Summary: America has two major political parties. This series discusses their indifference to the concerns of most Americans and their slow descent into madness. Today let’s look at the Democratic Party and the great American cities it governs.
Here’s a logo for many of America’s cities: Democrats run most of them.
They run most of America’s great cities, whose streets run with blood (less now than formerly, cold comfort to the relatives of the dead). The policy priorities of Party’s leaders are open borders (massive immigration, preferably from failed states), rights for the transgendered, police shootings, the Responsibility to Protect (wars to protect foreigners, not Americans), and identity politics. America’s cities rot and bleed while they focus on the interests of the wise, rich, and beautiful.
Be proud America! We lead the developed nations in high tech and homicides.
All of these are led by Democrats (except Tulsa).
Francesca Miraile at The Trace explains the details of this sorry graph, looking at Chicago.
“If some scholars of crime had their way, discussions of homicide rates would focus not on cities, but on the few urban neighborhoods where the phenomenon of murder inequality is especially stark. In St. Louis, which has had the country’s highest homicide rate since 2014, violence is concentrated within neighborhoods like the Greater Ville, where the homicide rate per capita is close to 300. According to police data, almost half of the city’s killings occur in only eight of its 79 neighborhoods. The unequal distribution of violence applies to Chicago, too. Five police districts, which contain only 8% of city’s population, recorded an estimated 32% of its murders in 2016.
“As in part years, a disproportionate share of Chicago’s homicide victims were young African-American men, killed in alleys and on street corners when an altercation was made deadly by the use of a firearm. A report released this week by the University of Chicago Crime Lab sought to identify what’s driving the spike in violence. It found that conditions commonly believed to influence gun crime — unemployment and poverty rates, availability of social services, mistrust in institutions, and public policy — did not change abruptly from 2015 to last year, and cannot directly explain the increase in murders. “One key implication of these data is the importance of a policy response that is focused on the core problem,” the report reads. ‘Violence concentrated largely in a moderate number of our most disadvantaged neighborhoods, carried out by teens and young adults in public places with illegally owned, and perhaps increasingly lethal, firearms.'”
Our acceptance of this bloodshed reveals our values as no pretty speeches by politicians can do. The aptly-named Hey Jackass website provides the people of Chicago with a running tally of the carnage. Every major American city should have one — mounted in central downtown!
Exceptional America!
Here is the WorldAtlas list of the world’s 50 most dangerous cities in 2015. America has four on the list! St Louis (15), Baltimore (19), Detroit (28), and New Orleans (32). No other developed nation has a city on the list. Amazingly, we don’t care. The lawless areas in our great cities was not even a major issue in the 2016 presidential election.
Conclusions
The Democratic Party’s stewardship of America’s major cities questions their fitness to govern. The high homicide rates — and their low interest in addressing this problem — are just symptoms. Many cities under their leadership remain locked into multi-generational spirals of decline. The Democrat’s misrule, often incompetent and corrupt, plays a large part in this story. Their disinterest in reform of their governance is a still heavier indictment. They play identity politics, declare sanctuary cities, and champion rights of the few transgendered while tens of millions of people suffer under their administration.
America’s tragedy is that the only other major party misrules in a different but also horrific fashion (see posts about the Republican Party and especially its powerful far-right wing). But America need not stay on this path. See suggestions about what you can do: steps to a new politics for America.
For More information
For a broader and more detailed analysis, see “Carnage, Continued” by Rafael Mangual in City Journal, 14 September 2017 — “Before declaring victory in the War on Crime, consider America’s sub-cities.”
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about guns & gun rights, about crime, about murder, about police violence, and especially these…
- Do guns make us more safe, or less? Let’s look at the research.
- Since 9-11 we have less crime but more fear of crime. A win-win for our rulers!
- The number of children killed by guns in America makes us exceptional, not better.
- News from England on the great experiment about gun rights.
- Martin van Creveld asks: why do American kids kill?
- America’s unspeakable problem: African-American’s crime rates.
- Important: Remember the Republican’s great betrayal of America in the 1960s.
A reminder of the long struggle to produce the Civil Right revolution,
a story of lost momentum.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
by Richard Rothstein (2017).
“Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law is one of those rare books that will be discussed and debated for many decades. Based on careful analyses of multiple historical documents, Rothstein has presented what I consider to be the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation.”
― William Julius Wilson (professor of sociology, Harvard).
From the publisher…
“In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation ― that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation―the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments―that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
“Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as “brilliant” (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.
“As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities
“The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book” (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.”
This is a particularly disturbing issue, and the issue is not restricted only to homicides, but to municipal debt, housing, education, etc. So many of these major cities, especially those with large “minority” populations, have been Democrat run for so long that memory doesn’t serve as to the last Republican administration. But the progress in many of these cities, if there has been any (to wit- Detroit, Flint Michigan, Camden, New Jersey- the list goes on) has been limited to some areas, and has left other sub cities in total desolation.
An interesting article about this specifically regarding crime rates by Rafael Mangual points out that in some districts (sub cities) of Chicago for example, the homicide rate is well over 100 per 100,000 residents. This puts them in line with the worst cities in the world.
While it is easy to put the blame on guns, you will note that many of the cities on that list are in countries that have extremely (extremely) restrictive gun laws, as do many of the US cities. Criminals prefer to buy guns illegally, as they cannot be traced (sorry no specific reference, but noted in previous readings, and fact checked by me back then).
