https://spectator.org/this-woman-is-...or-in-america/
aug 22 2022First, for those of you who haven’t read all of the previous columns in this space, a definition. What is Weaponized Governmental Failure?
Simply put, it’s the process by which urban socialist Democrats intentionally muck up the basic tasks of municipal governance and create such soul-crushing environments that middle-class taxpayers and voters decamp for the suburbs, thus leaving an electorate incapable of throwing off the political machine.
My theory is that Weaponized Governmental Failure, or WGF for short, was arrived upon serendipitously. At some point in the 1990s, Democrats noticed that some of their worst mayors — like Washington, D.C.’s Marion Barry — were simply unbeatable despite dismal performances.
And, at that point, it became recognizable to urban socialist Democrats that if you governed badly enough, if you refused to fill potholes or police the streets or solve traffic problems or provide functional public education, the middle-class voters who would consider voting Republican and therefore could put your political power at threat would just … leave.
And when they left, what remained would be a thin crust of rich people relatively easy to govern because they provide their own public services in the form of private school attendance for their children, private security for their neighborhoods, and so forth.
Oh, and a mass of urban poor who would also be easy to govern — at least, in the manner urban socialists like to govern. The votes of the poor can be bought cheaply because they don’t know any better. Tear down statues, offer “universal basic income” or free needles or midnight basketball, and you can fleece the poor into believing that you care. They don’t really expect anything better and they wouldn’t even know what that looks like.
So for the last 20–30 years as every single American city dominated by Democrat politicians has decayed into a state of collapse, Democrats have only built their electoral strength in those places.
It isn’t incompetence, though it looks like it is. It’s deliberate. Because federal dollars from things like economic development block grants replace the tax base lost through WGF exoduses.
