Prologue: Mr. Softee Now Serves Needles
Once upon a time in San Francisco, Mr. Softee rolled through the neighborhoods with a jingle and a promise: a swirl cone, a bomb pop, a taste of summer joy. Now? Same jingle, different cargo. Today, it’s a white city van dispensing free hypodermic needles to the homeless encampments lining Mission Street. The only thing they serve cold now is fentanyl.
This isn’t fiction. It isn’t parody. It’s policy.
Instead of investing in libraries, community swimming pools, parks and recreation, or children’s programs, San Francisco has redirected millions to fuel what amounts to lethal injection on wheels. The city spends over $500,000 per year delivering free syringes, and in 2024, the Health Commission approved a 14-month, $916,907 contract with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation—just to hire a 10-person team to clean up the needles littering the streets. That's right: half a million to deliver the poison, and nearly a million to sweep it up.
And that’s just the warm-up. California’s Harm Reduction Initiative—cheered on by Governor Newsom—has funneled over $61 million into so-called public health projects, with a chunk of it going to syringe programs while the cities funding them crumble under the weight of crime, addiction, and despair.
We used to have a word for cities that handed out syringes on the taxpayer’s dime while shutting down small businesses for lacking gender-neutral signage. That word was: failed. But we’ve upgraded. Now we call it “progressive urban planning.”
San Francisco was once a postcard. Now it’s a punchline. A city where romantic fog has given way to smoky haze, where innovation birthed billionaires who promptly moved to Austin, and where the only startups still growing are tent cities and overdose clinics.
Union Square and Market Street—once shimmering corridors of culture and commerce—have devolved into boarded-up husks. Luxury retailers have vanished. Local boutiques have died. What's left is a landscape that feels more Blade Runner than Bay Area. And the worst part? You can't wake up. You're in it. No hug from Mom, no warm milk, and definitely no teddy bear from the Mayor.
Mayor London Breed left behind a civic disaster. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi turned her back on the very city she once championed. And as the needles pile up, the storefronts empty, and the sirens never stop, we’re left with a city abandoned by those entrusted with its stewardship.
And while San Francisco writes poetry about its decline, Los Angeles just lights the match.
In L.A., we’re watching another script unfold—a darker sequel to the George Floyd riots, but with fewer excuses and more denial. This time, it’s not just about injustice. It’s about ICE. About law enforcement agents enforcing immigration laws passed by Congress. About mobs protesting the removal of people who are, by legal definition, in the country unlawfully. And yet somehow, in this upside-down morality play, it’s the ICE officers who get painted as villains, while rioters get called activists, and arson gets called expression.
And where are the leaders?
The Mayor of Los Angeles is issuing statements like she’s managing a bake sale. The Governor is asking for restraint, while ICE agents are getting pelted with rocks. And half the country is watching it all through the glowing filter of news anchors who call it “mostly peaceful” while the Walgreens burns behind them.
You want satire? This is beyond satire. This is self-parody at municipal scale.
We used to build cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco with grit and greatness. Now we build them out of cardboard signs and city-funded empathy circles. And when they collapse, we blame the weather, capitalism, Trump—anything but ourselves.
This piece isn’t about partisanship. It’s about cowardice.
Cowardice in governance. Cowardice in truth-telling. Cowardice in confronting what we see with our own eyes and pretending it’s someone else’s fault, someone else’s job.
This isn’t a left-versus-right crisis. This is a leadership vacuum.
And the cost? Our cities, our safety, and our sanity.
So, buckle up, Sports Fans. Because the dream factory is burning, the bus is overloaded, and as you’ll soon see:
We’re all Bozos on this bus.
Chapter I: The Burning of Los Angeles (Again)
It starts like it always does—someone throws a brick, someone lights a trash can, someone films it all on a phone with 2 million followers and zero clue. And within hours, the City of Angels becomes a cautionary tale on fire.
This time it’s ICE. Again. Federal officers serving warrants on individuals with prior convictions, deportation orders, and violent histories. Nothing new. Nothing unconstitutional. Just a bureaucracy trying to enforce the law it’s been given.
