When I moved to Minneapolis in 1974, it was considered a model city. Prosperous, clean, progressive, low-crime. It has been declining ever since. After four decades of monopoly Democratic Party rule, Minneapolis has deteriorated beyond recognition. The George Floyd incident and nearly a week of rioting, looting and arson, which did around $500 million in damages–no one has any plan to rebuild the destruction–has brought Minneapolis’s decline to public attention. But the rot goes deep, and has been getting worse for a long time. The Twin Cities have been below average in population growth, job growth and income growth in the 21st Century–ranking below, amazingly enough, the Baltimore metro area.
Yesterday President Trump took note of Minneapolis’s terrible reputation:
Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020
Rioters took over the city after the Floyd incident, and they haven’t given the streets back. With almost all of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to abolish the city’s police force, you can imagine that law enforcement is not being pursued aggressively. So we have scenes like this one, in Uptown, formerly an upscale entertainment district:
Uptown https://t.co/mgoWpjxj0e
— Libor Jany (@StribJany) June 20, 2020
It is sad to see a civilization descend into chaos, but that is what happens when leadership is utterly absent, or, worse, on the side of disorder. That is the world we are living in, here in Minnesota.
