On some matters of public policy, you can flick a switch and things change instantly. When Joe Biden ordered an end to construction of Donald Trump’s southern border wall, for example, or Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement, the effects were immediate. But those are exceptions to the rule. As Trump learned, trying to turn around the ship of state, whether it be local, state, or national, generally takes a good long time.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a system in which profound change would come about with great deliberation and require broad consensus. Thus, our constitutional checks and balances create the necessary restraint on the fancies of any particular generation of lawmakers. But this rule by the many known as democracy makes it far more difficult to achieve change overnight than under authoritarian systems of government, where power rests in the hands of the few, or one.
Whistling into the Wind?
How is this relevant, you might ask, to startling proclamations by the speaker of the House and the mayor of San Francisco, signaling that these left-wing Democrats have finally had enough with the crime wave sweeping urban America in general and San Francisco in particular? Well, because a few words uttered one day by a couple of politicians, however powerful, will hardly reverse the debilitating effects of endless left-wing rule on the once-great city - and other cities hit by the present crime wave, all run by Democrats. But both women apparently believe they somehow will.
“In recent months, we’ve not only seen a number of high-profile incidents of brazen robberies and car break-ins but also street behavior and criminal activity … that has become far too normal and cannot continue to be tolerated,” Mayor London Breed proclaimed on December 14. Note how she said continue to be tolerated, an open admission of culpability - she’s been in office since July of 2018. Then the mayor launched into rhetoric evidently designed to attract media attention, decrying “all the bu----it that has destroyed our city.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) followed at a separate press briefing, stating, "It's absolutely outrageous. Obviously it cannot continue, but the fact is that there is an attitude of lawlessness in our country that springs from I don't know where …”
Really? She doesn’t know where? Perhaps she and Her Honor the mayor might take a look in their proverbial mirrors.
Baghdad by the Bay
(Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The fact is the City by the Bay has been rotting away from the inside for a long time. But it took years, decades even, for the homeless, drug addicts and criminals who have now become synonymous with the city to fully destroy its image and drive people away. The spike in crime there and in so many other great American cities run by liberals and progressives is a direct and obvious result of the policies of the Democratic Party. Did they think they could just skate by with their rank cowardice in allowing criminals to run rampant in the aftermath of the George Floyd affair? Did they believe they could just throw out the baby with the bathwater by defunding, demoralizing, and disgracing the police, free of consequence?
And do they now think a mere acknowledgment of the problem by Speaker Pelosi and a speech of contrived, frustrated outrage dotted with profanity by Mayor Breed will suddenly make their city great again? Will it convince the thieves, hustlers, drug addicts, mentally ill, homeless, and other miscreants and lost souls living or roaming free on the streets of San Francisco that a proud sanctuary city that has welcomed them with open arms, no questions asked, is now a no-go zone? Good luck with that.
Do Pelosi and Breed believe the voters will buy their sudden, overnight transformation into crime fighters with midterms less than a year away? The thought is wildly amusing on the face of it. Will all those voters who pulled the lever for Joe Biden and now regret it as he sinks into oblivion, allow themselves to be fooled again by these professions?
Now that they are supposedly fed up with the crime wave their party all but invited as a means to take down Donald Trump in the summer of 2020, do these women believe that all those cops who quit, and prospective cops who changed career paths, will happily return? How are those involved in law enforcement supposed to trust promises of an about-face by the same party that stood by and made political hay of them being literally and figuratively attacked and spit upon by cretins burning down cities indiscriminately? Good luck with that, too.
Rest assured that this display of staged outrage - the only thing real is these women’s panic over their party and president’s tanking approval - will be dismissed with the back of the hand by woke-weary voters. Democrats have made their bed and now will be forced to sleep in it. They all but invited the crime wave which has overtaken urban America because of their own craven worldview, and because they thought it would contribute to the defeat of Donald Trump. Turning around and now proclaiming that you will no longer stand for what you yourself created is about as convincing as a promise to stop beating your wife.
~ Read more from Tim Donner.
