Falling Crimes Don’t Mean Much to Folks Reminded of Crime Every Day

 

Falling Crimes Don’t Mean Much to Folks Reminded of Crime Every Day

“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.” 

Trump announcing takeover of DC policing, August 11th.

OK, Donald Trump’s DC military-as-cops play is showy, over-the-top, unnecessary and horribly autocratic. His crime statistics contradict numbers from his own FBI, but like immigration, which resonated with voters until Trump’s overkill cruel response, crime hovers above all urban voters… even if the bad numbers are going down. Immigration was off the rails though not remotely as badly as Trump screamed; but there was a hint of truth behind Trump’s policies, even as no one really believed he would really implement his failing wholesale quotas of deportees. He used the rantings of a mentally insecure bigot as his inspiration. Stephen Miller is pure evil and the loudest leadership voice in the Trump administration.

But we know security cameras are everywhere now, and gated communities have exploded in the last two decades. We live in a gun culture where absolutely anybody anywhere with determination can get a handgun or an AR-15 if they want. Bullets are now the leading killer of American children and teens. Gun-killing mental illness is countered with the dumbest NRA expression, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” an expression that fails to define a “good” guy or how even a “good guy’s” momentary temper can turn him into a bad guy just long enough to kill someone. Courts created the problem.

With the loss of a functioning federal judiciary, which has so far simply waived off any objections to vote rigging via gerrymandering and views free and clear gun ownership as a fundamental right… by seriously misreading the Second Amendment… people (particularly in cities) just do not feel safe anymore. A 26% reduction in DC violent crime has no meaning if you or a family member has been a victim, and even as Donald Trump’s exaggerated statement above is hardly reality, it sounds right. As David Graham, writing for The Atlantic Daily (August 11th) puts it:

“‘This is liberation day in D.C.,’ Trump said. Nothing says liberation like deploying hundreds of uniformed soldiers against the wishes of the local elected government. District residents have made clear that they would prefer greater autonomy, including congressional representation, and they have three times voted overwhelmingly against Trump. His response is not just to flex power but to treat the District of Columbia as the president’s personal fiefdom.

“Trump’s move is based on out-of-date statistics. It places two officials without municipal policing experience in positions of power over federalization and the MPD [DC police], and seems unlikely to significantly affect crime rates. What the White House hopes it might achieve, Politico reports, is ‘a quick, visually friendly PR win.’ Trump needs that after more than a month of trying and failing to change the subject from his onetime friend Jeffrey Epstein.”

But there’s the hint of truth behind this move, even if the stated “reality” is profoundly exaggerated. Look at social and traditional media, constantly carrying “breaking news” of violent crime all the time. Often, people go to their local drugstore to buy some pretty ordinary items, only to find them locked in secure cabinets under glass. You can see what you want, but you have to push a button and wait for a busy attendant to meander down to open the cabinet door and let you take the product you want. Lots of people have stopped shopping at local hardware stores, drugstores and even major big box stores because of this inconvenience. But this product lock-up makes one huge impression: you are constantly reminded of pervasive shoplifting. And if you have stopped shopping at your former go-to ordinary retailers and have shifted to online alternatives, even if you were not a direct victim of theft, you know why you did.

That Donald Trump’s budget cuts, his racist approach to public education, his lack of support for childcare, nutritional and medical basics for the lower reaches of our economy are making crime a better “job” choice than legitimate work with solid trade school training. But even our community colleges are losing federal funding, schools that provide real training for near-term jobs with solid pay and a good chance for advancement. Education is bad and still unaffordable. Today, we abandon children, elderly and other vulnerable people every day. Trump will sweep homeless people off the DC streets and ship them… elsewhere.

We live in a society that is happy to treat the inevitable end-product of societal neglect, provide Alligator Alcatraz-level “detention” and miserable and dangerous “crime schools” masquerading as jails and prisons… but try and lift young people out of dead-end generational poverty and the austerity hammer comes out to smash those programs. Trust me, DOGE did us no favors… and now everybody is angry, too many looking for shortcuts and blame, but where are we? On the verge of losing our democracy, living under cultural mandate I and many like me find abhorrent, asking what is the United States of America today?

I have never been more ashamed of my country, yet I am quite sympathetic to terrified citizens finding solace in MAGA land, even though they are betting on the wrong people to deliver the life they truly deserve, politicians who only offer false hope, fake narratives, and whose “solutions” will make their own supporters miserable. Trump has discovered how maximizing the “us vs them” blame of divisive politics keeps him and most of the GOP members in Congress in office. And Dems are hapless fools being played by a dangerous and manipulative President who has one and only one constituency: him and secondarily his family.

As floods, fires and hurricanes decimate our lands with increasing frequency, references to climate change are being deleted from federal agency websites and documents. Nature doesn’t care. The laws of physics do not care. Our global competitors don’t care. Our President, the majority in Congress and the US Supreme Court do not care. Most of all, we ourselves do not seem to care that we unraveling what was once the greatest nation on Earth. Greed has become a God, and blame our big excuse. Can Americans ever again be on the same factual page?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I do not understand how government can work when large segments of the population simply believe in a very different array of contradictory “facts’ … and vote and act accordingly.