[Blue Jays]

"...[Portland] is about as 'deep-blue' as you can get..."

---

Agreed. It simply seems to be one of those truly bizarre spots that utterly denies reality.
It is not a sufficiently desirable location for us normals to wish to move there and especially to "toss our hats into the ring" for local election.

I have a childhood friend who resides there. This person is telling me there are NO RIOTS happening and it is all film footage being manipulated.
They are seriously that kooky now. I feel sorry for my longtime (yet clearly delusional) old friend. :-(

[volunbeer]

There is a disconnect to reality on all sides of this. Thanks to the media, both left and right, people tend to think this civil unrest and chaos is much larger than it really is. Most of it involves small numbers of rioters in well-defined areas. Stories about this are combined with stories of violence in the inner city and urban corridors thanks to the withdrawal of the police and general quality of life crimes.

Most cities have not seen this violence and destruction and will not tolerate it, but with continued lock-downs more people view what they see on the news or their computer monitor as reality. In a nation already skittish with fear over the Chinavirus it is distorting reality.

I have friends who live outside Portland and their neighborhoods and retail corridors have seen little disruption outside of more graffiti. They are generally conservative, but they are also minimizing what is happening there because they have not witnessed it.