Watching the news this morning has me thinking dark thoughts. My beloved nation seems to have fallen into the hands of lunatics and criminals. Thousands are marching in support of people who gang-rape young women and murder children and babies; our cities are beset with crime; our government has fallen into the hands of the corrupt. And so, once more I'm going to step into my self-appointed role as the stormy petrel of RedState.

There's an old saying that goes, "A conservative is just a liberal who has been mugged." It's unclear, of course, to what extent something like a mugging can affect some of the deeply-seated misconceptions of the political left, there is some hope, though; more and more these days, Democrats and leftists in general are being mugged by reality. But will that be enough to overcome the cognitive dissonance of the left? Will it finally cause big-city voters to take a good, hard look at what is happening, and to consider that it may just be time for a change?

Some Democrats are waking up and noticing that the policies they’ve been cheerleading have produced violent crime waves, a massive migrant crisis, and genocidal antisemitism. One would hope the public at large is catching on as well.

Just over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a spate of headlines about lefty, soft-on-crime Democrats attacked on the mean streets they’ve helped create.

Here's a summary of the mean streets of the nation's capital:

For the record, crime in Democratic-controlled D.C. has been skyrocketing. So far this year:

• Homicides are up 33%.
• Robberies up 67%.
• Motor vehicle theft has jumped 97%.

The same trends are happening around the country, as soft-on-crime leftists coddle criminals in the name of social justice. The public pays. Now, so are Democrats.

It's even happening here in Alaska. Not even the Great Land, home of many stubbornly self-sufficient folks living on the modern frontier, is immune from the effects of failing leftist policies. Anchorage, I would point out, is a Democrat bastion in mostly Republican Alaska.

Crime rates in pretty much all of our major cities are seeing similar rises. Smash-and-grab robberies are becoming more and more common. Shoplifters are walking into retail establishments and stealing with a brazenness previously unimaginable. And now, in the post-October 7th world, pro-Hamas terrorist sympathizers are taking over the streets of not only American cities but many in Europe as well.

Stein's Law was first observed as a rule of economics but it applies here as well; If something can't go on forever, it will stop. The situation of the left's dominance of our cities can't go on forever. It will stop. The question is, what form will that take?

When will the people of these cities decide they have had enough? When will they finally tire of stepping over sleeping addicts, piles of human feces, and puddles of urine while simply trying to go about their daily business? When will they tire of the smash-and-grabs, the attacks on store clerks, and the rampant theft that is causing retailers to close up their establishments? Well, there may be some signs of hope. In a recent piece, my colleague Duke brought us the tale of Representative Ro Khanna suddenly being gobsmacked by the idea of a Kamala Harris Presidency. Nick Arama tells us how even as obtuse a leftist as Eric Swalwell got bang-banged by reality after being hammered on a stupid statement he made about the Middle East. Finally, Matt Funicello tells us how, apparently, things are starting to look bad for Dems in the 2024 Presidential election.

Maybe there is hope for our cities yet. Maybe. As long as the residents of those cities keep voting the same lunatics back to positions of authority in those asylums, nothing will change. Surely, though, there is a breaking point; there must be a breaking point; there has to be a breaking point when people just decide they are not going to take it anymore.

And the key to the return to sanity? It may just be the Democrat's tacit acceptance of antisemitism.

...in the wake of Hamas’ genocidal attack on Israel, liberals got figuratively mugged by the realization that the Marxist “critical theory” ideology they’ve been peddling has spawned virulent antisemitic hatred among college students, and faculty, and prominent leftist Democratic lawmakers.

Douglas Schoen, an adviser to President Bill Clinton, wrote that:

Six weeks after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, American Democrats can no longer deny that their party has an antisemitism problem which, if left unchecked, may very well split the party ahead of next year’s elections and likely for the foreseeable future.

Things have to change. They can't go on like this. If nothing changes, within the next decade, two at most, our major cities will collapse, bringing the economy down with them and plunging the world into a depression that could last a generation.