Goodbye, Washington DC.: Mayor Bowser broke her contract with residents like me. So we’re leaving.

Human Events ^ | 7/23/2020 | Daniel Turner

[Morpheus2009]

So DC has people defecating on the roads and sidewalks too? Wow, something is really wrong with people, considering I learned to use a toilet many years ago as a toddler.

[SkyDancer]

My family escaped from NYC to the hills of WA for the same type of reasons; gangs took over the projects and started to turn them into drug centers with the accompanying crime.

[certrtwngnut]

Good to see another FR guy that likes his part of N.J. You must be in Warren or Sussex County.

[DugwayDuke]

“... sloganeering calls for “diversity” or “justice” are all just exhausting, not to mention intellectually vapid and morally bankrupt.” and my current favorite “We’re all in this together.” Anytime someone tries to sell you on the collective, they desire you to do something that isn’t in your self-interest.

[TalBlack]

I haven’t moved that far from DC geographically—only about 60 miles—but it might as well be another country. Deer at dawn and stars at twilight.

He ran. Well its simple and its quick but sooner or later someons’s gonna have to not run.

It dosent take balls to not run, it takes BRAINS. Where ya gonna run to that they can’t follow? He bought himself some time...maybe.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I trace my last name to a Huguenot settler in New Netherlands in 1664. My patronymic great-great grandfather commanded the a precinct in lower Manhattan during the draft riots. I was born in Manhattan, and raised in Queens. I punched my ticket out of New York as soon as could buy a car.

[Old Student]

I got the impact when I left the Los Angeles area in 1973. Some people are slow learners. I’ve been in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area now for a bit over 24 years. Big City amenities, small town atmosphere. The whole state is still less than 4 million people, versus the 12 million or so in LA alone now. And when some folks started that crap here, they got arrested and charged with terrorism. Our County DA said “This is Not Seattle – We’re Not Putting Up with This Lawlessness Here”

OKC and the OKC area is not perfect. We have crime. Roads are not what I’d call great, nor even good. But there are a lot of good restaurants. Cultural events abound. Maybe not as many good museum’s as I’d like, but again, not bad.

[Pollard]

and everything happens slower

Same here. Closest grocery store is 18 miles with 13 of them being gravel road and I drive by a few hundred head of beef cattle along the way.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Is it only White people who are leaving the city environment?

Anyone who isn't dependent on the city for welfare check. New York has been making war on the middle class for the last 50 years.

[old-ager]

> I hope this fellow learns to love the non-city as much as I have

I hope he doesn’t vote, or isn’t allowed to, because he won’t be able to stop himself from enlightening the locals.

[palmer]

From the article: But I’ll gladly tolerate sirens and car horns in exchange for a new restaurant on the corner.

I won't.

For major league sports, performing arts, museums, and bars, I will put up with the occasional crazy guy on the street, metro derailment, or gridlocked traffic because an intersection is blocked by some group “raising awareness” about something or other.

The traffic is always gridlocked, the sports teams are on their knees, afraid of the Wuhan flu, beholden to China. The "performing artists" are leftists who hate America, and the museums are houses of anti-white propaganda.
That leaves bars.

My conclusion: the author spent a lot of time at the bar.

[jocon307]

No, we are south of there, but thankfully far south enough to be deep in Trump Country!

[old-ager]

> He bought himself some time...maybe.

Ok, he should have organized a DC militia and stayed.

[cherry]

good posting...

[Robert DeLong]

Why not, he looks gay to me. If his condo is in the Dupont Circle area, he probably really is gay.

[Antioch]

Could a Red state manage white flight by making residency contingent on voting record? Basically welcome conservative refugees and ‘ef you liberals, you stay behind and fix what you’ve destroyed....If not, the fate of normal communities of actual Americans is going to degrade with the influx of liberals.

[CptnObvious]

He says he is a no-kids, well to do citizen of DC and that they need him because of the DC taxes and his spending money no longer done in DC. He's right.

Well to do citizens of the big democRATic cities are probably fleeing for their lives as we speak. Taking their income and taxes away from these cities.

Consider this, COVID, Protestors and the normally awful crime rates and it is going to be very bad for these cities for a very long time to come.

[PerConPat]

So the obvious question is why do the voters elect these people?

Many people have emotions stronger than their powers of reason, basically the Bell Curve; Demographics brought about by "Great Society" programs- vote buying; Decades of Fabian Socialist termite rot in the education system, media, labor unions....

[Tacrolimus1mg]

Bowser. Any coincidence she’s got the name of an iconic video game villain?

I don’t think so. I think she watched someone play Super Mario one day and went, “I’m going to do that!”

[Grampa Dave]

“I feel the OP’s “pain”. and it is painful to leave something you have loved all your life.”

Even for a couple of years, it can be painful.

Sometimes things change, which you have zero control on what comes next.

In 1966 we bought a great townhouse in western Fairfax county/DC area shortly after our first son was born. We had great neighbors and my wife made great friends new mothers of her age. Our second child was born in early March, 1968. We loved our relatively new home, and my parents had moved to Fairfax county to live near the grandkids and a good teaching job for my Mother. They were history buffs and loved to walk and tour the sights in DC.

Then, on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, TN., MLK was killed and the world for many of us changed.

We had serious riots in the DC area and basically every suburban neighborhood changed for the bad. Our areas didn’t have a regular night police staff before the riots, as there was no crime.

About a month later, the tires on my company car were stolen one night. The car was in an approved lighted parking place 60 feet from our home. Several other cars had their tires stolen.

The sheriff didn’t want to send a deputy to photo and fingerprint the cars without tires. He finally did. The thieves were never caught.

My boss was a NE Ivy league rectum, and said I lived in a poor neighborhood. 3 months later his Montgomery county home was robbed and partied in while he and his family were in the NE at a family vacation.

I changed companies and got an opportunity to move to Marin County, California to a new home. At first my wife didn’t want to move. I told her all of our neighbors and friends were planning to move that summer if they found jobs and homes away from the DC area. They all of them did, and my parents moved back to their home state.

One couple worked for the state department and went to Hong Kong for 3 years. Then, they moved back to their Virginia townhouse. As noted all of their friends had moved. They had rented their house and took another foreign assignment, asap. They had just returned to the DC area after that assignment and their home where we were neighbors.

I visited them for a couple of nights combined with a business meeting at Dulles. They could not believe how bad the area had become. Anybody who could afford to move, had or was moving. They kept loaded guns in that home 24/7. Drugs and kids including their teens were a problem all over.

They took another foreign assignment and somehow sold their home in Centreville. They never came back after that.