Thursday Morning Guest Rant

Throughout the course of this year, I have noticed a theme bubbling up in response to the surging crime in America's major cities. These cities have been transformed by their Soros-type DAs, police chiefs, mayors, etc. into crime-ridden hellscapes that are decreasingly conducive to human life and ambition. The most recent spate of random or semi-random attacks that have left a wake of dead or injured activists has seen this theme manifest more often in news coverage.

It isn't just news, though it's extremely easy to spot there. The most heavy-handed (and low-quality) popular programming also manifests the theme. The CW's "Gotham Knights" television show (a "young adult" drama based in Batman world) earlier this year espoused the theme, as do other entertainment products. The theme is not a new one, and it has been kicking around for more than a century. In 2023, however, it has seen a major rebirth. That theme is as simple as it is obviously wrong:
the root cause of crime is poverty.

The theme has its roots in Marxist theory, though not quite so explicitly. In Marxism, this manifests as the concept "capitalism is crimogenic" - that is, capitalism generates criminality. In Marxism, the reason for this are self-interested materialism (I can get more, and therefore be better under capitalism, if I steal/loot/murder/etc.) and criminal codes created by and enforced for the bourgeoisie and therefore criminals are, by definition, non-bourgeois and so logically the poor are criminals. Like everything in Marxism, it's a stupid mess.

The theme shifted in recent decades, freeing itself of the Marxist cruft and simplifying dramatically in the new world of postmodernism. The problem is still capitalism (or "The Rich" or "The Powerful" or what have you), but the cause is now just "poverty." The poor can't live with their oppression and so need to commit crimes in order to live. Because they must commit crimes, they mustn't be punished for committing crimes. If you want to reduce crime, the solution is not punish criminals but to alleviate the root cause: poverty. Only equity can solve crime.

We see it everywhere, all the time. Ace does an admirable job covering the surging urban crime in this country, and the theme is usually easy to spot in that coverage when he quotes articles about criminal activity. From Ace's coverage yesterday of a CVS store in Washington, DC that routinely gets cleaned out by organized gangs of "shoplifters:"

"A lot of people can't actually afford things in CVS," DC resident Gerald Darling told WTTG.

"I'm not saying stealing has to be the solution to that," he added. "However, I don't know, maybe if the city could provide more accessible resources to unhoused or under-income folks who can provide them hair care, bodily care, hygiene care -- that could be an option."

This year's theme is apparent everywhere and if you want to, you can spot it at will.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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