Think about how we shop for what we need. In the Bay Area, you can’t find what you’re looking for in a store locally because shoplifting and street crime have decimated retail business so that empty storefronts abut stores with nearly empty shelves.
The has world fundamentally changed, one local retail outlet at a time
“You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization—including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain—without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.” —Thomas Sowell
“...Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent...” —Adam Smith
I’ve remained silent for a while now, not knowing what to say or how to sort the many threads. Perhaps I’m slow, but I finally had at least a minor “aha” moment. I know it’s all fundamentally about money and power. Isn’t it always? But the salient question is always who this evil benefits. The one thing I know for sure is that it’s not independent communities and the local free market.
It’s human nature to want the world around us to make sense. We try to find common ground, but see erstwhile stable institutions, once employed to maintain safety and order, failing. Our stable society is dissolving into a million stratified fragments, all promoted by adherents to the twin idiocies of DEI and CRT. Overwhelmed, we see little choice but to retreat, hide, and live in our mental bunkers.
This is purposeful. If we remain stunned into silence and perceive it to be dangerous to speak up, it’s easier to destroy everything we hold dear and, yes, fundamentally change America—into a miserable, third-world dictatorship where the woke few live like kings, and the rest suffer.
Think about how we shop for what we need. In the Bay Area, you can’t find what you’re looking for in a store locally because shoplifting and street crime have decimated retail business so that empty storefronts abut stores with nearly empty shelves. The choice between wasting expensive gas hunting for this or that item and risking assault while you’re out versus online shopping—it’s simple.
Image: San Francisco’s deserted downtown shopping district. YouTube screen grab.
Go conveniently to Amazon. They’ve got the goods, plenty of choices, and they’ll get them to you so very fast! So fast other online retailers can’t compete. Returns are equally easy—no jockeying with customer service for authorization and label, no lining up at the post office. Just drop it off next time you get groceries. I can’t count the times I’ve tried to buy directly from other online retailers only to fall back on Amazon because it’s just that much easier and cheaper.
How did we get here? I’d argue that it was the result of deliberate Democrat policies. In Democrat-run enclaves, we have District Attorneys who don’t charge criminals legislatures that do away with cash bail. It mocks justice. Moreover, the worst of these DAs were selected, financed, and elected by the Soros/WEF crowd, so they are controlled wholly by forces outside the community. They push a DEI model of crime where the “poor” perp is always the wronged person. If you defend yourself, your store, your property, your body, and your possessions, you risk being charged with a crime—against an “under-represented minority”.
Ergo, shoplifting, mugging, and violent crimes against the citizens are condoned, even quietly encouraged. There are no penalties, really—in California, under $950 stolen is not even considered for prosecution. We’ve had wandering thug-gangs mercilessly attack old ladies on the street and get no-bail release. “Youths,” of course.
Police are scared to be accused of a crime if they enforce the law. In Oakland, California, there hasn’t even been a police chief since the far-left mayor, Sheng Thao, fired him right after she was elected, so almost a year now. Businesses are fed up, so there’s a strong recall effort against her and her crony, Pamela Price, the Alameda County DA.
But for many businesspeople, that success is going to be too late. Store closings are the norm. So are restaurant closings because who wants to go out and, while you enjoy your (increasingly expensive) dinner, have your car window get smashed in a robbery? But that’s the norm today, too.
The sweet little mom-and-pop Thai restaurant we used to frequent—whose owners saved for years to open lost everything when thieves stole a car, drove it through the front of the building, destroying most of the restaurant, and took everything they could find. Sadly, I’m betting that rampage didn’t even net them much, other than the thrill of destroying completely someone’s hard work and livelihood.
You can’t even carry a purse around here. It’s like a sweet invitation to the thieves. I don’t carry cash, either. I use my phone (and it’s an old model, just like my car, because I don’t want anyone paying attention to me). Apple has made it very easy to pay for stuff. Any chance you caught Dennis Quaid’s piece on Tucker about how easily the grid can get fried? I realize that not being able to pay with my phone would be the least of the problems if that happened, but yikes!
As for our new way of shopping, what happens when the inevitable driver’s strike is mounted? That future sees delivery drivers unionize (apparently some are already) and, when the time is just right, go on strike—now what?
It’s kind of like all the little dominoes falling in sequence to “fundamentally change” the way we live our lives. Such progress!
What would we be left with? Empty shelves in the remaining stores that limp along trying to survive, no delivery, then total paralysis? Your government will be glad to rescue you, I’m sure…
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