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The Detroiting and Death of Seattle (by a liberal journalist no less)

Yes, it is an hour but it an hour well spent on how the Utopian compulsions of progressives to pose as “compassionate and caring” has transformed Seattle into its own 3rd-world “shithole country” of homeless drug addicts and criminals polluting what was once a fine city. Reason? This fine city keeps electing socialists and demented Democrats. Me? I’m out of there after ten years and I hope my friends there make their escape soon. After that the only thing that solves a descent this deep is fire.

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  • Anon April 1, 2019, 3:40 PM

    Subtle differences. Detroit was taken over by the black mafia to squeeze/steal as much money out of it as they could. If there was actual justice in Michigan and America about a 1000 or so Detroit politicians. lawyers, cops and elite would be in jail. Seattle is different in numerous ways. Most of Seattle’s problems stem from a cadre of far left women and men who acquired stature and positions in Seattle in the 80’s and 90’s and since who wanted to make Seattle Socialist. Yes, most of the far left in Seattle are women and they fight dirty.

  • Dave April 1, 2019, 5:25 PM

    “Seattle is Dying” is the third program. Here are links to the previous two:
    https://komonews.com/news/local/year-long-project-gives-voices-to-seattles-homeless (2016)
    https://komonews.com/news/videos/watch-demon-at-the-door-our-heroin-crisis (2017)
    I have heard that will be a fourth, but I don’t know when.

  • Jeff Brokaw April 1, 2019, 6:27 PM

    Such a strange coincidence that these cities turn into shitholes after electing virtue-signalling SJW Progressives. If only there was some causal link that the media could uncover!

  • Snakepit Kansas April 1, 2019, 6:54 PM

    States and city states will eventually implode. How many illegal aliens can they take before they are bankrupt? How many thugs and illegals will they accept before they realize they will be eaten by their own? Swamp the schools, social services, police and courts. This can only end bad. Real bad. Unfortunately the numbnuts who can afford to escape the high taxes and crime, haul ass to greener pastures to spread their ilk there. Then continue to vote like they did prior. Look at Colorado. FFS.

  • Jeff Brokaw April 1, 2019, 8:14 PM

    Just watched the entire video — what a horror show. Wow. Disturbing, sad, infuriating, confounding. How is it possible for politicians to be that stupid?

    Civilization is a fragile thing and we are watching our politicians recklessly throw it away. It’s a race to the bottom and SF and Seattle seem to be “winning” but plenty of other cities are giving it their best shot.

  • Old Fert April 1, 2019, 9:48 PM

    Massive extremes in fortunes. Very high can afford to live there in great comfort and splendor.

    Those on the bottom rung (who for the most part aren’t working hard to remedy their situation) tend to stay there.

    Middle folks move out to where they can afford to live and must commute in, or move away.

    The high and middle are being taxed to the max to provide for those drug addicts and mental cases who will, sadly, stay on the bottom rung until they die.

    Those in power don’t want to raise them up, they just want to “make them comfortable” in their street-life situation. Oddly enough, those in power manage to make themselves more comfortable while “helping.”

  • Casey Klahnc April 2, 2019, 3:39 AM

    In the intro they show a guy with his pants hiked down and his ass out. The thing about too much booze is the squirts hit you fast. Anyway, our unfortunate is in front of the big REI. Which reminds me of a story.

    I helped open that big REI, and before that worked, I guess it was, 9 years at the grand old store up on Capitol Hill, Seattle. One beautiful summer day we had the doors open onto 11th., and everyone looked up from their middle class smugness to hear a bum looming in the doorway, yelling at the top of his voice: “You people think you know camping? I camp every daaaay!”

    That was the same summer our property manager found a bum who had expired under the loading dock.

    Hey, listen. Seattle is no great beans for the middle class, anymore, either. The city decides if you can be an American or not (turns out not!). I went back for a week to be bullied by enviro-busybodies, although I thought I was there for in-service training. My commute from my north end home stay took a carefully crafted hour of surface driving and freeway avoidance. I wanted to take the teacher, who is a friend of mine who lives near and teaches in NYC, down to the waterfront after class as a sightseeing lark. As we began to plan it out, the impact of driving from Capitol Hill to the waterfront on our timeline became an impossible plan! I used to walk it in maybe 9 minutes, and now you cannot drive it. Period.

