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...and this is why America can't have nice things anymore:
...can we just admit that America is falling apart and possibly headed for an acrimonious divorce? ...if so, can we just get it the hell over with?
(Gay Patriot) Kevin Williamson at NRO points out that the Baltimore riots are a direct result of the Democrat leadership of that city; a city with no Republicans in any positions of city Government, in the bluest state in the country. Baltimore is a one-party Democrat-run city, and the same can be said of Detroit, St. Louis, Newark, Atlanta and most other large cities that have not seen a Republican mayor since before the advent of color television. Williamson catalogs the failings of Democrat city governments, but he doesn’t really explain how dysfunction is rooted in the Democrat style of politics.
As I have often said, the Democrat Party has one value proposition: We’re going to take money away from people you don’t like and spend it on you. This model has been highly successful in large urban areas and in the last two presidential elections. It is a highly effective message for the greedy, entitled, low-information voters that make up the Democrat base. It is not, however, an effective strategy for actual governance. It is, in fact, the root of why Democrat governance is so dysfunctional.
In real life, how the Democrat value proposition plays out is, “We’re going to take money from people you don’t like, use it to create massive, bloated government bureaucracies where we can give our cronies do-nothing, no-show jobs and also divert a lot of that money to our business cronies who contributed to our campaigns, and whatever is left will trickle down to you in the form of lousy Government services [think inner city schools] and welfare payments that are just enough to keep you in poverty and demanding more.”
In the Democrat model, businesses that employ people and indeed people employed by the private sector are the enemy. The Democrat base is constantly told that businesses are greedy, and that they “owe” the community their “fair share.” And even when businesses try to do good for the community, they are attacked for not doing enough, or for doing it in the wrong way.
In this way, Democrats justify constant increases in taxes and regulations on businesses; and also make sure businesses contribute to the party in a kind of protection racket. However, it also drives businesses out of Democrat-run areas, or out of business entirely, creating unemployment. Democrats are by and large OK with this because welfare recipients are loyal voters; but a model in which ever fewer working people are supporting ever greater numbers of welfare recipients and government bureaucrats is unsustainable. Government, despite the “you didn’t build that” claims of Barack Obama and Liz Warren, creates nothing; it only takes. And it can only be sustained by economic growth in the private sector, which Democrat policies stifle.
Democrats also must villainize Republicans to make sure no alternative to their party exists. They tell blacks, “Republicans want to bring back slavery.” They tell gays, “Republicans want to outlaw sex and make it legal to kill you.” They tell single women, “Republicans will outlaw contraception.” They tell Hispanics, “Republicans want to secure the border and stop you from illegally taking American jobs.” None of these is true, but by demonizing Republicans, Democrats assure dysfunction by denying political alternatives, and by allowing their constituents to ignore the causes and effects of their own dysfunction. Contrary to Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, and guilt-ridden white liberals,the dysfunction of the black community is not the fault of Caucasian Americans. But it is politically potent for Democrats to tell African-Americans that they are the victims of White America. As such, there is no incentive for the black community to introspectively examine black-on-black violence, broken and dysfunctional families, or their rotten (Democrat-run) education systems. Those who acknowledge the dysfunction are decried as racists.
Democrats win election by stoking resentments, scapegoating productive people for the failures of unproductive people, looting the public treasury, and making monsters out of their opponents. These policies win elections very effectively particularly where voters are uneducated and ill-informed (i.e. dependent on Democrat-run schools and Democrat-run media), but as a strategy of governance, they are inherently dysfunctional. The resentments become hatred and violence, the productive people abandon the dysfunction until the dysfunctional are a voting majority, the public treasury is robbed bare, and you end up with… Detroit, Newark, Baltimore, St. Louis, Providence, Bridgeport, Camden, and all the other one-party urban hellholes, basically.
Democrats think that the dysfunction can be papered over by spending more of other people’s money. But that only works while there is money to spend. The country is broke, which is why I think Baltimore is just the prelude of what’s to come.
...can we just admit that America is falling apart and possibly headed for an acrimonious divorce? ...if so, can we just get it the hell over with?