But in L.A., facts don’t matter. Optics do.
And when the optics are curated for TikTok, you don’t get policy—you get pyrotechnics. Peaceful protest morphs into mob rule. Mobs morph into riots. And those riots morph into hashtags, funding drives, and interviews on MSNBC, where well-moisturized commentators call arson a “symbolic cry for help.”
We’ve seen this film before.
And just like in 1992 and 2020, the script is predictable:
Only this time, the excuses are even thinner.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dismissed the chaos as “teens throwing rocks.” Governor Newsom called for “context.” And the Mayor of Los Angeles released a statement that read more like a yoga newsletter than a plan to restore order.
Meanwhile, ICE agents were being pelted with bricks and beer bottles, their vehicles vandalized, their identities posted online. And in the city’s progressive circles, not one major voice dared to say: “This is wrong.”
Because in 2025, saying that earns you labels. It gets you canceled. It gets you uninvited from the donor dinner.
And so, the fire spreads.
L.A. doesn’t just burn with flames—it burns with cowardice. With silence. With the quiet endorsement of leaders too afraid to be leaders.
This isn’t resistance. It’s regression. It’s the devolution of a city that once dreamed big into a city now afraid to wake up.
The smell of smoke is now part of the civic aesthetic. And the soundtrack? Sirens, shattered glass, and influencers narrating collapse like it’s a vibe.
The LAPD and LAFD, once among the most respected emergency services in the country, have been reduced to little more than extras in this civic disaster film. Told to 'stand down' in the name of optics, they watch as the city unravels block by block. Fires rage. Assaults spike. Stores are ransacked in broad daylight. And first responders—those trained to protect, defend, and save—are told to do the unthinkable: nothing.
Is this insanity? Yes. But it's also policy. A deliberate choice to prioritize perception over protection. To elevate the fear of backlash over the responsibility of leadership.
All of this on the heels of one of the worst wildfire seasons in California history—over $25 billion in damage, 30 lives lost, 200,000 evacuated, and 18,000+ structures incinerated—while city leaders refused to call in the National Guard for fear of how it might look.
And where was the Mayor?
Off on an international climate junket in Ghana while entire neighborhoods burned. It took her three days to issue a response—and even then, she cited "community pain" instead of lawlessness. Shameless public officials retreat behind hashtags and soft-focus talking points, paralyzed in their own politics. Let Rome burn. Let them eat cake.
Because when you run a city based on optics, substance becomes the enemy.
And now, much of the same. The same soundbites. The same hashtags. The same polite paralysis masquerading as policy. Only this time, fewer people are fooled. And more of them are leaving.
So yes, L.A. is burning. Again.
But this time, it’s not just the city. It’s the story itself.
And the ending? Still being written—in broken glass and disappearing standards.
Chapter II: ICE Cold and On Their Own
They came in with flak jackets and warrants, not flamethrowers and hashtags. No campaign slogans. No camera crews. No Instagram Lives. Just the Department of Homeland Security doing what Congress told them to do: remove individuals with felony convictions, ignored deportation orders, or known gang affiliations.
But this is L.A., 2025. And enforcing the law? That’s the new crime.
By sundown, ICE agents were being swarmed like ants on a flaming donut. Protesters hurled bricks, buckets of paint, frozen water bottles, and—because this is California—biodegradable glitter bombs. One officer was hospitalized with a fractured orbital bone. Two others were chased from their vehicle, filmed, and doxxed by a 17-year-old who sells bootleg “Defund Everything” hoodies out of a sidewalk tent in Silver Lake.
And what did the city say?
The Mayor’s office issued a statement thanking the community for its “compassionate restraint.” Governor Newsom urged residents to “channel their grief constructively.” Congresswoman AOC, broadcasting from an artisan wine bar in Brooklyn, told MSNBC: “We shouldn’t overreact to teens expressing frustration with institutionalized systems.”
Teens. Expressing frustration - With a cinderblock.
