Liberal pearls were clutched from coast to coast again the other day when President Donald Trump tweeted about the Baltimore Congressional district of Elijah Cummings. “Racism,” they cried, mostly because they cry that in response to any criticism who, to use another of their broken record responses, happens to be a “person of color.” Well, I lived in that district from 2001 till 2014, I watched people recoil when I told them. President Trump was too kind.
To give the full context of the president’s tweets, since unless you follow him on Twitter you’ve likely only heard small portions of them, he wrote, “Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA. As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”
First off, Cummings did attack the acting Secretary of Homeland Security the week before, screaming at Kevin McAleenan over the conditions in which illegal aliens are held at the border.
Second, the district Cummings represents is one of the poorest in the country. Whereas illegal aliens have three meals per day and a roof over their heads, many in Cummings’s district do not. It encompasses most of west Baltimore, which makes my hometown of Detroit look prosperous. The only reason the economic numbers aren’t worse is the district includes a large swath of Baltimore County because Democrats gerrymandered the state to water down Republican representation (from 3 to 1 in Congress when they redrew the lines in 2010). They drew the lines in a way that would ensure Democrats would win. It also brought in areas that were doing better economically, though not enough to ever defeat a Democrat. The state’s congressional district map looks like someone sneezed on a wet Rorschach test, but it’s by design. So to say the Cummings district is an economic disaster is to understate the problem.
Third, crime in west Baltimore is the only growth industry, if you don’t count the rats and roaches. Taking the trash out on Fridays was an adventure. You’d drag your bag to the alley and toss it a few feet away from the pile, you didn’t want to be too close in case you didn’t beat one of the cat-sized sewer rats to the trash. Most of the time you did, but you always remembered the times you didn’t. It only takes one time that a giant sewer rat runs out of a pile of trash bags you’re standing next to for it to inform how you act thereafter.
The city has a huge rat problem. It’s so bad, one of the most popular bumper stickers in the city has a silhouette of a rat with “Balt” written on it and “Charm City, USA,” ironically under it. Rats don’t thrive in clean areas. And neither does hope.
Baltimore city schools are a disgrace. They’re near the top in spending and near the bottom in results. The schools have “misplaced” tens of millions of dollars, no one in city government seems to care or is ever held accountable. Graduation rates hover around 50 percent, literacy rates below that. There hasn’t been a Republican elected in the city in over 50 years and two of the last three mayors resigned amid scandals.
The murder rate in the city is astronomical. In terms of raw numbers, there have been more murders in the city in the past, but during those years the city had hundreds of thousands of more people living in it. Per capita shows just how dangerous Baltimore is. New York City, with a population of more than 8 and a half million, has fewer murders per year than Baltimore, with a population of just over 600,000.
By crying “racism” over the president’s criticisms of Cummings’s district, none of this gets discussed. Which is why the media is doing it.
Liberals do not want to discuss liberal failures, so they cry racism.
Current Baltimore Mayor Jack Young, appearing on MSNBC Monday morning, whined to host Stephanie Ruhle that he’s not getting enough federal money to fix the city’s problems. Half the city’s budget comes from the state government, and they want more. Money isn’t the problem. Leadership is the problem. Replacing incompetent liberals with younger, “fresh” incompetent liberals won’t change anything. Neither will truckloads of federal cash. Running cities isn’t the domain of the federal government - they have their own governments. If they’re cesspools of graft and failure, it’s up to the citizens to make a change. If they don’t, a state can step in. Short of that, voters get what they vote for.
Crying racism ends the discussion of any of this, of anything related to liberal failures. I didn’t want to live in Baltimore. I worked in D.C., an hour commute was not something I sought out. But it was all I could afford. It took me a long time to escape. I was the exception, not the rule. For the people left behind, the people who wake up to find police investigating a murder on their block or who hear gunshots in the night (both of which I did), none of the cable news chatter over the weekend does a damn thing to help.
What it does do is change the subject. If you want to know what Democratic Party policies will do for the nation, you need only look at what Democratic Party policies have done to the cities where they have absolute power. Nothing scares Democrats more than that. So scream racism.
Democrats are going to do what they’ve always done. The media is going to do whatever the Democrats need them to do. That leaves change up to the voters in these areas. If they’re going to accept generational failure, reward it with lifetime job security for people like Cummings, so be it. Just don’t complain when things get worse. And it’s not racist to point it out. It’s actually racist to not point it out because that district is majority a skin color that isn’t yours.
Democrats are pushing the idea white politicians can’t criticize the actions of black politicians, not because those criticisms aren’t valid, but because they’re racist. Phrases like “rat-infested” are racist when you point out how a majority black district is infested with rats and the Democrat-controlled government isn’t solving the problem. Essentially, they’re saying people have to either speak differently and not use common terms when discussing issues with “people of color.” Think about that – people should be treated differently based on their skin color; that there should be “separate, but equal” language when talking about human beings with different melanin levels. If only there were a word for that kind of thinking…
Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses.
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