John Aravosis, a rather popular lefty blogger, has just written a piece outlining the extent to which crime is developing in Washington, DC.
Although the piece is naturally subjective (and therefore may not necessarily represent what is actually going on), the arguments he uses are quite compelling, namely that people living in well-to-do areas are now being targeted. A veteran New York Times reporter was killed in the past twelve months, and just recently a young British politician was murdered and his girlfriend raped in the suburb of Georgetown, which, in Sydney parlance, is like being raped and murdered by a gang roaming the streets in Turramurra.
To me, this is one of those self-fulfilling prophecies that come about because of the inaction of those on the right wing of the political spectrum. Desperate to cut back on expenses and ideologically committed to small government, education and law enforcement budgets are substantially pared back, thus allowing the emergence of an unchecked gang culture that cannot be addressed by the local police and which confirms to the right wing, yet again, that people just can't trust the police and that it's better to keep paring back their budgets and instead rely upon arming yourself with your own weapons since the police, and therefore the government, have been proven to be ill-equipped to do the job.
Meanwhile, on the so called riot-torn streets of Paris, people are walking home in relative safety.
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