    Fuuuuhk Seattle. And the horse it rode in on.

    I think I’ll go shooting, today. Maybe I can borrow a neighbor’s gun.

  • Former Lurker April 2, 2019, 7:07 AM

    Time to get the pitchforks, torches, and ropes and start hanging the politicians. Even mob rule would be better than this.

  • jwm April 2, 2019, 8:41 AM

    And in my little corner of the Southland the “compassionate” in city hall have decided to let the urban campers pitch tents in a formerly nice park, AND along a wide green easement on the main boulevard into town. Sorta’ makes for a festive atmosphere on your way onto town. This goes well with the tsunami of high-density tenements being built on every vacant lot within the city limits. The streets are choked, the parks are full of tweakers, and derelicts, no one speaks English, and everything’s broken.

    JWM

  • captflee April 2, 2019, 8:52 AM

    As a 1980 denizen of the Shilshole Marina in Ballard, I am of the opinion that Ecotopia has aged far worse in these intervening decades than even I, and that is saying something. I suppose I should have seen it coming, having spent no little time at a bicycle cooperative which shared a building with a sensibly shod women’s group, from which would intermittently erupt anti-male chants of a particularly bloodthirsty sort. Even in those pre-Reagan times, at the ass end of the seventies when the djinn, fair and foul, released in the sixties yet stalked the land, that stood out. I mistook that bit of lunacy for an aberration when it was plainly a harbinger.

    I imagine, Gerard, that seeing this transition must be painful for you. I can’t say that I was ever able to work up much affection for the place; not my weather, not my people. Even so, it was easy to see its appeal, and to recognize the loss.

    Casey: I am no stranger to the Capitol Hill store, and wonder if our paths crossed there.

    Perhaps some day soon I shall assemble a group of like minded folk and head up to Fremont, there to do away with old V.I.’s monument, method yet TBD. Wonder if I could get as good a legal deal there as the Research Triangle’s iconoclasts did?

  • Bruceph April 2, 2019, 8:54 AM

    My stomach is churning having watch most of this video, and having been very, very close to the drug situation.
    I think one is willfully blind, or willfully brainwashed, to think this little video touched the heart of the problem. It’s much bigger (because it’s us), and much simpler. I won’t go into it here. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.
    The solution is also much simpler and derived from Neil Youngs’ observation “every junkie is a setting sun”.
    Here’s my offering to that pile of ideas known as ‘Solutions’*. I realize it’s offensive. It makes me shudder; yet, I think it would work, in spite of the ensuing social justice riots.
    Option A: holding ‘user quantity’ of drugs, automatic 5 years hard labor, regardless of health. No visitation rights; no lawsuits (civil or otherwise) for resultant melanoma.
    Option A1: holding ‘user quantity’ of drugs, with previous [singular] violent arrest, 20 years to death hard labor, no visitation rights. release after 20 upon review.
    Option B: ‘distribution quantity’ of drugs, mandatory execution within 7 days by firing squad. Single visitation allowed. corrupt officials, of any stripe, found ‘planting evidence’ or ‘influencing an outcome’ get same treatment.
    Now I’m going to crawl in a hole and contemplate how the heck I came to think this way. Just in case I’m incorrect or unwilling to ‘do the hard work’ necessary to arrive at a better conclusion. But having been both at cause and victimized by this pandemic I not inclined to think I’ll come to any new ‘understanding’. What one Must understand, heroin is Death. Sit in silence with this for a long time.
    Additionally, the culture is sociopathic.
    footnote: the same goes for pimps, traffickers and pedophiles and especially, abortionists, who should get a special airlift to Kabul or perhaps the DRoC, with a tattoo revealing their occupation the forehead.
    * “The chief cause of problems is solutions.” Eric Sevareid 1970

  • Gordon Scott April 2, 2019, 9:41 AM

    There was a story about four months ago that described why homelessness got so bad in Seattle. There were four groups, if I remember. One is the addicts–they’re pushing for “wellness” care, meaning free needles, free food, free shelter, and, quite possibly, free drugs.

    Another is two large nonprofits that are recipients of heavy public funding. Naturally the leaders of these two groups make very good money, and more and more of the funding goes to keep the group going and less and less to actual beneficial events.

