This article by Nellie Bowles about the downfall of San Francisco and how it precipitated the ouster of DA Chesa Boudin was so fascinating I could hardly put it down. It has the narrative style of an engrossing book. Bowles provides a cautionary tale of what can take place when left-leaning city politics get out of control.
What happened to the man at the Safeway, what happened to Dustin Walker—these are parables of a sort of progressive-libertarian nihilism, of the belief that any intervention that has to be imposed on a vulnerable person is so fundamentally flawed and problematic that the best thing to do is nothing at all. Anyone offended by the sight of the suffering is just judging someone who’s having a mental-health episode, and any liberal who argues that the state can and should take control of someone in the throes of drugs and psychosis is basically a Republican. If and when the vulnerable person dies, that was his choice, and in San Francisco we congratulate ourselves on being very accepting of that choice.
Bowles also touches upon the ouster of the school board members. The story about how the members tried to outdo each other with how many boxes of intersectionality they could check off was bananas.
