A scathing Op-Ed published in the Saturday edition of the Seattle Times decries the Jet City’s descent into toxic politics and something of a magnet for homeless people and drug addicts that apparently has become so bad that it’s not even a safe environment around the King County Courthouse.
By Monday morning, the opinion piece authored by science writer and microbiologist Alex Berezow had attracted more than 1,000 responses from readers, and there was not much middle ground. A lot of people have grown to hate the city, which was once home to Boeing. Others defend what the city has become.
Some critics say Seattle is “only 20 minutes in any direction from the United States.” KIRO radio personality Dori Monson habitually rips city leaders as incompetent and essentially clueless.
One Seattle Times reader, identified only as “ericbl,” offered this observation:
“Seattle has changed dramatically over the last 30 years as leftist radicals have taken over the politics of the city. Seattle used to be the cleanest and safest city in the county. Now it’s overrun by bums defecating in the street, leaving used needles in the street, and aggressively panhandling. The politicians won’t allow the police to do anything about it. I saw it every day for seven years when I was working in Belltown…
“Unfortunately, it really does matter who we elect to public office. And the people of Seattle have been electing the very worst people for a long time.”
For Evergreen State gun owners and Second Amendment activists, Seattle is the hub of anti-gun Northwest politics, despite the fact that it is located in the county with the most active concealed pistol licenses of any county in the state. It is home to the billionaire-bankrolled Alliance for Gun Responsibility, and the longer running Washington CeaseFire, both gun prohibition lobbying groups.
There is no small irony in the fact that just across Lake Washington to the east, Bellevue is home to the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Their presence so near “Latte Land” may keep some Seattle anti-gunners awake at night.
Berezow may have summed it up by noting, “Slowly but surely, Seattle has become an angry place.” He laments that one City Council member, Kshama Sawant, thought it was “terrible” for a feminist organization to wish that the late First Lady Barbara Bush “rest in peace.”
And he added this:
“For a city that prides itself on being ‘anti-Trump,’ it is difficult to see how exactly we’re supposed to possess the moral high ground over ‘The Other Washington.’”
Back in 1936, Postmaster General James Farley, working in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, called the Evergreen State “the soviet of Washington.”
Recent news accounts have revealed the dangerous environment downtown, where KOMO News – the local ABC affiliate – reported there had been more than 500 criminal assaults around the courthouse. Hoses are used to wash away human excrement, homeless camps have sprang up in various locations, and the city’s liberal elite seems determined to blame the problems on everything other than their own failed policies, but that may not be entirely fair.
The city’s “refuge” policies appear to be working perfectly. Seattle, apparently despite official claims to the contrary, has become successful at becoming a Mecca for “homeless” people and drug abusers from all over the map. It hasn’t helped for the city to announce that it wants to provide “safe injection sites” for junkies.
Underscoring this, Monson recently wrote at MyNorthwest.com, “One woman told KOMO 4 that she came up here from Phoenix, where she had been eating out of garbage cans, to live in the tiny houses. But wait — our politicians told us that all the homeless people we are funding are local. Could it be that our politicians are lying to us? Gasp.”
King County Councilwoman Kathy Lambert shared a link to the Seattle Times Op-ed on Facebook. It has garnered much attention from her constituents, who live outside Seattle and express little desire to venture into the city.
One suggested fix is for Seattle to become a county unto itself, much like San Francisco. But that’s not a cure for what allegedly ails the city. At this point, it might be that the only way to solve Seattle’s “problem” is for that long-anticipated “big one” to hit at about 8.5-9.0 on the Richter scale and send the city sliding into Elliott Bay, but if the city’s critics are accurate in their complaints, that might not be fair to the fish.
