fire-service, ambulance, and police response times in both. I have seen houses completely destroyed by fire in cities with fulltime firefighters due to poor response times and traffic – and people die because of delays in EMS response in cities. And response time even on violent crimes. I do not blame that as much on the actual responders as on the urban government elected officials and especially the vast army of unelected bureaucrats infesting our cities. (And smaller places as well, I admit.) But some of that is countered by rural and frontier people willing (and able) to help – versus the enforced victim attitude and willingness of urban “leaders” to let the criminal elements run wild.
The cities COULD be restored (they are beyond reformation), but there is neither will nor courage to do so – and so they will continue to slide into collapse, chaos, increased tyranny, and ultimately doom. It is a very slow but steady process: one I’ve seen first hand in Rhode Island, Northern Virginia, San Francisco Bay area, and Maryland. The slowness increases the misery and damage.
Yes, getting buried under urban refugees is a serious concern – and we see it happening in places like Utah and Colorado and Idaho and even South Dakota: they bring their attitudes with them. So education is essential – and reform of local and state government in those areas is as well. Many urban people are quite tolerable if they have been properly disinfected.
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I agree about response times in urban areas these days, and I also agree about the reasoning. The Second City Cop blog, run by a Chicago PD copper, has an article this morning about the BS calls that CFD ambulances go to because politicians refuse to allow calls to be triaged. I don’t know that rural response times can be improved much without building more fire stations, etc., since geography doesn’t change, and neither do safe vehicle speeds.
As far as rural people being more willing to help their neighbors, that’s absolutely true. but willingness and ability are two different things. Squirting your garden hose on a house fire won’t do much good, and how many of your neighbors have the training and equipment to save you if you’re seriously injured in a car crash or have a heart attack in front of their house? Most people don’t have tourniquets or stop-the-bleed kits handy, and if they do, how eager would they be to jump in, with all the different kinds of yuck that can be in blood these days? How many of your neighbors know CPR?
I’m not knocking rural people; they probably have more basic life skills than city people do because they have to be more self-reliant, and I wish everyone, rural, urban, or in-between, had those skills. (I wish common sense was not uncommon enough to be considered a superpower, too, but here we are.)
And thank you for not taking offense at my comment about city people cooties. It was kind of uncalled-for, and I appreciate your indulgence.
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But it was a cute remark! Good points, and as we seem to be on a jag right now, you are pointing out the need to educate ourselves and others. (Dare we mention the word “morality”?)
FMI out of curiosity, what is the significance of your screen name Old 1811?
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If there’d been an Internet 2000 years ago, it would no doubt have featured columns confidently predicting the end of Rome, Damascus, and Jerusalem.
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Don’t forget, Tom. Rome DID end. Destroyed multiple times, and at times with populations of a few thousand. As did Jerusalem: at least three times that we can date with great accuracy, left uninhabited and uninhabitable. I don’t know enough details about Damascus to know if that happened to it today, but I suspect it did. Yes, new cities were built at the same locations, but though they claim the heritage of the earlier cities, they are definitely different and distinct. And not all cities of ancient times were “revived” – consider Babylon, Ninevah, Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, Cahokia, Mesa Verde, and the great Maya cities. To say nothing of places in South America, other parts of Africa, and South Asia.
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