    The third was the politicians, who compete to virtue signal the loudest. All of them require frequent treatment from chiropods for the repetitive motion injuries they suffer. Patting yourself on the back all the time causes muscle stress. Don’t do anything controversial like suggesting giving the addicts bus tickets back to where they come from.

    Fourth was the lefty voters. They don’t want to do any of the heavy lifting of making the homeless be less addicted, or more responsible. They want to vote for someone to tax Amazon and Microsoft and to hire people to do the work. Then they feel good about how much they care.

    It’s amazing how fast that sort of nexus can destroy a beautiful city. And it’s happening in San Diego, LA, San Francisco and to a lesser extent, Portland.

  • tallow pot April 2, 2019, 9:49 AM

    Around forty years ago, I had an appointment at the Federal Bldg. I found a diagonal parking spot on the hill and stepped out of my car into human feces. Nothing has changed, it’s only gotten worse. BRUCEPH I’d add a prohibition on the administration of narcan to those who willingly chose to use illegal drugs.

  • Gordon Scott April 2, 2019, 10:39 AM

    Tallow pot, re: Narcan. That young Hollywood cutie who killed herself a few months back, and was brought back (though she apparently has serious brain damage and probably won’t sing again)? She and her friends have Narcan on hand, just in case. So they can party more hearty. Demi Lovato, that’s the name. Too bad Prince didn’t, although since he was a solitary pain pill user, it probably wouldn’t have helped since you need someone else to administer it. His security people at Paisley Park were not allowed to watch the cameras in the living area.

    I was in the Seattle area for a week, an month ago. I looked for the homeless camps and didn’t see any. But I spent almost no time in Seattle. I was in Kent, Seatac, Tukwila, and other burbs. My coworker, who used to live there, asked if I wanted to go to Pike Place Market. We’re staying in a hotel. What am I gonna do with a fish?

    We had a big homeless camp spontaneously pop up last summer in Minneapolis. They’re not uncommon. City inspectors find them on vacant lots often. But this one was right by a freeway. It grew and grew. Part of it was that it was the Native part of town, and many of the campers were Native. Day and night people stopped by to bring food, tents, sleeping bags, etc. Being Minneapolis, the city brought in portable toilets and dumpsters, and there were efforts to keep it free of vermin. Unfortunately, not free of drugs.

    There was a vigilante Native group running the place (Natives Against Heroin). Now and then they would make a big deal out of tearing down a tent and “evicting” a drug dealer. This would be a dealer who wasn’t paying the vigilantes the proper scratch. Drugs were available 24/7.

    Much anguish on the part of our council members, who closely resemble those in Seattle. And unlike Seattle, it gets fricking cold here. Eventually, one of the state tribes, (Red Lake Chippewa) which owns a bit of land in town, allowed the city to set up a really big tent. We shall see what happens in the future. One idea was to build these little studios for them to live in (500 square feet isn’t little!) with kitchens and bathrooms across a courtyard. Now perhaps I’m just cynical, but I suspect that courtyard will smell like piss in about 18 hours.

  • butch April 2, 2019, 11:06 AM

    My sympathy meter is pegged low. The virtue signaling voters brought this upon themselves. F**k’em.

  • Casey Klahn April 2, 2019, 12:38 PM

    Greetings, Captain Flee. I sure you saw me in the climbing department upstairs. All full of myself and of shit, as all climbers are. 198-something through the late 90s. I worked on capitol Hill, the Flagship downtown, Redmond (when people thought it was Bellevue) and at the Spokane store. I was a terror to my fellow employees, whenever they’d say something really vapid @ the environment. I would nail them to the yardarm; once a really blathering and overly excited customer came in to get some tree climbing stuff because he was going to hang in the trees in the Olympic national Park and save the last ones from being logged. I told him that there is no logging in the National Park, and that he was a total idiot.

    I’d have a beer with any old Seattelite and at anytime. I happened to love the weather but that’s because I came there from the coast, where it was actually rainy! I thought Seattle was the freaking sun capitol.