Meanwhile, the ICE field office went into lockdown. Agents had to be extracted by helicopter—because the streets were impassable, LAPD was on stand-down, and the city’s leadership had outsourced public safety to TikTok sentiment polls.
There was a time when federal officers were treated with a baseline of respect—or at least the assumption that they were doing their jobs, not auditioning for a villain role in someone’s protest-performance art. That time has passed.
Now, these men and women are scapegoats in flak vests. Every action scrutinized. Every moment filmed. Every lawful arrest spun into a civil rights tragedy. Forget nuance. Forget context. You’re either the villain or the victim—no middle ground. Especially if you wear a badge.
And yet they keep showing up. Every day. Every shift. Quietly, professionally. Not because it's fun, and definitely not because it's safe. But because someone has to.
Imagine trying to enforce immigration law in a city where saying the word “immigration” is treated like a racial slur. Where the guy throwing rocks at you gets bailed out faster than the paramedics can patch your skull. Where policy is a script, reality is improv, and the only consistent thing is that no one—not the mayor, not the governor, not the press—has your back.
This isn’t just law enforcement without backup. It’s 13 Hours in Boyle Heights—a full-blown American Benghazi, minus the foreign embassy and with just as much political cowardice. Only this time, the role of Hillary Clinton is played by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass—aloof, delayed, and fixated on messaging over rescue. And Governor Gavin Newsom? He plays the part of the smiling absentee-in-chief: too busy chasing photo ops, checking poll numbers, and practicing his presidential hair-flip to bother noticing his own cities are collapsing.
Anarchy didn’t break out. It was permitted.
Imagine being a firefighter watching flames engulf a street but being told to stand by “until the optics improve.” Imagine being a police officer staring at a looting mob and knowing you’ll be suspended for intervening. Imagine being trained to save lives, only to be ordered not to.
This wasn’t just ICE left to fend for themselves—it was every first responder in Los Angeles.
Do we forget so easily?
We once had hearings, investigations, and outrage over Benghazi—rightfully so. But here? The silence is deafening. No headlines. No calls for accountability. Just more hashtags, more vandalized patrol cars, more stolen merchandise, and more bureaucrats offering “thoughts and prayers” from the safety of their wine-funded fundraisers.
The difference?
This battlefield was in our own backyard.
And we left our own people to face it alone.
ICE Cold. And completely alone.
Chapter III: Political Kabuki in a City on Fire
“All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use imposes burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.
In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace, as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.
We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”
—President Bill Clinton, 1995 State of the Union Address
You’d be forgiven for thinking this came from a MAGA rally between chants of “Build the Wall.” But no—this wasn’t Donald Trump. This was President Bill Clinton, during his 1995 State of the Union, flanked by Hillary Clinton and Maxine Waters applauding (I kid you not – watch the video). He went on to call for more border guards, faster deportations, stricter hiring laws, and the end of welfare for undocumented immigrants.
A standing ovation.
Fast forward 30 years, and anyone repeating those words today would be digitally executed on X, canceled, unfriended, and publicly shamed by an army of blue-check avatars. The irony? Those policies are still on the books. The only thing that’s changed is our willingness to pretend they never existed—because they’ve become politically inconvenient.
Welcome to the stage performance of the 21st century: Political Kabuki—a sensory assault of virtue-signaling, gaslighting, and institutional decay performed under TikTok lights and PR firm scripts. Picture a demented circus where every juggler’s dropping flaming batons, but the crowd’s too doped on hashtags to care. It’s a stylized ritual of outrage and orchestrated amnesia—non-leadership as Broadway spectacle.
We’ve become a nation of bureaucratic contortionists and moral ventriloquists, each mouthing empty platitudes while the streets burn underfoot. Welcome to Lex Luthor’s Bizarro World—where up is down, in is out, hot is cold, wet is dry, and “they’re just peaceful kids trying to have a protest.”
And the headliners?
