Yes, I'm still an odd one to be writing about the state of America's urban areas. If you've been reading my work at all for the past couple of years, you know I grew up in a rural setting in Iowa and am a happy rural dweller myself now. I have little time for cities, despite having lived in them for four decades. I find them unpleasant; crowded, noisy, and, to be honest, they stink. I like the clean country air of Alaska's Susitna Valley, and if that means I have to put up with dark, below-zero mornings, that's fine.
With that being true, why am I still worried about America's cities? Because our cities are the beating hearts of our nation. Much of the country's economic activity happens there. Urban areas contain a lot of the country's industry and academia. What's more, our cities used to be the pride of the nation, but that's not so much the case anymore. Rampant open-air drug use, huge homeless encampments, and rampant crime, including rioting against federal immigration officers, are taking their toll.
Case in point: There seems to be an epidemic of unprovoked violence in our nation's cities. Here are a few examples, just from 2025:
- January 1, New Orleans, LA: A terrorist goblin rammed a rented F-150 into a crowd on Bourbon Street, killing 14 and injuring 57.
- January 1, Las Vegas, NV: An active-duty US Army soldier detonated an explosive device inside a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Seven people were injured.
- July 28, New York, NY: A gunman walked into the Park Avenue office building that is home to Blackstone and the NFL and opened fire. Four random individuals were hit before the gunman turned the weapon on himself.
- August 27, Minneapolis, MN: The Annunciation Catholic Church was targeted by a shooter who killed two children and injured 21 others. The shooter was identified as a "transgender woman."
- November 17, Chicago, IL: A man set a woman on fire on a Blue Line train in a seemingly random attack. The woman survived with severe injuries.
And of course, there is the unprovoked and horrific attack on Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte, NC commuter train. On Saturday, we learned of another stabbing attack on the Charlotte light commuter rail system, again completely unprovoked, this time by an illegal alien.
Why is this happening?
Read More: The Downfall of America's Cities: Incompetent Leadership
The Downfall of America's Cities: Liberal Courts and Revolving Doors
There are a number of reasons, and these five examples are illustrative.
The New Orleans attack was an act of Islamic terrorism. Between the Biden administration's open-border policies and their refusal to enforce immigration law, along with lax or even non-existent vetting of "asylum seekers," we have imported millions of people from Muslim-majority nations. Many of them see America's modern lifestyle, our tolerance for a variety of religions and lifestyles, as intolerable, and seek to end it by any means necessary. In so doing, they would reduce our nation to be much like the ones they left, which makes one wonder why they came here in the first place - unless it's to do precisely that. And, our major cities have been rolling out the welcome mat for such people.
The Las Vegas attack appears to have been a political statement, carried out by a person with what, in hindsight, appear to be serious mental health issues, as evidenced by his claims that the United States and China were in possession of gravitic drive systems. It's unclear why the Biden-era Pentagon kept him on active duty.
The New York attack appears to have been carried out because of the perp's anger towards the NFL, for reasons unknown. We do know that the attacker traveled from Las Vegas to New York to carry out the attack.
The Annunciation Catholic Church attack is another example of an uncontrolled mental illness resulting in tragedy. A "transgender" perp, with a long history of expressed hatred, was somehow out walking around.
Finally, the Chicago arson attack was carried out by a serial criminal, 50-year-old Lawrence Reed, who had been arrested at least 72 times over a period of 30 years, and yet was still walking around loose.
The common threads? Anger, hate, and a revolving-door system that rotates captured goblins right back out onto the streets. In other words, incompetent municipal leadership and ineffective, "woke" justice systems.
Some of this may be simply due to overcrowding. People are not, by nature, hive animals. Forcing millions of people into packed urban areas causes a range of mental pathologies, including lashing out in violence. But the overarching issue is decades of urban decay, caused by feckless, self-seeking municipal leaders and leftist politicians and officials who place ideology over facts. This can't be blamed solely on overcrowding; Tokyo is crowded on a scale unimaginable to most American urban dwellers, and Tokyo is pleasant, clean and safe.
Fish rot from the head. The problem our cities have with sudden, unprovoked, violent attacks is just such a case. The individual motivations may differ in any given incident, but the root cause always comes down to urban governments: Governments who welcome unknown, unvetted aliens, governments who shelter the mentally ill, governments who return criminals to the streets 20, 30, 40 times with no consequences for the actions that got them arrested in the first place. These governments are the same ones that allow massive homeless encampments that are havens for crime and drug use, and who make excuses for the offending goblins when yet another street takeover or riot breaks out.
That's the problem that must be addressed, if we are to stave off the utter and final collapse of many of our major cities. If that collapse comes, it won't be followed by any sudden urban renaissance; the people of those areas will have to walk a long, bitter path of ashes before any semblance of structure returns to what were once some of the world's greatest cities.
