455 Comments
Jun 19, 2022·edited Jun 19, 2022

Excellent, if not a little hard to read. It is the embodiment of my slogan about extreme liberals - "Good Intentions = Unintended Consequences"

From the East Coast, we watch California and think, "It's a beautiful place to visit, but who would want to live there now?"

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Beautiful writing, Nellie. Thank-you. Please write about Philly. We average 5 shootings a day and 10 murders a week. We make San Fran look like Paradise.

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Here is how San Francisco fell: Let anyone do anything at all. Elect revolutionaries who want to destroy society. Import illegal drugs from China. Have Newsom be the mayor and then the governor. This article is total nonsense. .

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I went to the Atlantic and spent the better part of an hour reading the whole thing. It is a fascinating read, a read I’ve thought about all day. It’s especially fascinating as a far right conservative from a red state. I was a bit shocked at what is considered “normal” there. I mean it’s like it’s a different country! It’s been years since I’ve visited SF but I have friends there. One friend has owned a Victorian in The Haight since the 1960s. And my nephew goes to SFU. They are undoubtedly liberal but I didn’t have any idea.

Best of luck to SF. I hope they can get it somewhat straightened out. I doubt it, but I’ll pray for them.

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The big obstacle is equating these failed approaches with compassion. One can be intensely compassionate but insist on results. The emotion and the task can be two entirely different things

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Once you expect policy to work, what is left of progressivism?

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I bet that the billion dollars "for the homeless" provides a lot of good paying jobs for bureaucrats.

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The language that Leftists use to hide the truth is mind bending. There is nothing "progressive" about using public money to pander to the groups that keep Leftist politicians in office, and to see this author use the term "California Libertarianism"? Excuse me? That's the newest term to be defined as an oxymoron in the space where the sane reside. Do not confuse ANYTHING Leftist with Libertarian values, that is an insult to the Founders.

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If you’re going to San Fransicko... great article and a glimmer of hope at the end. I hope that the change is real and not just talk, and I also hope this change happens across America, and in particular here in NYC

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I'm glad to see that Nellie finally posted this article (which I read earlier in The Atlantic) here on Common Sense. It gives a lot of insight into what shaped Nellie into the person she is, which makes it even more amazing that she took a step back from Progressivism. Kudos, Nellie!

I agree that libertarianism helped create this situation--allowing people to "do their own thing." The problem is that too many libertarians have no answer to the issue of people's "own thing" becoming a problem for everyone else. The actual libertarian answer is too harsh for the Progressives: locking up the criminals (including those whose crime is leaving dangerous litter--used needles and human feces--in public places) and allowing drug addicts to experience the natural consequences of their choices (death by overdose).

But the Progressive desire to embrace and accept all oddities--no matter how dangerous to others--is what has made this problem impossible to solve. By papering over the issues with Newspeak, they allow themselves to believe that they have done all that can be done. To believe that they are kind and caring. To believe that allowing the law-abiding to be harmed in the name of tolerance is truly "righteous" (in the ideology of Woke-ism).

I have less hope for San Francisco than Nellie does. I don't think the inhabitants have the grit to make the hard choices, to impose the necessary solutions, to call their actions by their proper names. As a libertarian myself, I don't object to the city making drug addicts comfortable while they kill themselves. But it should be called what it is: assisted suicide. Nor should the process of providing comfort (and even drugs; fentanyl seems quickest to allow overdose) be allowed to enrich anyone (as it clearly does).

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Saw this today from someone who worked the trenches in Seattle: "Much More Violent, Much More Unkind: Notes on progressive drug policy in the United States"

https://rhyd.substack.com/p/much-more-violent-much-more-unkind?s=r

Dunno You or anyone interested, but it's free, so there is that.

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Thank you! That was very interesting. The author is clearly enmeshed in their own worldview, but they are still able to recognize that what Progressives are doing isn't working.

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Naw. And, yeah, him being an anarchist threw me off, but I guess he seems to be recovering from it. At any rate, he punctured enough holes in the Woke agenda to make it interesting.

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Boudin. like the bread?

