By Kevin D. Williamson
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
A few weeks ago, there was an election in Ferguson, Mo.,
the result of which was to treble the number of African Americans on that
unhappy suburb’s city council. This was greeted in some corners with optimism —
now, at last, the city’s black residents would have a chance to see to securing
their own interests. This optimism flies in the face of evidence near — St.
Louis — and far — Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Atlanta, Los
Angeles, San Francisco . . .
St. Louis has not had a Republican mayor since the 1940s,
and in its most recent elections for the board of aldermen there was no
Republican in the majority of the contests; the city is overwhelmingly
Democratic, effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to
its police department. Baltimore has seen two Republicans sit in the mayor’s
office since the 1920s — and none since the 1960s. Like St. Louis, it is
effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police
department. Philadelphia has not elected a Republican mayor since 1948. The
last Republican to be elected mayor of Detroit was congratulated on his victory
by President Eisenhower. Atlanta, a city so corrupt that its public schools are
organized as a criminal conspiracy against its children, last had a Republican
mayor in the 19th century. Its municipal elections are officially nonpartisan,
but the last Republican to run in Atlanta’s 13th congressional district did not
manage to secure even 30 percent of the vote; Atlanta is effectively a
single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department.
American cities are by and large Democratic-party
monopolies, monopolies generally dominated by the so-called progressive wing of
the party. The results have been catastrophic, and not only in poor black
cities such as Baltimore and Detroit. Money can paper over some of the defects
of progressivism in rich, white cities such as Portland and San Francisco, but
those are pretty awful places to be non-white and non-rich, too: Blacks make up
barely 9 percent of the population in San Francisco, but they represent 40
percent of those arrested for murder, and they are arrested for drug offenses
at ten times their share of the population. Criminals make their own choices,
sure, but you want to take a look at the racial disparity in educational
outcomes and tell me that those low-income nine-year-olds in Wisconsin just
need to buck up and bootstrap it?
Black urban communities face institutional failure across
the board every day. There are people who should be made to answer for that:
What has Martin O’Malley to say for himself? What can Ed Rendell say for
himself other than that he secured a great deal of investment for the richest
square mile in Philadelphia? What has Nancy Pelosi done about the radical
racial divide in San Francisco?
Mychal Denzel Smith, toy radical at The Nation, offered
the usual illiterate slogan “f**k the police” and declared of the rioters: “I
also hope they break s**t.” Writers at Salon also endorsed violence for its own
sake. “I do not advocate non-violence,” Benji Hart affirmed. Most of this can
be credited to juvenile posturing, and it should be noted that the rioters in
Baltimore mostly are not burning down tax offices or police stations but are in
the main looting businesses and carrying out acts of wanton opportunistic
vandalism — that’s not a revolt, but a crime spree. Meretricious “black rage”
rhetoric notwithstanding, what we have seen in places such as Ferguson and
Baltimore is much more ordinarily criminal than political.
But there is a legitimate concern here — from which no
one seems to be willing to draw the obvious conclusion: There is someone to
blame for what’s wrong in Baltimore.
Would any sentient adult American be shocked to learn
that Baltimore has a corrupt and feckless police department enabled by a
corrupt and feckless city government? I myself would not, and the local
authorities’ dishonesty and stonewalling in the death of Freddie Gray is
reminiscent of what we have seen in other cities. There’s a heap of evidence
that the Baltimore police department is pretty bad.
This did not come out of nowhere. While the progressives
have been running the show in Baltimore, police commissioner Ed Norris was sent
to prison on corruption charges (2004), two detectives were sentenced to 454
years in prison for dealing drugs (2005), an officer was dismissed after being
videotaped verbally abusing a 14-year-old and then failing to file a report on
his use of force against the same teenager (2011), an officer was been fired
for sexually abusing a minor (2014), and the city paid a quarter-million-dollar
settlement to a man police illegally arrested for the non-crime of recording
them at work with his mobile phone. There’s a good deal more. Does that sound
like a disciplined police organization to you?
Yes, Baltimore seems to have some police problems. But
let us be clear about whose fecklessness and dishonesty we are talking about
here: No Republican, and certainly no conservative, has left so much as a
thumbprint on the public institutions of Baltimore in a generation. Baltimore’s
police department is, like Detroit’s economy and Atlanta’s schools, the product
of the progressive wing of the Democratic party enabled in no small part by
black identity politics. This is entirely a left-wing project, and a
Democratic-party project.
When will the Left be held to account for the brutality
in Baltimore — brutality for which it bears a measure of responsibility on both
sides? There aren’t any Republicans out there cheering on the looters, and
there aren’t any Republicans exercising real political power over the police or
other municipal institutions in Baltimore. Community-organizer — a wretched
term — Adam Jackson declared that in Baltimore “the Democrats and the Republicans
have both failed.” Really? Which Republicans? Ulysses S. Grant? Unless I’m
reading the charts wrong, the Baltimore city council is 100 percent Democratic.
The other Democratic monopolies aren’t looking too hot,
either. We’re sending Atlanta educators to prison for running a criminal
conspiracy to hide the fact that they failed, and failed woefully, to educate
the children of that city. Isolated incident? Nope: Atlanta has another
cheating scandal across town at the police academy. Who is being poorly served
by the fact that Atlanta’s school system has been converted into crime
syndicate? Mostly poor, mostly black families. Who is likely to suffer from any
incompetents advanced through the Atlanta police department by its corrupt
academy? Mostly poor, mostly black people. Who suffers most from the
incompetence of Baltimore’s Democratic mayor? Mostly poor, mostly black
families — should they feel better that she’s black? Who suffers most from the
incompetence and corruption of Baltimore’s police department? Mostly poor,
mostly black families.
And it’s the same people who will suffer the most from
the vandalism and pillaging going on in Baltimore, too.
The evidence suggests very strongly that the left-wing,
Democratic claques that run a great many American cities — particularly the
poor and black cities — are not capable of running a school system or a police
department. They are incompetent, they are corrupt, and they are breathtakingly
arrogant. Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore — this is what Democrats
do.
And the kids in the street screaming about “inequality”?
Somebody should tell them that the locale in these United States with the least
economic inequality is Utah, i.e. the state farthest away from the reach of the
people who run Baltimore.
Keep voting for the same thing, keep getting the same
thing.
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