The recent spate of brazen organized store lootings in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and surroundings aren’t the beginning of societal unraveling in those places, but the latest manifestations.  They represent a new stage and an acceleration.  It’s no accident that this mayhem is lopsidedly centered in blue strongholds.   

Note that these smash-and-grab robberies aren’t confined to poor neighborhoods in big blue cities, but have spread to middle-class and upscale areas -- areas frequented or inhabited by the affluent, (mostly) white progressives who have favored defunding police and emptying prisons. 

Their virtue-signaling about equity and justice is well and good until they become victims -- or, at least, feel threatened.  The chickens are coming home to roost throughout blue America, to amend Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s famous dictum.               

Here are samples of the growing havoc:

From the L.A. Times, November 26:  

Los Angeles police late Friday were on citywide tactical alert after a wave of smash-and-grab “flash mob” robberies at high-end stores.

This from CNN, November 22:

At least 14 people forced their way into a Louis Vuitton store in Oak Brook, Illinois, last week, and made off with at least $100,000 in merchandise, according to CNN affiliate WLS-TV, based on interviews with the Oak Brook Police Department.

And from The Real Deal, November 22:

Brazen thieves targeted stores in four Bay Area cities, including a Walnut Creek Nordstrom, in a three-day spree that forced officials to restrict access to San Francisco’s Union Square.

The culprits in this race to the bottom aren’t just awful elected officials, incompetent public servants, and law enforcement rendered impotent in tackling crime, but a corrupt worldview that permits thieves and thugs to run wild.  These brazen mass robberies aren’t a passing phenomenon.  They’ll only spread, increase, and worsen.  They reflect a perverse ordering of society that stems from progressive values and principles.    

Making political changes in blue jurisdictions next election year would certainly slow the slide, but not arrest and reverse it.  There’s no exit for citizens in blue states and jurisdictions unless they cast off progressivism, which feeds societal derangement.  Otherwise, when fickle voters eventually return progressive politicians to office, lawlessness and rot will resume. 

By way of example, in the early 90s, crime-plagued New York City was made worse by the dreadful David Dinkins’ administration.  Dinkins was followed by 20 good years of law-and-order under Giuliani and Bloomberg.  New York thrived.  The de Blasio years mark a return to the Dinkins’ era, along with steeper decline.  It’s no coincidence that de Blasio began his government career under Dinkins.           

Progressives aren’t a demoralized lot.  That wouldn’t explain why and how they’re failing at practically everything they touch, including upholding law and protecting innocents from criminals.  Conceit, in part, insulates them from connecting the dots.    

Progressives haven’t lost their confidence in traditional values; they’ve consciously abandoned those values over decades.  They’re confidentially anti what America has long stood for; their disdain continues to grow.  

The breakdown of law and order is obviously a prerequisite to “transforming” America.  Left-leaning ruling classes rationalized or embraced and, in some instances, openly encouraged lawlessness and violence last year.  Kamala Harris’ public support for this degeneracy surely emboldened criminals, which includes BLM and Antifa.  Both groups act in loose cooperation with Democrats. 

Victims, like the McCloskeys in St. Louis, who last year defended their property from a mob, per Missouri law, were indicted by Democrat circuit attorney Kim Gardner while real criminals roamed free.  The McCloskeys agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges, which amounted to wrist slaps.  The anticipation of a pardon from Missouri governor Mike Parson spared the McCloskeys the time, costs, and uncertainty of lengthy criminal proceedings. 

This autumn, the nation watched the undeserved prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse, who defended his life against assailants during the Kenosha riots last August.  Videotapes, showing Rittenhouse being menaced and assaulted, necessitating his killing two assailants and wounding another, were plainly exculpatory. 

Rittenhouse was maliciously prosecuted.  Thomas Binger, Kenosha’s lead prosecutor, saw to it.  As with the McCloskeys, the Rittenhouse trial was, in a larger sense, an attempt by progressives to upend a civilizational norm.  What was really on trial was a right to self-defense.   

Democrats Kim Gardner and Thomas Binger chose to weaponize the law, going after law-abiding citizens, attacking their moral right to protect themselves.  Soros-backed DAs in San Francisco (Chesa Boudin), Los Angeles (George Gascón), and Chicago (state attorney Kim Foxx) are lax on crime and grant passes to bad guys routinely.    

Gardner and Binger, et al, are only symptomatic of deeper trouble across blue America.  The deeper trouble is the polities that install these men and women in office or elect those who hire the Bingers.  Harmful policies and governance result from poor choices by citizens who are guided by faulty judgment.  The sorry spectacle of Christmas season in San Francisco is a testament to the community’s dysfunction.  Chesa Boudin wasn’t appointed by God.      

The good news is that Boudin and Gascón are facing recall efforts.  Not all San Franciscans and Angelenos are ready to accept their communities’ suicides.  Likewise, in a fit of sanity, Seattle voters elected Republican Ann Davidson as city attorney in a tight contest.  Minneapolis voters turned out two anti-police city council members and voted down an initiative to effectively dismantle the public safety department.  But do these results truly represent the beginning of sea changes in understanding or merely reactions to the moment?       

What we’ve seen in Washington, D.C. since January has been a concerted effort by Democrats to impose failed progressive beliefs and values on red (or traditional) America.  Behind every Biden and congressional Democrat measure is an attempt to alter the nation in fundamental ways… to refashion the country so it more closely resembles declining blue states, New York and California being the premier examples.  And the aforementioned blue cities, where rot is as plain as day. 

If that seems perverse, it is.  Healthy minds, informed by healthy morality, measure actions as those actions play out in reality.  Consequences matter.  If failures occur, partial or whole, changes are made to align one’s perceptions and actions with facts.  That makes for healthier people and communities. 

Progressives have either lost or lack the very vital capacity to properly discriminate.  They’re enthralled by a belief system that omits the damaging facts of their actions if those facts offend or challenge their beliefs.  Failures are ignored or excused -- and if you listen to Jen Pasiak’s yakking, spun as successes.  Through rampant crime, unsafe streets, ransacked stores, and more, blue communities are bearing the brunt of this obstinacy -- a communal obstinacy, no less.     

Such is the stuff of blind zealotry, too, and in a real sense, that makes progressives dangerous -- not only to themselves and their communities but to us… to the nation as a whole. 

Zealots can’t be reasoned or compromised with; they aren’t open to either, anyway.  They won’t stop unless they’re defeated and pushed to the margins.  If progressive zealotry prevails, and progressives succeed at imposing their worldview on us, the consequences will be similar to what’s happening in dreary San Francisco and Chicago.  Main streets in our communities will become mean streets.  Americans of good sense and goodwill can’t permit that to happen.   

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith and occasionally on Parler, again @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.

Image: Pixabay

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