Mayor Karen Bass: Plays the role of detached technocrat. Shows up three days late to her own city’s riots. Cites “community pain” instead of felony assault. Her talent? Making complete civic failure sound like a mindfulness app. She wasn’t just late—she was also nowhere to be found when the Malibu and Pacific Palisades wildfires scorched more than $22 billion in damage and claimed at least 36 lives. While thousands fled burning neighborhoods, she was overseas on an international junket to Ghana—touting climate leadership, ironically, as her own city turned to cinders. That’s not just tone-deaf. That’s government by Instagram filter. A modern-day Marie Antoinette, only with a passport, a press kit, and a total lack of urgency.
And now, it’s happening again. Same mayor. Same script. Different disaster.
Governor Gavin Newsom: Cast as the manicured messiah. Can recite the phrase “California values” while wildfires consume $25 billion in homes and ICE agents are getting airlifted out of mob zones. Between hair gel applications, he’s planning a presidential run with the charisma of a shampoo commercial and the authenticity of a recycled Whole Foods bag.
Congresswoman AOC: Broadcasts from a Brooklyn wine bar and reassures America that the rock-throwing, cop-beating riots in L.A. are just “teens expressing frustration.” Frustration apparently comes in bricks now. She’s not alone—she’s following a proud tradition of elites downplaying chaos from safe distances. Hillary Clinton once called riots in Baltimore an example of “understandable anger,” while MSNBC’s reporters famously described arson as part of a “mostly peaceful protest” with a literal inferno blazing behind them.
Nancy Pelosi: The ghost of San Francisco’s past, sipping imported rosé from her Sub-Zero fridge while the city she once claimed to serve now smells like fentanyl and failure.
Kim Kardashian: From her fortified Beverly Hills compound, she posted: “My heart hurts for my neighbors.” Neighbors, of course, meaning the unpaid interns and domestic staff darting through her marble kitchen while the National Guard staged outside her gated community. Her brand of activism? A black square on Instagram and a gluten-free tear.
LeBron James: “This is about justice,” he declared—from 37,000 feet above the Mediterranean on a private jet. The only uprising he fears is the champagne running out before landing.
Joy Behar: “They’re just kids trying to make their voices heard,” she chirped. Meanwhile, those “kids” are looting retail corridors with the finesse of a Smashmouth concert.
Ilhan Omar: “Abolish ICE,” she demands—while quietly adding another security guard to her entourage.
Meghan & Harry: Whisper moral imperatives to Americans about oppression—from a $14 million estate in Montecito with a rescue chicken coop.
Barack Obama: “We must understand the pain driving this unrest,” he opines, framed perfectly between custom-built bookshelves and a Nobel Peace Prize.
And the media chorus line? Their job is to cover the fire—while insisting the smoke is a mirage.
You think fentanyl is a strong drug? Try whatever these people are taking. Because that’s not denial—it’s a full-blown, prescription-strength hallucination.
This is not governance. This is theater.
The result? A civic opera where the plot is incoherent, the cast is allergic to accountability, and the audience is trapped in the burning balcony with no exit.
Because when politics becomes performance, cities become casualties.
– And somewhere, Hillary is still nodding.
Stay tuned. Intermission’s over. The next act has already started—and the stage is on fire.
Chapter IV: No Badge, No Backbone, No Plan
Law enforcement retreating. Prosecutors refusing to prosecute. Police morale in free fall. Citizens on their own. “Public safety” has become a dirty phrase.
The curtain rises, and what do we see? Not leadership. Not courage. Not accountability. Just the flickering shadows of bureaucrats backstage, whispering to pollsters, nodding to consultants, and clutching talking points like rosary beads.
The city burned—and the response was hashtags, wellness seminars, and “community listening circles.”
The people cried out for safety—and got symbolism.
Meanwhile, the LA Fire Department was told to stand down. ICE agents—trying to enforce laws still printed in the federal code—were pulled back under threat of mob violence. LAPD officers were ordered to “observe” but not intervene. Every act of looting was rebranded as "unrest." And the only arrests made? Journalists and citizens who filmed it.
