"Pandemics, race riots are part of the price we pay for having big cities"

The headline is adapted from a line in "The City is Killing America: America's real problem are urban problems", by Daniel Greenfield, in Frontpage Mag, 21/10/20. Mr Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

In this lengthy and thoughtful article, Mr Greenfield traces the rise of American cities, and their problems, from the early days through the Civil War and the industrial age into the urban decay and despair which blight the once-great cities of todays Disunited States.

He concludes that cities like New York and San Francisco, not to mention Seattle and Portland -- all of them run by Democrats -- are the breeding grounds and incubators for pandemics (Covid-19 is just one) and "mostly peaceful protests" (read: race riots) which are destroying America, literally.

The photos above were taken in Seattle in June. 46 more can be found in "Seattle Riot: 46 devastating photos of Downtown destruction, vandalism", a photo gallery posted on mynorthwest.com, 1/6/20. By why pick on Seattle? Google images for Chicago, Buffalo, Newark, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Boston or virtually any US city, especially those on the "blue coasts".

And then there's Detroit. You may remember seeing "Quiz: Which American city has been occupied 3 times by the US Army?" on WWW 3/12/19. Walt shared a positive review of Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff, Penguin Press, 2013, along with just two of the excellent photos to be found in an excellent photo essay at the end of that book. It's depressing but compelling reading.

Mr Greenfield writes: Pandemic maps of the death toll show the deaths concentrating around major cities before making the slow trek from urban into suburban and eventually rural areas. The urban lockdowns didn’t stop the spread of the virus. What they really did was trap poor and middle class residents in urban areas, while the wealthy fled, and the virus spread to urbanites with the least mobility.

The people with the worst immune systems, in the densest living conditions, and the least ability to get up and leave, suffered the most, from nursing home patients to minorities with large families. The general pattern was historically familiar from the Middle Ages, and the only thing that our public health experts proved is that they weren’t any smarter than medieval peasants.

But the coronavirus is an urban problem and all the official solutions to it are urban solutions. And the urban problems and their solutions are killing us and taking down the whole country.

Urbanization has become a pyramid scheme taking over entire states, while hollowing out the more conservative rural areas, turning red states blue, and leaving everyone except those at the top of the pyramid scheme poorer with each generation.

America is no longer divided between the old geographies of North and South, but the new geographies of density, between cities and their suburbs, and rural areas and small towns. The latter represent the old American communities, while the former showcase the new feudal order in which great suburban wealth and urban poverty combine into radical political alignment. 

That’s the so-called “resistance”, not by the disempowered, but by the politically privileged....

The urban model hasn’t worked for America in sixty years. The pandemic has put it on the verge of collapse as the wealthy industries that made cities their base flee into virtual workspaces. It’s time to rethink and defund cities as the hubs of our economy and our nation....

Envisioning a less dense and more open country will heal many of our social and economic ills. Urban areas have concentrated political radicalism and blight. Universities have become their own radical cities. Municipalities have built networks of crony companies around themselves. Density has destroyed communities and families while depriving people of a meaningful life.

Reducing immigration can slow down population growth to sustainably match our economy and replacing cities with communities can allow our society to heal from its urban wounds. America was built around communities, not cities. It can be rebuilt around communities again.

The city is too big to fail and that means that the country is dying of its failures. We can either keep the city alive at the cost of the country, or let the city fail so that the country can live.

Walt regrets that limitations of space keep us from sharing the whole article. Please, dear readers, click on the link at top or here to read the whole thing.