What is New York Becoming?

 I'll come back to Baltimore tonight mourning as ever my inability to live in New York. But as I come back the thought occurs as ever. The life we want shouldn't be anywhere near this expensive.

People who blame capitalism for the nature of a world that's always been bad are dangerous. If they ever give us that better world they talk about, it will be at the price of hundreds of millions of lives at least. And even if they're right about capitalism (and they're not) a billion people are willing to die and kill to prove them wrong. And the problems of right-wingers are too obvious to repeat again and again and again. But all this, all the problems today, is the fault of supposed moderates and centrists who claimed to be wiser than the people they claimed are extremists and should have known better; but they didn't, because complacency breeds complacency. If things are going better now, why not assume they always will and who cares if we cut a few corners in providing for the future? Taxes go down, education funding slashed, welfare programs gutted, wages frozen, communities hollowed, regulations stripped, and voila, a public that can't make money to live properly and any service to help them out is unreliable, they're no longer educated properly to figure out the cause of their problems, and companies, in their search to dominate a worldwide market, are allowed to move their jobs anywhere to find the cheapest labor.

So back to Baltimore I go. A city I don't particularly care for and doesn't particularly care for me. If you're white, the city's livable. The prices don't break your bank account. People really are noble in Baltimore. They try so hard to save a city that cannot be saved. Nobody comes to Baltimore to live their best life, and if they do, somebody misinformed them.

But look around New York next time you come here. For the first time since I was a kid, there's graffiti everywhere, and not the artistic kind either. There are sex workers all around Times Square again. Even the most prosperous streets have boarded up businesses. If Baltimore became New York once upon a time, New York is about to become Baltimore.

Even if I moved, the whole country is clearly turning into Baltimore. The only difference between living in Baltimore and elsewhere here is that Baltimoreans are living in the American future. It's not a particularly nice place, but most of us survive, and that's the best most of us can ever ask. Occasionally there will be those moments of transcendence that recharge our batteries for the next insurmountable obstacle. But in the meantime, life goes on, as unrewarding as it's probably supposed to be.