America's most anxious city revealed by data. It should have been painfully obvious

You only have to look at how Seattle (mis) governs itself, allows anarchic ‘autonomous zones’ to flourish, and slashes police budgets, to realise its residents have got a lot to be nervous about.

According to official data, Seattle is the most anxiety-ridden city in the US. The Seattle Times reports: “Here in Seattle, we take a lot of pride in our status as the coffee capital of the nation. But starting tomorrow, you might want to consider switching to decaf. Why? Because Seattle is also the most jittery major metro in the US, according to survey data from the US Census Bureau. 54.5% of the adult population of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties – that’s roughly 1.8 million people – said they felt ‘nervous, anxious, or on edge’ for at least several days during the past two weeks.”

As the home of Starbucks, Seattle has become Beantown west, where the beans are coffee, not Boston-baked, but Beantown is also full of nuts. So, it’s not hard to understand why Seattleites are feeling a little roasted. They’ve burned their beans… and their nuts. No wonder they’re nervous, stressed, and jittery...

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Let’s recall what went on here in the wake of George Floyd’s killing last year: “Shootings, stabbings, beatings of bystanders, police officers blinded by lasers, thrown bombs, burned vehicles, and the usual plethora of broken windows, stolen merchandise, obstructed traffic and graffiti.” These phrases describe many of the so-called “protests” that were gleefully tolerated by the liberal city council and mayor of Seattle when the city officially turned its Capitol Hill neighborhood into a Black Lives Matter/Antifa-run “petri dish of failed anarchist aspirations” called CHOP. (Originally named a more jazzy CHAZ – Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone – the area had to quickly run from its own reputation and renamed itself CHOP – Capitol Hill Organized Protest.)

Only warlords rule in autonomous zones

While the chief of police wanted to actually do something to stop the violence, she was restrained by the city government, resulting in the death of two black kids who were taken out by an untrained security force self-imposed by the new anarchist dictators who had routed the police via the progressively happy aid of city officials. The city council and mayor instructed the police to stand down and even surrender their precinct in the upscale neighborhood.

This led the black, female chief of police to ask why black kids were the only ones dying at the hands of the BLM protest movement. Wanting to look out for the needs of all citizens on Capitol Hill, the chief spoke against the council’s order to stand down: “Rapes, robberies, and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area that we’re not able to get to. So, it is not a right for us not to be able to deploy our officers here. We owe that service to everybody.”

In the immediate aftermath, the city council couldn’t rush fast enough to capitulate to the will of the murderous anarchists and voted, under the urging of the Black Trans Taskforce, to defund its police by 20%. White council members virtue-signaled their rage over how the Seattle Police Department – which comprised many black officers, including the chief – was too unsympathetic to blacks. In a stark rebuttal to the council, Chief Best, who you would think was everything a place like Seattle wanted, resigned in a stand of solidarity with her department and in respect to her own integrity. I’d say she earned her last name.

Reducing the police budget by half meant firing half the officers, which posed a problem, because the officers with least seniority were mostly black. To remedy the problem, city council member Lisa Herbold, fair of skin and red of hair, recommended firing them by race – whites first. Such noble self-sacrifice! Of course, she would not face the firing squad herself, since she was not on the force. She was merely sacrificing other whites.

Who would have guessed that the new anarchist rulers (a self-contradicting term if there ever was one) would be unable to feed themselves? First, they begged the people living in the area they had taken over to donate food so they could eat; then they complained when some lawless people stole the donated food! Of course, they were also fussy in their begging, asking that the donated food fit a vegan diet – no meat, please.

Let us enable you

The real demonstration at CHOP was a demonstration of how idiotic and self-destructive Seattle truly is. Its far-left government swallowed the Antifa diatribe without question because it was the politically correct stance to take in one of the nation’s bluest towns. One council member, Kshama Sawant, even went so far as to move to de-annex the neighborhood from the city to grant it separation from the rule of the council she was a part of. Such self-sacrifice – or at least it would have been, had she not then placed herself at the head of the new separatist, semi-city-state of CHOP. I think the citizens of Seattle should have voted to de-annex only City Hall, so as to separate the whole city from its council.

This idiot Sawant said she planned to create legislation to turn the east police precinct building into a “restorative justice center” to fight racism, guided by the group that killed the two black kids and complained about their free food being stolen in the lawless zone. Never mind that her own long-Democrat-run city must have failed miserably at combating racism over the past 50 years if de-annexation from its Democrat leaders had become the final solution.

Best wanted her officers back in the precinct so they could start doing their job again, and argued the new move was rushed, unprecedented, and unimaginable. She declared it a “completely reckless … abdication of duty” that was nothing but “pandering and political posturing.”

