Same thing happened to Northern Virginia. When I grew up there in the 60s and 70s it was still a semi-rural area full of dairy and horse farms, but once the federal government exploded it all got paved over and overdeveloped to death. Now it's one of the most expensive areas in the country. In my opinion, one of the most corrupt relationships in this country is the one between developers and politicians. I can't count how many times I've seen areas and communities ruined by their insatiable hunger for cash.
JFK shut the Soviets up with the CMC. The rhetoric in the 80's was simply to outspend Russia and scare people about communism. Reagan's cabinet was full of criminals. Spooks and lobbyist. It was insane.
If you build it they will come. and come. and come. and come. "it" being the soft-on-crime welfare state and sanctuary cities California's ridiculously over-the-top Environmental Impact and Sustainable Development polices are also driving their homelessness crisis. It's as if they don't understand the first thing about how supply and demand impacts prices.... or they perfectly understand and are using their wealth to buy politicians who will abuse their authority to create artificial exclusivity and value for the ownership class. I'm banking on the former.
Yes I agree, it is a fairy tale. But one that would go a long way in stopping the irresponsible behavior that is tolerated by this very off the rails liberal run city. They have turned SF, certain areas in a greater 3rd world shi*hole, IMO. You are right in that a modern democrat cannot fix what they created. The same mindset that created this problem, will never fix it, given the logic involved. In order to fix it they must be pragmatists instead of modern liberal progressive ideologues. And it is a fairy tale to think such ideologues can fix what they broke, what they have created out of utter stupidity and ignorance, iMO. Truth is, IMO of course, that what is called conservative ideology cannot fix it either, for ideologues will always ignore pragmatism, if pragmatism rejects ideology. I don't think either ideology is capable of addressing many things in a most pragmatic fashion. It is ideology first, and if that is not capable of solving a problem, then that problem goes unsolved. Ideology will limit the ability to solve problems, and many times the same ideological driven solution, when it fails, will not cause a discarding of that solution, but later on, it will be tried again. No one remembers when some ideological driven solution fails, given enough time. I think we see a history of this in many areas where problems exist. Bad thing is, we have no group of people, organized, that are driven by simple pragmatism, that seek to solve problems without a political ideology driving them, and limiting them. Am I wrong in this perception? Of course pragmatism must have some moral compass, or otherwise you get Hitlers using pragmatism to solve problems, a final solution paradigm.
Conservatives are much more pragmatic. Call me crazy but conserving what works is preferable to replacing it with what sounds nice to rubes, and does not work. You don't see conservatives tolerating fecal snow. It simply wouldn't be tolerated, just as breaking the law, differing standards, and tolerance of children wading through needles would not be tolerated. The lefts "solution" here is to provide more beds/shelters-which just means more homeless. When you find yourself in trouble-the FIRST step should be to stop digging. The left can't do that-they are incapable.
Yes if you are looking for pragmatism, IMO, you will find much more of that on the conservative side than on the off the rails modern liberal side. Yet I see a lack of pragmatism on some issues when it comes to conservatives too. But yes, at least there are some pragmatists on the conservative side, and a huge lack of such on the modern liberal side. And I may be understating it by using a "lack". ha ha. I think JFK was perhaps one of the last pragmatic democrats holding the oval office. And if he was around today, he would not be in the democratic party, given how off the rails that party has become. It drove me from the democratic party in the 90s thanks to Clinton and his sell out of working americans. Can you imagine any democrat today asking..." ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?" ha ha. Unless of course that question preceded the next one..which would be...what can you do to remove pres trump from office? Legally or illegally. ha ha
As a pragmatist, how would you fix it? What the left has done and continues to do ain't working. I'm not putting you in that camp, just wondering what solution would work. Obviously, open borders and sanctuary havens are a cancer.
Kennedy would be unrecognizable as a democrat today, which is a shame because I'd rather have 2 pragmatic parties to chose from, and for them to compete to see which ideas are more successful. Thats real progress, not the ugly reality that is the democrats today.
To the Left perhaps, but the reason there are statues of Reagan in places like Warsaw and Budapest is because he elevated the fight against Communism to a moral level. Before that, many of our leaders treated it as a competition between economic systems and/or military superpowers. Race has nothing to do with it. The problem is the Republican spendthrifts in DC are no better than the Democratic spendthrifts in DC. That's why ALL those *******s need to be put on the end of a Balanced Budget Amendment leash, and if I had my way they wouldn't be able to tax you and me and draw a paycheck until they passed a budget. The way Washington has been operating the past 10 years is completely unacceptable.
Let's not look to "fix" anything before mid-terms OK? SF voters might reconsider exactly what it is they're DNC cast ballots are supporting, if they have to pause to scrape human feces off their shoes before entering the voting booth.
And it's decidedly less glorious and glamorous than we thought it would be. When I was a twerp I dreamed of space colonies and flying cars but here we are talking about pooh apps. What a letdown - the future turned out to be sh*t...
If you wake up in SF at around 3 in the morning, before the city wakes up and look over the bridge and see the fog rolling in, its quite remarkable, one of my favorite places in the world.....but then the realization hits of what that area is actually like and I can't get out of there fast enough.
Your historical view seems rather revisionist. Nobody had to "scare" people about the thread of monolithic Communism. From the end of WWII to the fall of the Berlin wall the Soviets were an existential threat. The people in Eastern and Central Europe could educate you as to life under the Commies. My son in law was born and raised in East Germany and was even a member of the their para-military youth organization. He could tell you a thing or two about the Stasi.
Never going to happen. They could be stepping over piles of children and would be incapable of recognizing their way does not work.
This is the reality, all the while most of America thinks California is about surfing, and everything is going great.
That makes two of us! Progressive democrats are not by any means progressive, but they have regressed into outright off the rails idiocy. It is sometimes hard for me to think just how off the rails idiotic my old party has become. I do not recognize it today at all. If they do not change, that means that they will have to rely upon low IQ people, who can be conned easily, and by upper middle class and upper class people. Given that, we will not see them cast identity politics, creating division between different races of americans, different ethnicities, aside but to ramp it up, with clever and not so clever propaganda, as they deny truth and have no place for pragmatism in solving problems, they created. But how long can they continue the farce? And intentionally dividing working americans by race, pitting these people against one another, using propaganda and out right lies and deception in order to pull it off. Hopefully their mode of operation will be forced to change, and we again see something closer to the party of JFK, but with new generations, and what they seem to be, what they seem to believe in, I am not at all hopeful that working americans are ever again represented, after trump leaves office. I think that as little as he has actually done what he said he would do, and it is still early, yet, I will grant that, that he will be the last president that ever tries to make the lives of working americans better. I think the status quo that preceded trump will return with vengence once he leaves office. I hope I am wrong and that enough americans have woken the hell up, and will not tolerate returning to the treasonous status quo. I just wish I was young enough and healthy enough to be able to live long enough to see what happens post trump. ha ha
They have moved from conning our low info voters to importing new low info voters. Its like a 12 foot tall big rig coming up on a 10 ft underpass. Regardless of what they want to believe-reality is going to interject itself, and its damn stubborn.
I didn't see her coming, either. When I was a twerp Democrats fought communists. Today they are communists...