One of the prime drivers now for much of this violence is ascribed by Heather MacDonald to the Ferguson Effect- whereby police are no longer doing proactive policing, and in the neighborhoods where it is most needed, the result is a rise in crime- especially homicide, but not necessarily limited to that. For groups like “Black Lives Matter,” while the devastation currently occurring in largely minority neighborhoods should be particularly distressing, it seems that blaming the police seems to be an easier out, rather than addressing the fact that with less police, you tend to get more crime. Blaming (and remaining politically correct) instead of working together is not an optimal strategy, and the results show.
From the Mangual article:
While police must be held accountable for their actions, it must be recognized that those actions are both good and bad. The number of minority youth killed by police pales in comparison to the current carnage going on in what are mostly underprivileged areas in cities that are mostly run by Democrats (and mostly for a very long time).
Barry,
Thank you for your thoughtful article. I have added the City Journal article to the For More Info section of this post. Two notes —
(1) In a nation with free travel, a city cannot effectively regulate sale or ownership of guns. Especially in the US, where most “cities” are just the center of their urban areas (NYC and LA are among the rare exceptions).
(2) The “Ferguson effect” is effective right-wing propaganda, nothing else. If police were responding and “policing” less, there would be fewer shootings by police. The rate is roughly flat for 2015, 2016, and 2017 (when detailed private databases began, such as by the WaPo) — and similar to the rate from earlier estimates.
I heard if one factors in suicides as violence, japan is actually the most violent developed country.
dashui,
That’s true, because suicide rates are higher than homicide rates. For the US, 10 suicides and 5 intentional homicides per 100,000. Note the western suicide rates are probably understated.
But considering the two to be similar phenomenon is a value. For the West, derived from Christian theology. I believe people have a right to check out at will. We can support them and encourage them to stay in the game. But it is their choice.
I agree, a person’s life is theirs to do with as they choose, but I also believe that most people who attempt suicide don’t really want to die. I base that upon articles I’ve read about people who “failed” in their suicide attempt–the vast majority of them are glad they didn’t succeed in killing themself.
Notorious PAT,
It’s a complex subject, for sure.
Side note: In my days (long long ago) as a social worker, I trained as a suicide prevention counselor. The final was a simulated call with the counselor. At the end he said my performance was one of the most remarkable he had seen in two decades of teaching this course. He had convinced me that suicide was the most logical course of action for him. I had no useful suggestions for him.
After looking at the most dangerous cities chart above who are we to lecture any country and it’s savagery. What’s going on in many of our cities is horrible and it saddens me. The Dems own the Black vote because of black leaders. They sold out in the 60s/70s – reap what you sow.
Gute,
The tragedy of America is that the GOP is just as bad as the Democrats. Perhaps worse. They made the outright evil decision to embrace racism in the 1960s for political gain. Remember this great betrayal of America, with few precedents in US history (i.e., they knew it was wrong).
Graft and decay too often go hand in hand. Overlaying the issue of race complicates things and can act as a red herring or “a dancing scarecrow.” (Straw man of convenience pulled about with puppet strings)
Still. Racism is as racism does, and the results of an almost universal Democratic Party racism of political expediency and callous opportunism are far more deadly to disadvantaged ethnics than any “racist” words pronounced by Redumblicans.
James,
” are far more deadly to disadvantaged ethnics than any “racist” words pronounced by Redumblicans.”
True. But not more damaging than racist deeds by Republicans.
Remember, one of the darkest moments in American history was the Republican’s betrayal of their history and American ideals by embracing racism in the 1960s — their “southern strategy.” We would be much better off if they had stayed on the straight path. For details see On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let the GOP remember its great betrayal.
Hi all,
Sorry, but don’t know how to jump into the middle of the thread.
FM> True. But not more damaging than racist deeds by Republicans.
The Southern Strategy essentially blew up any chance of having a society based on equal protection for all for a hundred years or more. Corruption is corruption and can bite anyone of any color, and it’s unfortunate that many of our cities and counties are run by venal and corrupt people, but that’s something you can chip away at. Atlanta and Dekalb county are frustrating, but there seems to be progress over the past few decades in my experience, though I’d rather have a bunch of Finnish middle schoolers run Dekalb county’s online tax payment system than the nozzles who run it now. They’d flunk a fourth-rate community college into to HTML class.
Many of the woes that we’ve inflicted upon ourselves have been institutional, including one of the more pernicious ones that gets little attention: zoning. Funding schools with property taxes is another and the whole system of property tax has a perverse segregating effect on communities. Politicians will decry “gentrification!” out of one side of their mouth while jacking up millage rates and assessments out of the other.
Racism is real, but it may not work the way Ta-Nehesi Coates thinks it works. Republicans and their abettors have made the problem well-neigh intractable, but we still have to fight it. The *only* way, IMO, is faith in equal protection for all (all means all) under just laws, but I wonder how may people still care about such things. Corruption is bad and needs to be fought, but that is a relatively a straightforward battle, and we’re actually winning this one, at least in the small (nothing you can do much about the military-industrial-congressional complex, alas).
Finally, let me leave y’all with an interesting look at gun deaths in America. When it comes to guns, the most dangerous thing to a white man in America is himself. Still, I fear facts fare poorly versus propaganda and faith.
With regards,
Bill
Bill,
“The Southern Strategy essentially blew up any chance of having a society based on equal protection for all for a hundred years or more.”
Yes. It was “the great betrayal.” One of the dark moments in US history. I don’t understand why this is not widely seen and so seldom mentioned. Perhaps its just our usual amnesia about our history. Fools “live in the now.”
“Racism is real, but it may not work the way Ta-Nehesi Coates thinks it works. ”
I used to read Ta-Nehesi Coates. Now imo he is part of the problem. Here is a gentle criticism of his recent work: Black Critics Shake Their Heads at Ta-Nehisi Coates.” Even National Review challenges him only carefully.