Former District Attorney George Gascón—always silent as a chalk outline, and his ghost lives on. The man who campaigned on criminal justice “reform” presided over a city where the only thing that reformed was the public’s faith in justice—disintegrating daily. His “successes” included declining to prosecute repeat violent offenders, refusing to try juveniles as adults no matter the crime, and demoralizing every prosecutor who once clung to a sense of duty. The revolving door he installed at the courthouse spun like a slot machine. He was finally voted out in shame.
And now? Meet new LA District Attorney Nathan Hochman—the man who promised to clean up the mess. A former federal prosecutor who ran on “law and order,” Hochman had the résumé, the rhetoric, and the trust of a city desperate for change. But months into office, his record already plays like a rerun. He was MIA during the riots. Silent during arson. Invisible during looting. The man who campaigned with fire governed with a whimper. Same courthouse. Same chaos. Same playbook.
Meet the new boss—same as the old boss. We just got fooled again.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell? Mostly invisible. In public statements, he talked about deploying LAPD officers, but in the same breath shrugged off responsibility—“Our job is to deal with everyday crime on our streets.”
Apparently, this wasn’t everyday? Looting, arson, violent mobs—just another Tuesday, Jim? Under his non-leadership, the department fell into disarray. Tactical readiness became a PR slogan. Morale? A distant memory. And deployment? A PowerPoint slide. McDonnell seemed more interested in avoiding headlines than preventing crimes.
LA County Sheriff Robert Luna? Caught between the Governor’s optics machine and the Mayor’s disappearing act, Luna played Fort Apache commander without the walls. His deputies were under siege and under orders not to push back. The jails deteriorated. The patrol zones unraveled. And morale? Somewhere between burned out and betrayed.
And the LAFD? Led by Chief Kristin Crowley, the department made headlines not for stopping fires—but for being benched while the city burned. Firefighters stood watching—not from lack of courage, but from lack of permission. Their biggest fire-suppression victory that year? A press release.
Welcome to Gaslight City—where pointing out the obvious became the new crime.
There was a surreal hush as lawlessness was normalized. You felt it at stoplights, in boarded-up storefronts, in the nervous glances of commuters who once felt safe walking after dinner. It was the silence before the sucker punch—the moment before trust in civil society was breached, and nobody showed up to fix it.
And what did leadership offer in that silence? A mural. A speech about healing. Maybe a new position in the Department of Equity and Belonging, staffed by someone who never had to dial 911—because help was already inside the gates.
Meanwhile, the rest of us navigated this burning theater with a fire extinguisher in one hand and a copy of the penal code in the other, knowing damn well neither would be honored.
This was what it looked like when governance was replaced with theater. Not a play about courage, but a farce. Not a city managing its crisis, but actors managing optics.
What used to be civic duty became stage direction.
And every smoke signal they sent us… was another gaslight.
Chapter V: San Francisco — Paradise Lost in a Syringe
I once loved this city - No, I lived for this city. The hills, the fog, the jazz clubs on Polk Street, the spontaneous poetry readings in North Beach, the late-night burritos that saved your soul. It was magic—gritty, electric, unexpected magic. A jewel of the West. A place where dreamers came, and sometimes, dreams actually came true.
Now? It’s a fentanyl theme park with $9 lattes and curbside morgues.
The Golden Gate Bridge still spans the bay, but it no longer leads to hope. It leads to a city that has replaced charm with chain-link fencing. Elegance with encampments. Innovation with indigence. And for the price of a luxury sedan, you too can own a home with a homeless tent in the front yard—unless you're the Mayor, a City Supervisor, or Nancy Pelosi. In which case, the tents are... mysteriously absent. “If I can’t see it, it’s not there”—the new San Francisco zoning code.
This isn’t hyperbole. This is block-by-block despair. The sidewalks? Carpeted in needles and human waste. The alleys? Pop-up meth labs with better Yelp reviews than the city’s Michelin-starred restaurants. And still, the response is: harm reduction, safe use zones, and trucks that cruise through neighborhoods like a completely twisted version of Mister Softee—doling out fresh syringes like they’re sugar cones. Only the jingle is replaced by the sound of a tax base hemorrhaging.
