Don't believe your eyes, the endless capacity to rationalize. Maybe that works some places.

Walking the nation's capital streets after dark shouldn't be Russian roulette. Being advised to dart from one side of the street to the other is not normal. Take a chance, you say. Will a pack of sociopathic teenagers beat the hell out of you, maybe kill you, steal your car and be back on the street the next day? Forces of crime thrive in many countries south of us, so why not give way to them here, too, demonize efforts to take back the streets. Why not become a failed state? Foreign diplomats and the nation's citizenry come and go in the US capital all the time. To do the nation's business, to testify before Congress. Most of us, and certainly the residents, don't have personal security. Since when do we have tents and non- permitted Middle Eastern bazaars in the middle of Washington DC.? Thugs ringing the Lincoln memorial? That's never okay. That's never leave it to the locals. The cities are a mess because of "progressive" misrule and what can only be, at this stage, malign intent, because nobody's that stupid. Oakland is a sewer, with enormous, blubbery all but naked prostitutes tramping through box store parking lots in front of kids, dead car grave yards and some kind of insane festival that the police can't stop - they're "outnumbered," they say, so that's that-- that involves wrecking and driving stolen cars.

DC's governing class has given "law abiding" residents the bird for as long as I can remember. For good reason, the federal government has a say in its own capital, especially when from ideology or sheer incompetence the locals are not doing the job. The left conveniently forgets that it used to be very easy to enter a government building before terrorist attacks and the capital's buildings were surrounded by ugly, massive cement berms and security long before Jan. 6. That was fine because they didn't want to criticize you know, terrorists. The loss of so much of normal living in a free and peaceful society, everything from getting on a freaking plane to going in a government building, has met with crickets on the left. Police state? The forced lockdown during Covid, and forced closing of schools, and businesses from which many have never recovered, the forced vaccinations, the fatal blow to many restaurants that haven't reopened, in which law abiding citizens "had no say," was championed by the left. Everyone had to stay inside, churches had to close -- except George Floyd rioters and protesters, who got a great, big, corrupt exemption. The collapse of parts of Oregon and Seattle and major cities like Minneapolis into anarchy and violence, attacking police stations and courthouses, is much more a threat than a national guardsman from Lynchburg, Virginia patrolling the streets of Washington DC.

In San Francisco and New York City major chains closed because of retail theft and fears for employee safety. Toothpaste is behind lock and key. Madison Avenue in New York loses great shops by the day. Robbers have cleared out entire shops. Until the failed state mentality of what used to be the Democrat Party starts locking up criminals and getting them off the street, yeah, I think the federal government will be forced to step in. I trust the guys and women in the National Guard and in the military. The current Democrat candidate, a communist, in New York wants to open the jails.