    I note your pre-Reagan pedigree, and I recall the femmes being vocal, violent, and crabby about President Reagan when he had recently been in office, and I worked on Capitol Hill. They were the first rabid political fatwa, and they dropped their opinions at every turn. Those were the halcyon days when we were still having dialogue. Now, it’s more like a war.

    Anyway: cheers!

  • Bruceph April 2, 2019, 1:57 PM

    One other thing to get straight in the state of politics today is an all too largely constant: Your taxes are there to fund the programs. The programs are there to extract your taxes.

  • AesopFan April 2, 2019, 3:22 PM

    Jeff Brokaw April 1, 2019, 8:14 PM
    …. It’s a race to the bottom and SF and Seattle seem to be “winning” but plenty of other cities are giving it their best shot.
    * * *
    First you ban Chick-Fil-A from your airports…then it’s downhill all the way.
    Sad.
    We lived in San Antonio for two years and loved the city, but the crazy has gotten much worse.

  • Tom Sherry April 2, 2019, 5:36 PM

    “How is it possible for politicians to be that stupid?”

    They live in Bellevue, Redmond, Mercer Island and Bainbridge Island. Not in urban Xiattle.

  • Rob De Witt April 2, 2019, 7:54 PM

    Let me add a little something…

    In ’71 or so, after somehow surviving my childhood, losing my daughter and my only stability, spending time in a mental hospital due the severe breakdown that resulted, and a host of other delights…..I found myself in Chicago trying to make a go of it with my former high-school sweetheart.

    I was 26, I think. I’d grown up, to coin a phrase, in a small city in farm country, and lived in every smaller town I could get close to. All I’d wanted was to escape the escalating insanity of the Rock Culture, and that ended, and ended with, my marriage. This was my first big city, and I saw this stuff through the bus windows when I traveled around town looking for work, an experience I’ll never forget. All I could do was weep.

    And still.

  • Geri April 2, 2019, 9:20 PM

    It is much worse than I thought. San Francisco is worse. Rhode Island has the solution if the politicians would woman/man-up and do what needs to be done.

  • Susan in Seattle April 3, 2019, 6:24 AM

    There are so many things I could write but will instead link this long but well-worth-the read article:
    https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-homelessness

  • Theduchessofkitty April 3, 2019, 9:54 AM

    Seattle-zuela.

  • Gordon Scott April 3, 2019, 3:23 PM

    Geri, what is being done in Rhode Island?

  • Joe April 3, 2019, 4:48 PM

    “[It is a basic principle of a tyrant] to unarm his people of weapons, money, and all means whereby they resist his power.” ~ Sir Walter Raleigh

  • ghostsniper April 3, 2019, 6:05 PM

    If you build a homeless infrastructure…they will come.

  • Geri April 4, 2019, 7:42 AM

    Gordon, If you watch the video it will tell you Rhode Island is arresting, incarcerating and treating drug addicts. They give them methodone and similar medication so that the former drug abusers can go on to lead productive lives. Rhode Island states they have a 93% success rate with this treatment.

  • Rob De Witt April 4, 2019, 11:02 AM

    My goodness, the same resistance to the Homeless Industry is beginning to show up in San Francisco. Newly elected check-all-the-boxes (Black, raised-on-welfare, Lesbian Socialist) Mayor London “I Probably Won’t” Breed has been publicly and loudly shouted down in a sales pitch for a new “Navigation Center” for the druggies and insane.

    https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/London-Breed-shouted-down-at-meeting-over-13740305.php?t=be2908157e

    Amazing.

    This is Politics 101, and never mind what the Eastern lawyers are accusing each other of. I’ve lived in and around this area for over 40 years and I haven’t seen this kind of pushback since the ’70s.

  • Phil Ossiferz Stone April 4, 2019, 2:19 PM

    This is your daily reminder that representation in the state legislature, the electoral college, the House of Representatives, and Federal funding are all determined by CENSUS DATA. The barrios crammed full of illegal beaners and the sprawling homeless encampments are all juicy sources of political power and riches. The pols responsible for this are not stupid. They are merely greedy sociopaths feeding at the trough.

    In other news, the Reform Jews and dykes at The Gun Class will continue to vote for this sort of thing, as well as ‘sensible’ gun control. They merely are a bit alarmed that the things they may vote for will affect *them.* They too are greedy sociopaths, but with an ideological axe to grind.