The American Urban Issue

Stop the decay of our cities

It looks as if Spencer Pratt is not going to make it to the runoff elections for Mayor of Los Angeles. Pratt, whose house burned down during the fires of last year, ran a common-sense nonpartisan campaign focusing on quality of life, crime, homelessness, drug abuse, among other things.

In essence, Pratt’s campaign could be summed up in a simple slogan: “We don’t have to live like this.”

However, it appears that Los Angeles residents do, indeed, want to live like this. Despite there being no argument for Karen Bass, she surged to first place. Bass represents a continuation of the status quo and managed decline of Los Angeles.

This is yet another example of a trend that American cities have been seeing for decades now. Whenever someone comes along who wants to try to reverse the decay and filth, they make it a big point to rebuke them.

Yet, even after they rebuke, they still complain. They still complain about how unsafe their cities are. They still complain about quality-of-life issues that haven’t been addressed. They still complain about everything, yet they continue to vote for the status quo.

It wasn’t like Spencer Pratt was an overtly partisan candidate either, but they would rather vote to remain a pigsty to own the people they perceive as right-wing.

Of course, we mustn’t forget American conservatives’ role in this too. For decades, conservatives advocated for a retreat from the cities and a focus on suburban and rural politics. The ground was entirely ceded for liberals to entrench themselves inside our high population centers.

So, what does this give you? A city political machine dominated by liberalism, political offices filled by liberal appointees, and educational systems ran by liberals that create more liberals. Liberals don’t care that their cities are rotting because there is no downside for them.

Ironically, inner city liberals become “conservative” in a sense that anyone advocating something new like Pratt did become dangerous radicals seeking to upend the daily life of city residents, even if this would benefit the average citizen.

Of course, what else is to be expected from a political philosophy that has treated anti-racism as a religious doctrine to the point where being anti-crime and anti-homelessness is considered racist due to the demographics of the perpetuators?

Unfortunately, because of this, cleaning up our cities will not be able to get done in a democratic fashion. The country is a body. A body cannot function when several organs are rotting with infection.

The only solution is to forcefully clean up the cities for their own good. If the prosecutors and judges won’t throw the criminal element in jail, then the feds should. If they refuse to go after gangs, send in the armed forces to do it for them.

The American system of decentralizing certain powers to local government only works when the people in charge of local government care about the area they are governing. Our founders could not conceive of a future where large portions of the country would be intentionally left to rot by the people who control them.

This isn’t because the founders were stupid, but because such a concept is stupid to the point where it couldn’t be logically conceived by anyone during that time. You ever hear of something so dumb that you never would have thought of it? That’s what this is.

We need reconstruction for our great cities, not a retreat. These cities are a monument to American achievement, and it would be a shame to let them continue on this course.

Barring extreme methods, here are some things that we could do immediately at the federal level:

• Mass deportations

• Ending H1B Visa programs

• Reenacting the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill or a modernized version of it

• Funding city police forces if city leaders defund them

• Expand federal/local task forces

• Reopen asylums and other mental health facilities to get the homeless off the streets

• Audit programs for fraud and abuse that harms honest people who rely on those programs

There are many more actions needed, but specifically a hardline stance on crime should alleviate most of the issues. Of course, good luck getting Congress to sign off on any of this.

I know that it can be done. I want our cities to be on a tier comparable to those in Japan and China: clean, orderly, and upkept. We only need the will to get it done.

If you want an example of a nice-looking American city, look no further than Miami. No, I am totally not biased. Floridian hands typed these words. Honestly though, the reason that happened was because developers were allowed to go crazy there, so we ended up with American Dubai in the swamp.

Conservatives also win the mayorship often, which is an outlier for most US cities. The exception came with the last election, when the mayorship was won by Democrat Eileen Higgens, but even she is a more moderate Democrat, advocating for the police instead of standing against it, as well as technocratic and pragmatic governance.

Heck, I currently live in Gainesville and that is a nice city. In fact, I’d argue that most Florida cities are nice. Yes, crime exists, but at least our politicians don’t stand in the way of those prosecuting it, unlike those in California, Minnesota, and New York.

The point of this article is that you need to upkeep what you have. If you let your possessions fall into disrepair, especially when those are major population centers, your empire is falling apart. We must not let the empire fall.

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