Here’s a dose of fiscal insanity: The Health Commission recently approved a 14-month, $916,907 contract with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation—not for treatment, but to hire a 10-member needle clean-up crew. Half a million to distribute the poison, another million to clean up the evidence. And that’s a drop in the bucket: $61 million in taxpayer dollars now fuels the Syringe Side Hustle.
And the needles? They’re not confined to alleyways anymore. They’ve migrated. Into the toniest children’s parks. Into the sandboxes of once-pristine playgrounds. Into the bushes lining the front walks of Pacific Heights estates. Families flee not just because of crime, but because their children can no longer play without risking a trip to the ER—or worse. This isn’t some abstract, faraway dystopia. You thought Blade Runner was fiction? Guess again. This is the sequel—and you're in it. And no one’s yelling “cut.”
Meanwhile, the soul of the city withers. Union Square? Hollowed out. Market Street? A ghost town. Retailers fled like it was Chernobyl. Target, Walgreens, In-N-Out Burger, Office Depot, Anthropologie, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Crate & Barrel, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, The Gap—the list goes on. Over 50% of pre-COVID retailers have closed their doors, and more are leaving every month.
And it’s not just retail. San Francisco is hemorrhaging business headquarters like a severed artery. Meta, X (Twitter), PayPal, Snap, Airbnb, Salesforce, Autodesk—over 60 companies have pulled out, citing unsafe conditions for employees and customers alike. Office vacancy rates have shattered historic records, and convention activity is down 35%, crushing hotels and restaurants. But hey, no worries—your $17 avocado toast now includes an automatic 20% “service charge” and a 5% “cost of living” fee, because who doesn’t love being tipped for surviving?
Everywhere you look, there's a banner, a mural, or a press conference about “belonging.” But it’s hard to feel like you belong when you’re dodging syringes and stepping over corpses. This is not social justice. This is state-sanctioned decay—managed decline rebranded as compassion.
It’s like watching a mad prophet rant in the town square while everyone else politely sips oat milk and applauds the emperor’s invisible pantsuit. We’re not living in a city anymore—we’re trapped in a hallucinogenic civics experiment gone rogue.
And just like that, San Francisco—the city that survived earthquakes, revolutions, and tech booms—collapsed not with a bang, but a whimper and a hashtag.
Chapter VI: A Brief History of Courage
Once upon a time, American cities had mayors—not mascots. Leaders with grit, vision, and the unapologetic swagger to keep chaos at bay and civilization upright. They weren’t perfect. They weren’t always polite. But when the city caught fire—figuratively or literally—they didn’t fly to Ghana or host a listening circle. They grabbed a hose, a microphone, and a bullhorn. And they led.
Fiorello LaGuardia of New York remains an all-time great—the people’s mayor, plain and proud. He read the Sunday comics on the radio during a newspaper strike because he believed kids still deserved joy. But he was no softie: he took on the mob, cleaned up the city’s corruption, slashed red tape, built hundreds of miles of roads and bridges, expanded public housing, consolidated public transit, and poured funds into education. He stood firm during the Great Depression and World War II, bringing both dignity and discipline to the mayor’s office. His name now graces an airport, but his legacy built a civic standard. He famously said, “Only a well-fed, well-housed, well-schooled people can enjoy the blessings of liberty.” And he meant it—every word an antidote to today’s parade of platitudes.
Tom Bradley of Los Angeles was a five-term legend and the city’s longest-serving mayor. The first Black mayor of a major West Coast city, Bradley was instrumental in turning LA from a freeway punchline into a global powerhouse. He spearheaded the successful bid for the 1984 Summer Olympics, a Games that turned a profit and set the bar for future hosts. He oversaw the dramatic expansion of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), championed civil rights, revitalized downtown, and pushed for minority-owned business development. Bradley didn’t just cut ribbons; he cut through bureaucracy and got things done. A statesman with steel in his spine, his civic legacy towers over today’s crop of political holograms. Compared to Bradley, Karen Bass looks like a protozoan floating in the petri dish of indecision—microscopic, spineless, and entirely unaware she’s being watched.
