“Progressive Paradise”

A day in the life of the Left.

It was another weekend of violence and disorder in Chicago. “At least 32 shot, 8 fatally, in weekend violence across city,” read one headline on the WLS-TV news website. Another headline said, “15 arrested in connection with Loop chaos after 2 teens shot.” That story went on to report that a “large disturbance” — more accurately, a small riot — took place in the city’s downtown area. Videos of the incident showed crowds of young people jumping on cars and buses. Later, at least one person pulled out a gun.

A Target store in San Francisco has locked its entire product range behind security glass as crime in the city spirals out of control.

A video posted on TikTok on April 20 shows all of the items in the store locked away from customers.

According to geotagged imagery, some products at the store on Folsom Street were behind glass since at least October of last year, WNCT reported.

An abandoned Portland tavern burned to the ground this week in a blaze sparked by squatters who had been harassing the crime-riddled community for more than a year.

Firefighters tried in vain Wednesday to beat back flames that consumed the former Farmer’s Barn Tavern in north Portland, which neighbor Dusty McCord said was “clearly a time bomb waiting to go off.”

He said squatters have been menacing the neighborhood since they besieged the bar that closed in 2018, threatening residents with guns, sometimes physically attacking them — and frequently cutting down trees to make campfires.

Oakland has always been a gritty city—the tough-luck twin to wealthy San Francisco. Under newly elected Alameda County District Attorney Pam Price, Oakland could be headed for a fate much darker than gritty. Price has been following the de-prosecution and decarceration playbook of radical district attorneys across the United States. If she stays on that course, Oakland is in for a “hella tough time,” to use the language of the Bay Area.

It would be funny were it not so incredibly pathetic. A county-run drug counseling center for homeless drug addicts in Portland had to be shut down and some of its employees were dumped because of drug use and “inappropriate relations” between employees. In other words, a drug and sex scandal shut down the Multnomah County Behavioral Health Resource Center.

“Portland is not Portlandia anymore.”

It’s something we say around here, and it resonates, because the series starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein was both popular and infamous depending on who you talked to and their opinion of the effect the show had on Portland. But the civic time and tenor depicted on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) series is definitely history now.

Chalk it up to that standard conservative talking point: the decline of Blue cities under Democratic “leadership.”

On Monday, the outdoor fitness retailer REI announced it will close its only remaining store in Portland in February 2024.

The company emailed REI members to explain that the location could no longer guarantee the safety of employees and patrons, the local NBC outlet reported. Other major-chain stores throughout the U.S. have also closed, citing security issues, including a Whole Foods in downtown San Francisco last week and various Starbucks locations last year, including two in Portland.

People complain that Americans are insincere with their friendly greetings, but the coffee barista who’d just served me a £4.50 latte sounded like he meant it when he thanked me for being a ‘loyal customer’.

After all, apart from him, his two under-employed colleagues, and a solitary couple poring over a laptop in a distant corner of one of San Francisco’s largest and smartest coffee shops, we were entirely alone.

At this hour, the establishment — Joe & The Juice on Market Street, the city’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfare — would once have been heaving with thrusting young technology workers stocking up on pricey coffee and ‘cold-pressed’ fruit juice before heading off into their gleaming offices to spearhead the digital revolution.

April is the cruellest month — or at least it is in San Francisco. The city is already well known for its chronic problems with homelessness, drug abuse and crime, but the negative headlines are now piling up.

Inside the assault on meritocracy

In the pre-modern world positions in society were largely inherited. Some people were born with saddles on their backs and others booted and spurred to ride them — “The rich man in his castle / The poor man at his gate / God made them high or lowly / And ordered their estate,” in the words of the Victorian hymn. The meritocratic idea was the dynamite which blew up this view of the world and provided the materials for the modern era. But its reign is threatened as never before.