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Jun 13, 2022·edited Jun 13, 2022

yuk. reading this made me slightly ill. the saddest part of the article to me was the picture of Loehmanns closed I remember when it opened. I took a "sick day" from work to be in line to shop til i dropped as I was a dedicated Loehmanns shopper in Boston where a friend and I shopped for 5 roommates. We were between university and grad school when we lived a year of fun!! I drove in from Galveston for the opening and as I drove a truck pulled up beside me.. when I looked over the driver raised up and jacked off. smiling all the way. Hey it was the "city" guess I was lucky he di not yell out his pronouns but now I live about an hour away and have not been to SF in about 10 years and I loved it and miss it....I even avoid the airport. I remember driving in to go to the opera and then to Stars to hang at the bar with the "rich and famous" like Willie Brown of "Kamala" fame. it was the place to be..homeless yes. they were there. . but as a part it the city. not the whole city.. but enough of that.. I am a libertarian.. I believe drugs should be legal. .. all drugs.. what I do not believe is that when a person chooses the drug life that the rest who do not should support them in their choice by giving them whatever it takes to keep them from breaking onto my car.. or stealing my stuff. Nellie says:"Residents had hoped Boudin would reform the criminal-justice system and treat low-level offenders more humanely. Instead, critics argued that his policies victimized victims, allowed criminals to go free to reoffend, and did nothing to help the city’s most vulnerable" I think she is mistaken about who is the city's "most vulnerable". It certainly is NOT the addicts of SF

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“The city’s approach to drug use and homelessness is distinctly San Franciscan, blending empathy-driven progressivism with California libertarianism.” Nellie, thank you for helping a wider audience make sense of the decline of San Francisco with your beautiful writing and for getting it published in the Atlantic. It is not often in these hyper-partisan times that an essay like yours would even reach progressive readers. You take great care in building the story to help people understand how empathy, carelessly applied, can unwittingly destroy a city from within. Some Common Sense readers seem frustrated that there is not more outright criticism of San Francisco’s failing policies, but my take-away is that your essay was meant to speak to progressive San Franciscans who love, mourn and question the direction of the city. There is subtlety in your approach; I think you’re right to meet those readers where they are.

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This assessment of SF reminded me of the famous Torah commentary: (paraphrased) "Those who are merciful to the cruel will see the cruel devour the merciful."

Practical politics is the practice of enforcing mercy (chessed) or justice (gevurah); brilliant politics is getting this balance correct, recognizing mercy and justice are hard to balance. While mercy demands compassion for the addicted, justice demands their murdering drug pushers be executed -- certainly an oversimplification.

Take petty theft. Nothing destroys an economy faster than stealing, as people will not put capital at risk if if will be stolen. Hernando DeSoto's "They Mystery of Capital" explains it well.

Anyway, a season of stricter justice seems the order of the day.

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I knew SF was spiraling the drain after the following bizarre frightening experience in 2015....let me first say that I grew up in SF in a middle class family. During my school years there , from the age of about 10 , my brother and I walked around the city together , without our parents, traveling by MUNI bus and BART to get to school, visit friend’s houses, etc. This was not unusual for elementary school age children living in SF. Once I was a bit older I went downtown alone to orthodontist appointments, getting to my part time job, etc. Never had a problem with any of this and almost never felt unsafe. Fast forward to 2015. My husband and I were attempting to take our young daughter to a children’s theater performance downtown. We found the entire Civic Center BART station to be occupied by wall to wall vagrants and addicts passed out in the station or actively shooting up drugs, needles all over the place, human excrement along the walls, etc. We picked our daughter up, ran out of the station, entered onto the sidewalk and found the streets lined with more of the same in the middle of the afternoon. Many of the people passed out looked dead to me. Before we could hail a cab to get the hell out of there vagrants were lunging at us, throwing used syringes at us, trying to trip us and yank my backpack off of me, etc. We never even made it to the theater that day. We high tailed it home in a taxi. So much for a fun day in the big city with the family! That was 7 years ago, it’s much worse now. Those kinds of scenes are now common throughout SF. That old beautiful historic theater is now boarded up.

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A retort on Twitter: https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1536091009741991937

I find it astonishing how vehemently I disagree with Mr. Karakatsanis. There are only two arguments in his thread.

First is tribalism: he and his friends are right, Ms. Bowles and her friends are wrong, and you are a bad person if you agree with them.

Second is that, once you get past the bullshit, Mr. Karakatsanis appears to actually believe that having drug-addicts living on tents in the streets is a good thing. Any suggestion that implies that maybe some other system would be appropriate is violence and supports "caging".

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I am sick of arguing with the likes of Mr. Karakatsanis. Fortunately, now that it is known that he and his ilk don't have the votes even in San Francisco, I feel much better not caring about his idiocy. Perhaps they might soon be acknowledged as completely irrelevant by the Twitterati.

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