Then there was Richard J. Daley, boss of Chicago. Kingmaker. Street tamer. Architect of a city that worked. Under his leadership, Chicago built the Sears Tower (now Willis), expanded O’Hare into the world’s busiest airport, and modernized public works at a breakneck pace. He wasn’t subtle, but he was effective—ushering in urban renewal while controlling the city’s political machine with an iron grip. When the 1968 DNC spiraled into chaos, Daley didn’t call for hashtags—he called in the National Guard. His son, Richard M. Daley, carried the legacy forward into the 21st century, introducing green architecture initiatives, launching Millennium Park, and making Chicago one of America’s most livable cities.
Ed Koch of New York? He was New York. Brash, brilliant, and brutally honest. He led the city through its fiscal crisis, balanced budgets, revitalized neighborhoods like SoHo and the South Bronx, and became a one-man brand for urban tenacity. His trademark attitude—defiant, funny, and deeply civic—became part of the city’s fabric.
Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia? Controversial but commanding. He patrolled the streets personally as police commissioner before becoming mayor, and his “law and order” stance kept the city’s crime in check. Rizzo’s style was tough love—heavy on the tough—but his defenders credit him with maintaining order in turbulent times.
Marty Walsh in Boston? A labor union champion and two-term mayor who boosted public school funding, oversaw record-low crime rates, and attracted major corporate headquarters to the city. His push for affordable housing and mental health services showed governance with both backbone and heart. He later became U.S. Labor Secretary under Biden.
Kevin White, also from Boston, governed during the tumultuous busing crisis of the 1970s with composure and creativity. He brought vitality to a declining city—modernizing Quincy Market, hosting the Bicentennial celebrations, and laying groundwork for Boston’s economic comeback.
Anthony Williams of Washington, D.C. was a technocrat in the best sense—focused, smart, and relentless. When he inherited a city teetering on bankruptcy, he enacted sweeping financial reforms, drew in private investment, improved public schools, and restored basic city services. He didn’t seek applause; he sought results.
These were mayors with spine. With vision. With brass where others had oatmeal. They didn’t lead by vibes and slogans. They led by example. They faced crises head-on. They wanted the job—not just the press conference. They weren’t afraid to be unpopular if it meant being effective.
And now? We’ve traded bulldogs for bumper stickers—a sad decline into the cesspool of political cowardice, with Diogenes roaming city halls by lantern light, still searching in vain for one honest leader with grit and guts. Our mayors no longer fight for their cities; they curate them for social media. And we are left with platitudes in place of plans, hashtags instead of help.
Chapter VII: We’re on the Road to Nowhere
There was a time when cities had plans—big ones. Subways carved through bedrock. Bridges built across impossible spans. Schools, hospitals, parks that stood as monuments to civic will. Now? We get ribbon-cuttings for pilot programs, roundtables on "equity resilience," and press releases about the task force that will be studying the last task force's recommendations.
We are governed by traffic cones and press conferences. Bureaucrats hold summits while city buses roll past tent cities. The streets bleed and the mayors tweet. There is motion everywhere—but no movement.
Welcome to the American metropolis, where nothing gets built, nothing gets fixed, and everything gets renamed. Where public safety is a press strategy, not a priority. Where city planning means zoning for dysfunction, and "solutions" mean pushing the same boulder up the same hill while insisting it's "bold new thinking."
It’s not leadership. It’s LARPing. Local government now operates like a Renaissance fair of failed ideas: costumed technocrats jousting for grant money and media clout while the peasants wade through the mud of reality.
Instead of decisive action, we get symbolic gestures. Instead of results, we get reports. And instead of fixing anything, we form another committee. This isn’t governance. It’s a bureaucratic bus tour to nowhere, with everyone waving from the windows as the city crumbles around them.
And who gets left behind? The working poor. The kids. The elderly. The shopkeeper with a busted window and no police report. The mom who waits three hours for a bus that never comes. The nurse who walks home in fear.
Meanwhile, the people in charge hold mindfulness seminars and talk about "the journey." They quote from vision statements while potholes bloom like craters beneath their feet.
