Destination Baltimore
Pundits and commentators on news shows have been honest recently in describing Hillary Clinton’s now-dead campaign as devoid of a big idea. There is no pitch to America. An even more honest pundit would freely admit that the voting coalition is free stuff for each underclass and grievance group, as well as media-promoted higher social status for the well-to-do whites and Asians. In her own words, there is the drive for inclusion, more benefits, and being nice. Vote for me! She will bring about the utopia.
This is not different from President Obama’s 2012 pitch, which was stay the course. His convention speech practically moaned “Gimme more time“. These figureheads represent a system, which is the system we have been living under since the New Deal and cemented in the ’60s with the Great Society, CRA, and immigration. When spoken out of the mouths of everyday liberals, it sounds even more hollow, but they are right. They are good. They are the positive forces.
These are the true believers of their religion. Even if not true believers, they are fellow travelers going to the church of progressivism to look good, per the ruling priests. Approach them from a different angle. Go along with the quest for the utopia, and point out its end results.
Not Scandinavia. Baltimore.
Baltimore is the end result of Democrats ruling a city for decades. It is also the end result of Democrats needing to import black voters and use them as weapons to lock down the city electorally and therefore lock down state wide elections. In other words: insecure power. Maryland, since the dawn of the progressive era, has rarely had a non-Democrat running the state, with Baltimore often providing the cushion of any Democratic electoral victory.
It is also a place of misery and crime, fictionalized for progressives to weep over in the show The Wire. Like any good piece of progressive pop culture, the misery is shown, but no one digs into its genesis. Abstract boogeymen can be blamed, but decades of progressive policies and progressive needs set Baltimore in its place.
How bad is Baltimore? It is a city of very little industry that, like Detroit, has been cut nearly in half since the 1950s. Whites have fled, so despite all the hysteria in essays on racism in bygone decades in Baltimore, it was the white population that was ethnically cleansed or fled. A small central location for ambitious gentrification forces has popped up, but it is in the midst of a sea of misery. After the mayor and DA used Freddie Gray’s death as a means to push the nationalization of police forces, and their political futures, the murder rate skyrocketed to levels not seen in decades. Police officers have quit by the hundreds.
Read the rest at Social Matter.
