Another Tragedy in Baltimore
GREGORY HOOD • OCTOBER 2, 2023 • 1,500 WORDS • 177 COMMENTS • REPLY
One of the signs that the country is falling apart is that conservatives seem to have written off major cities. The governor of Texas is busing migrants to New York City, where they cause so much trouble the mayor says they could destroy the city. San Francisco, Philadelphia, and other cities are conservative punchlines. Many liberals take a curious pride in decline, as if it were a sign of cultural authenticity.
It’s my impression that conservatives don’t care what happens to urban liberals anymore, because they brought ruin on themselves. Liberals refuse to learn, because admitting they were wrong would mean admitting we are right. Conservatives should not stop caring, because liberals are as much victims as perpetrators — even as they keep making the same mistakes.
Perhaps the most embarrassing American city is Baltimore. The city that gave us Edgar Allan Poe, H. L. Mencken, and the National Anthem is a wreck. It’s been bleeding population for years, and its rates of drug addiction and crime are soaring. Years ago, the television series The Wire showed the city as unreformable — plagued by corruption, crime, and drugs. Oddly, when President Donald Trump called it a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” The Wire’s creator David Simon complained:
“If this empty-suit, race-hating fraud had to actually visit West Baltimore for five minutes and meet any of the American citizens who endure there, he’d wet himself,” he said. “It means the president, if he stepped out of his limo and found himself suddenly a racial minority, would wet himself on that fundamental alone.”
https://www.unz.com/ghood/another-tragedy-in-baltimore/
