The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Seattle's Journey In To Hell

    By Orion on Mon, 11/01/2021 - 4:02pm |

    For years, we have always been warned about Nazism emanating from some rural reactionary quarter. Nazism, for real, however, took root in Vienna, a once highly educated and prosperous city where things simply did not turn out how anyone thought they would turn out. There was such a void of any sort of proper governance that total evil could take charge.

    I do believe that cities like Seattle, Washington are where that could happen again. Technocratic governance by software elites turned life in to a massive homeless dystopia. Instead of preparing for the real world, an entire generation was raised for a technological utopia that never showed up, with medieval ruin showing up instead. Unlike other cities in the United States, there's little preparation for dealing with social problems.

    Stories of that region regularly now sound like a journey through hell: 

    SEATTLE — A murder case in Spokane is drawing attention to the alarming amount of human trafficking happening in the Seattle area. 

    A 60-year-old Spokane man is behind bars after he admitted to killing his daughter's ex-boyfriend. He claims the 19-year-old man sold his daughter to a sex-trafficking group in Seattle. However, the FBI and Washington State Patrol are investigating that claim. 

    Seattle is known to be one of the top cities for sex trafficking. Statistics are hard to track, but the Port of Seattle, which has been working to fight human trafficking since 2007, says 500 to 700 minors in King County are forced into prostitution every year. 

    "We've got young people who are being sold in the sex trades and adults who are being trafficked for labor," said Mar Brettmann, executive director and CEO of Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking. BEST provides training on the signs of sex trafficking to businesses in sectors like hospitality and tourism. "It's happening at even more alarming rates since the onset of COVID."

    Homeless and undesireables littering the streets, sex trafficking, a lack of police enforcement, and more aggressive conservative types from Eastern Washington willing to take force in to their own hands. While I was living there, I lived with an ex-Mormon who quite literally turned his home in to a brothel. This is a recipe for something really bad, for someone to show up and threaten to clean things up by force. The culture there is one of denial and believing that problems only happen somewhere else. I'm from there. I wouldn't say it if I weren't serious.

    Comments

    yet a quick glance at google news on the Nov.2 elections there sound like voters have finally started trying to take the situation in the other direction. Both from two days ago

    The Seattle Times

    Progressives on the ropes? 5 takeaways from Seattle’s election night returns

    .Are Seattle progressives on the ropes? How did a Democrat become a Republican to get support from Democrats? Here are five takeaways from...

    The Times article above even uses the wording "progressive fright night"

    K5: 

    Is Seattle seeing a sharp shift in its politics?

    Bruce Harrell is the mayor-elect, with a nearly 30-point gap between him and challenger and current City Council President Lorena Gonzalez.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 11/06/2021 - 3:49am

    Excellent finds. 

    One thing is that once Seattle repudiates progressivism, it might never go back. Progressivism in the world means a lot of things but in Seattle it means denialism - pretending social problems don't exist in order to seem more righteous than those dealing with them. It's an out of control city that literally just throws everything problematic out on the street.


    by Orion on Sat, 11/06/2021 - 5:05pm

    just in case either of those was not clear enough, this lays it out real simply as the main job responsible for your concerns

    Now that's not to say that a more reasonable Democrat might have won, but that's the choice that was given.

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 11/07/2021 - 4:55am

    I would say that, generally, Seattle is just a city that needs to look at itself. Its brand of progressive rested on the assumption that social problems happened elsewhere and it was a unique utopia that had the right to lecture everyone else. That maybe made sense when someone like George W. Bush was president, although its problems were just hidden better. It stopped making any sense after that and the city has become an extremely backward and regressive place that attracts the country's rejects. If some variation occurs, that shows that the city is finally beginning to self-reflect.


    by Orion on Wed, 11/10/2021 - 8:10pm

    Meanwhile in SF, many are still grappling with how to deal with criminality:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 11/06/2021 - 5:03pm

    The problem in SF is different from in Seattle. There's a darkness in Seattle that the Bay Area doesn't have. That's just my opinion, tho.

    However, SF is pretty damn extreme. I saw a young woman with a knife prominently displayed on her side navigate through multiple street people with her eyes jetting from side to side. Nearly everyone in the city seemed to have a knife on them. Again, that sort of displays that they're somewhat self-aware. 

    If you talk to San Franciscans about it, they will admit the city has big problems. In Seattle, they will deny. In the minds of Seattleites, they're living in some sort of liberal Vatican. Ironically, the Vatican also had serious problems that everyone denied for years.


    by Orion on Sat, 11/06/2021 - 5:12pm


    by artappraiser on Sat, 11/06/2021 - 7:54pm

    Developing countries have communities, family culture, fewer drugs, tradition and communicated expectations for young people, and a controlled media. Also developing countries tend to be a lot older and don't subscribe to bizarre ideas that try to deny human nature. 

    People here also are prone to childish utopian ideas that keep them from embracing practical solutions. They'd really rather be right about something than do the right thing.


    by Orion on Sun, 11/07/2021 - 2:33am