City officials, on the other hand, practically boasted about the broadened freedom to “protest” they were creating for the activists on the hill. However, no one protested louder than the mayor as soon as the Antifa/BLM mob decided to move off the hill and camp outside her personal residence.

The mayor’s path to enlightenment about anarchy is interesting

As soon as her newly remodeled home was imperiled by the peaceful protesters, it was time to call the police back in. Until then, Mayor Jenny Durkan had referred to the events on Capitol Hill as “a summer of love.” It was the idiot Sawant who led the protest to the mayor’s doorstep. Once there, she railed against the mayor and whipped up the crowd. That threat led to Durkan calling for Sawant’s expulsion from the council the next day. It’s fine to try to burn buildings on Capitol Hill and expel the police from their own publicly funded precinct with the mayor’s assistance, but threaten the mayor’s own mansion and it’s all over!

The next day, CHOP was dispersed in just 24 hours. It turns out the police can do the job, if liberals just get out of their way. It also turns out liberals cry for the police when protesters turn threatening toward them.

During Durkan’s ‘summer love-in’, one Christian preacher was roundly beaten up for speaking the wrong words to the peace-loving crowd. Concern about George Floyd not having been able to breathe fled the anger-addled minds of protesters as the preacher was placed in a choke hold to silence him. Meanwhile, those who protested Trump’s wall rapidly erected barriers all around the zone to keep out the people they didn’t like, such as the preacher, while the mayor and Governor Inslee did their best to keep out Trump’s law enforcement.

It’s just a gay old town … or an old gay town

Durkan seems have been elected more for her gay pride as Seattle’s first lesbian mayor than for her ability to create a better town. Seattle’s LGBTQexpialatrocious mayor claimed hers was “a campaign about what Seattle will be like for that next generation, and you have committed to making it the best Seattle ever.” Prior to becoming mayor, this Obama appointee was described as “the first openly gay US attorney in the country.” Since Seattle prides itself on promoting gender confusion in its schools, embracing it in its politics, and being the city of the woke in a state with gender-neutral birth certificates, undoubtedly Durkan is the face of what Seattle will be like for the next generation, but she certainly had nothing to do with making it the best Seattle ever.

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Seattle wears its mayor with pride. She got almost two-thirds of the city’s vote. Bloomberg noted that the year she was elected “was the ‘year of the trans candidate’ in the US, and generally a victorious year for LGBTQ politicians in city and state elections … A majority of voters just a couple decades ago considered being LGBTQ a disqualifier.” Durkan is not, however, Seattle’s first homosexual mayor. Immediately prior to Durkan’s tenure, Ed Murray became mayor in 2014, but he resigned in 2017 over allegations by men that he sexually molested them.

It was time to go girl if you’re gonna go gay. Durkan was promoted as the “spotlight candidate” of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a “national organization dedicated to electing LGBTQ leaders to public office.” Says the fund, “LGBTQ mayors are leading the resistance by welcoming immigrants and refugees, standing with Muslim communities and implementing protections for trans students in schools. Those are Seattle values, and those are Jenny’s values.”

It couldn’t have been said better. Durkan, who began her career as a criminal defense attorney, worked hard as mayor to combat President Trump’s immigration policies and to make Seattle a City of Refuge for illegalimmigrants, particularly from the Muslim countries Trump had redlined. During the riots, she also regaled Trump for breaking the law when he sent in troops to protect federal buildings that she was allowing to be ransacked – an odd claim from a mayor who cares so little about others who are shattering the law like so many broken windows.

Durkan also labored to enforce gun laws more strictly, which is probably one of the reasons Seattle is now one of the highest-crime cities in the United States. “Seattle homicides increased 68% … in 2020, a 26-year high …. Defunding the police may make it harder to catch killers once they’ve killed,” noted the Seattle Times.

Who would have guessed? Apparently, those escaped killers are at it again: “The murder spree is not letting up in 2021 – the [neighboring] city of Kent, for example, already exceeded its homicide totals [in July] for all of last year….”

King County, where Seattle is located, is also breaking records for gun violence. “More people were shot and killed between January and September of this year than in all of 2020…”

It’s what happens when LGBTQ credentials outstrip the ABCs of common sense.

So, what’s to stress out about? One thing may help lower the anxiety for Seattleites: as a result of the intense criticism she received for her liberal efforts to liberate the CHOP rule-free zone overruled by anarchists, Durkan announced she would not be running for re-election. Enlightenment.

Who would have guessed that, in the bluest city you’ve ever seen, with the grayest skies you’ve ever seen, a place full of laughter and full of queers, the people who grow up there free and wild would be anxious about everything all the time? There are just so many ways to be wrong when you’re woke.

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