DC: yet another shithole

I'm from Alexandria, Virginia, which is just south of Washington, DC. The home I lived in for years is about 16 miles away from the US Capitol. Old Town Alexandria is an eight-mile drive along the George Washington Parkway from Mount Vernon, George Washington's comparatively quiet estate (as tourist traps go, Mount Vernon is one of the quieter, more tasteful, and more pleasant ones). But when people from way out of town ask me where I'm from, I usually say "the DC area" just because it's easier for them to picture. People who live in my part of the world know that Alexandria, Arlington, etc., are all right next to DC and are often the location where people who work in DC live. But if you're from out of town, you don't automatically know that. Now, though, with Washington, DC, having well and truly plunged into shithole status along with all the other Democrat-run shitholes, I wonder if I should start saying "I'm from Alexandria" again (not that Alexandria has distinguished itself in a positive way in recent years; it and the surrounding Fairfax County have gained infamy as a huge leftie enclave, and no Kevin is welcome in his own country.)

But could DC be repenting of some of its leftist folly?

In truth, calling DC a shithole is nothing new. I think I've told the story of being parked somewhere at night in the "good" part of town—one of those areas where you can clearly see the Washington Monument—and hearing gunshots. This was years and years ago. DC has had a major homelessness problem for as long as I can remember, and "bad" parts of town, especially in Southeast, have existed for decades (although some of the better restaurants are located in those dodgy parts). DC's been rotting for a long, long time. There's a Potemkin aspect to the town: mostly white workers commute to DC from northern Virginia and southern Maryland, giving tourists one impression of the city during the day; then all the workers go home, and any remaining tourists get a very different impression of DC as night falls. I'm not saying it's all bad, at least when it comes to the DC in my memory. I enjoyed my four years of living in DC while I was a student at Georgetown (1987-1991). But since GU had no Korean courses at the time, I had to walk from M Street to Pennsylvania Ave and over to Washington Circle where the George Washington University (GW or GWU) campus was located—a walk that took me past a lot of homeless people, many of whom were quiet, but some of whom were memorably surly. A city's shithole status is a slow, creeping, depressingly inevitable thing. Under Republican Giuliani, New York experienced a temporary renaissance (and sure, Rudy wasn't perfect, nor did he do enough about corruption in his own administration), but that's long gone now after a series of incompetent leftist mayors, and NYC is right back to the shitholery.

So I guess the big picture is that, if DC is currently regretting some of its leftie policies, well, don't expect the city to come around and abandon them all in favor of something saner. I'd say that most major US cities need to be burned to the ground—yes, people and all—so we can start over, but realistically, I think there's something about big cities that's inherently leprous and cancerous. You might get the occasional Giuliani-style blip, but the overall trend will always be leftward, and always toward shithole status. Even if you were to burn everything down.