There is a growing segment of by-default-blue New Yorkers leaving the party for redder pastures. The top reason? Violent crime. How would I know? I’m one of them.
As a lifelong New Yorker who ended up in the media industry, I was basically born into the liberal mindset. It never felt political, it was just an unconscious process of workplace and cultural osmosis.
My disenchantment grew in proportion to the rise of cancel culture, rampant Democratic corruption, and woke ideology—but it was largely out of sight, out of mind. Unfortunately, it’s metastasized into something that we now can’t ignore: almost daily, vicious assaults on innocent New Yorkers.
We deal with enough just living here. We don’t need to worry about getting stabbed 40 times, having feces smeared on our face, or being randomly slashed. It is completely intolerable and disgusting.
Our recourse from the home team of Dems? Feckless talk of “community resources” and “social justice.” These empty buzzwords will never bring back the lives of those lost in the name of their utopian dream.
I really don’t care whether the crime stems from socioeconomic inequality, mental health, or cultural issues. The fact is now plain as day: whatever causes these criminals to behave this way is irrelevant. They simply cannot co-exist with us in civil society.
Bail reform may not be the singular cause, but it is symptomatic of the liberal attitude of leniency and complacency that provides the perfect atmosphere for violent criminals to outpace our ability to police them.
I’m going to say it plainly because no one else seems to be willing to do so:
If the equity framework weighs one “innocent” criminal sitting in Rikers too long, versus leaving 10 New Yorkers permanently maimed, traumatized, or dead, I know which option I’d pick. The leftist equation wants equity for those who come into contact with the criminal justice system, while completely dismissing those who have no desire for adjacency to that system.
If Democrats so desperately want to rehabilitate these people, fine. Go ahead and try it. But, don’t treat the streets of New York City as your bloody social experiment. My position isn’t meant to dehumanize criminals. It aims to re-humanize the everyday citizen who is now treated as a mere statistic, just collateral damage in the march toward so-called “social justice.”
Honestly, I don’t really care about rehabilitating someone who smashed open the skull of a 57-year-old woman just minding her business, like so many of us try to do. Punishment isn’t to benefit the offender. It’s to protect the rest of us who just want to live in peace.
People will lambaste me for pointing fingers or casting blame. Yes, blame must be assigned to understand what the hell is going on. Without recognizing where this originates, we will be doomed to an ever-declining NYC, scrambling to figure out this apparently very complex puzzle of why violent criminals commit violence when they aren’t punished.
Until the Left can admit its mistakes and backtrack, any Democratic vote is a vote mired in innocent blood, a liability that puts innocent citizens in harm’s way in hopes of hippie pipe dreams that should have died in the 1970s.
