Woke religion and the ruination of San Fransicko

While I visited San Francisco in June 2021, I parked the car with two bikes on the roof, two blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf. Across the street, a crime scene in front of a hotel. On every parking meter, a sign reads, “If you love it; don’t leave it.” Well, a guy had walked out to see his SUV BMW with bashed out rear and side windows. The Asian and Black gangs stake out a guy at each end of the street to watch for cops. The other two drive up to a car with luggage. In 30 seconds, they “smash and grab” anything in the car - and drive away to uncover their license plate, pick up the lookout guy and escape with cameras, jewelry, suitcases and anything in the car.

The cops told us NOT to leave our car or the bikes would be gone, and our car would be bashed-in by the thieves. We left San Francisco for the first time in 40 years without enjoying the city. By the way, 17 Walgreen’s Drug Stores bankrupted this year from shoplifting in the “City by the Bay.” A sickening 11,000 homeless roam the streets begging for money and drugs. We saw them! It’s sickening!

Michael Shellenberger lives in Berkeley, once worked for George Soros, and once teamed up with Maxine Waters to make sure addicts had clean needles. Somewhere along the way, though, he came to his senses, and it’s from this hard-left foundation that he wrote the book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities:

In a 16-minute interview with the Washington Examiner’s Doug McKelway, Shellenberger, a one-time winner of Time magazine’s “Hero of the Environment” award, explained his metamorphosis, which was catalyzed by a series of policy prescriptions that he now sees were deeply wrong-headed. Among them: the de-criminalization of up to three grams of very dangerous drugs, including deadly levels of fentanyl and meth; and the de-criminalization of shoplifting up to $950 of goods, which gave crooks carte blanche and gave retailers reason to pack up and leave. One wonders: What did he and his fellow travelers think was going to happen?...

Victimology is the central theme of the book — a progressive ideology that designates some people, by identity or experience, as victims who are entitled to behave in destructive ways. The result is an undermining of the values that make cities, and civilization itself, possible....

Shellenberger, who moved to San Francisco in 1993, says he no longer feels moral living in the Golden State, and he feels like his taxes are going to unethical activities. Clearly, the scales have fallen from his eyes. If only every leftist were so willing to see the failures of progressivism....

Michael Shellenberger and I wrote “Woke Religion: A Taxonomy” to help people understand the woke religion.

I want to be crystal clear about something: bigotry and racial discrimination are real and they have no place in society. Yes, there is ongoing racism. Yes, there is ongoing homophobia. Yes, there is ongoing hatred of trans people. These are morally abhorrent and we all need to work together to bring about their end. The woke religion, however, is not the way to stop these moral horrors. It is making our shared problems more difficult to solve.

This is the spirit in which we offer this taxonomy.

Mac Donald: Brian, we are witnessing the disintegration ofh civilization right before her eyes. when massive numbers of individuals know that they can rampage through stores, plundering and looting, confident in their immunity from the law, there's nothing left of the civilized order, the protection of property is the cornerstone of a stable, prosperous society.

Merchants have to know they can put their goods into the stream of commerce without being robbed blind.d. the common thread in the shameful looting, in the waukesha christmas parade murderers, and an rising gun violence is a concept of disparate impact unless that concept iss explicitly refuted and rejected, there is no way we're going to get a handle on this rise in crime. the reason that felony laws are not being -- felony theft laws are not being enforced the reason darrell brooks was put back on the street despite an active warrant and a 50 page rap sheet is because in forcing laws or enforcing bail, requiring bail has a disparate impact on blacks. look at the video. law enforcement has a disparate impact on blacks not because it's racist because the black crime rate is so high. but when you stop enforcing the law in order to avoid disparate impact, it's blacks who are hurt the most.

Brian: what you're saying, real quick, what you're saying is if you look at the stats, raw numbers, more blacks are committing crimes than other minority groups, than whites. that's why the arrests are greater and that's why there are more in jail, is that what you're saying?

Mac Donald: Absolutely. the law enforcement is a function of criminality. it's not driven by racism. blacks die of homicide that 13 times the rate of whites. that's because they are committing homicide at 13 times the rate of whites. in newla york city where we are now, brian, blacks commit about 75% of all shootings. according to the victim of an witnesses to the shootings who are minorities themselves, overwhelmingly, even though they are 23%ve of the population. whites commit less than 2% of all shootings. 34% of the population. the solution here is not to stop enforcing the law.

That means more mayhem, more deaths. the solution is to tackle, despite what chesa boudin thinks is the root cause of crime, he would say poverty and racism, the root cause of inner-city crime is family breakdown. as long as that problem goes unaddressed, our only solution is to enforce the law in a color-blind, just fashion. >> brian: when you steamroll children at a holiday parade on a sunday y afternoon, you no longer need to see a pie chart or a bar graph to know in wisconsin. american is out of control. when they half to share the top story withhph this choreographed looting, you know america is out of control. it's not because we are running out of food or money. it's not a catastrophe. it's a self-inflicted wound put forward by people who i believe want the story in the country. i think it is time for average americans, not politicians to rise up to say they're not going to take it.

I dare you to look, with a clear and unfiltered lens, at the bloody nightmare we once called the United States of America.

Connect the dots. Contemplate the utter chaos in every major city while Black Lives Matter militants, academics and bureaucrats prattle on about "systemic racism" and "two-tiered justice."...

We are hectored repeatedly by the Biden administration that "white supremacy" is the root of all this country's problems. CNN reported as "news" this week that "there's nothing more frightening in America today than an angry White man."...

The scourge of Soros DAs has ushered in nothing but misery, filth and death across the ravaged plain in the name of social justice...

When will more good people stop reflexively cringing in the face of accusations of "racism" and call out the racist system of two-tiered justice that is actually bringing America to its knees?