“We’re on the road to nowhere, come on inside.” That’s the invitation now—into cities where up is down, dysfunction is destiny, and progress is whatever the PowerPoint says it is. “They can tell you what to do, but they’ll make you like it too.” Bureaucratic hypnosis at its finest.
“We’re on the road to paradise, here we go, here we go”—only paradise smells like burning lithium and week-old urine. And the only thing we’re passing is the buck.
“We’re on the road to nowhere,” the Talking Heads once sang. Turns out it wasn’t a metaphor. It was a municipal policy.
We are witnessing the illusion of motion. The theater of governance. A Potemkin village of policy where effort substitutes for outcome, and no one is ever accountable. And the destination?
Nowhere.
Because without courage, without clarity, without the will to tell hard truths and make harder decisions, no city ever gets saved. It just gets managed—into oblivion.
Kindness has been weaponized into chaos. Bureaucrats and nonprofits use empathy like currency, but real empathy isn’t a press release or a mural—it’s boundaries, accountability, and follow-through. It’s saying “no” when it hurts. It’s caring enough to confront.
The hard truth? Boundaries aren’t cruelty. They’re civilization. Without them, kindness becomes complicity, and compassion collapses into catastrophe. When consequences vanish, cities become triage zones—and the most vulnerable pay the highest price.
So, buckle up, Sports Fans. Because this bus has no brakes, no map, and no driver. And if we don’t grab the wheel soon, the next stop is the bottom.
Chapter VIII: Tent Cities and the Compassion Con
Once upon a time, homelessness was a crisis. Now it’s an industry—with a business model, PR team, and five-year plan. Billions are spent. Outcomes are few. Accountability is nonexistent.
Welcome to the Homelessness Industrial Complex, where good intentions have metastasized into bureaucratic theater. Nonprofits build empires on the backs of the unsheltered. Consultants fly in with PowerPoints and leave with paychecks. Politicians virtue-signal from behind podiums while the tent cities multiply outside their office windows.
Kindness, once a virtue, has been weaponized into chaos. We've turned empathy into an excuse, and “compassion” into a code word for collapse. We throw money at symptoms while ignoring the disease. We lower expectations in the name of inclusion and remove consequences in the name of care.
But here’s the hard truth: real empathy doesn’t mean letting someone live in squalor because we’re afraid of looking mean. It means boundaries. It means standards. It means saying no when it matters, and meaning it. Because without lines, without structure, all you’re doing is watching people slowly die in the name of virtue.
Kindness without clarity is cruelty. Compassion without consequences is collapse. And permissiveness dressed as progress is a moral and civic failure of the highest order.
You don’t lift someone up by lying down beside them in the dirt. You do it by reaching out with a firm hand, a clear plan, and the courage to say: “This is not acceptable. We’re going to fix it.”
The consequence of ignoring this? A generation that mistakes leniency for love. A city that treats encampments like urban art installations. Sidewalks overrun. Parks abandoned. Syringes in playground sandboxes. Families driven out. The tax base in retreat.
This isn’t empathy. It’s entropy.
We are watching civilization erode under the weight of euphemism and evasion. “Unhoused neighbors.” “Houseless community members.” The names get softer as the crisis gets worse. We’ve blurred language so thoroughly that we’ve forgotten the point of having words in the first place: to tell the truth.
The descent into bullshit is breathtaking. We’re lying to ourselves—and cashing the checks while doing it. A vast economy thrives off human suffering. The more tents, the more grants. The worse the misery, the bigger the budget. From needle exchanges to navigation centers, there’s money in the madness—and no incentive to solve anything.
The reality? Some people need help. Others need limits. Many need both. And pretending otherwise isn’t kindness—it’s cowardice.
And until we learn the difference, cities will continue to rot in the name of reform.
So, let’s call it what it is: The Compassion Con. A feel-good fraud that prioritizes appearances over answers and signals over solutions.
It’s time to end the theater and bring back the truth. With real boundaries. Real services. Real accountability. Because the opposite of cruelty isn’t indulgence. It’s integrity.
And that’s what every person—housed or not—actually deserves.
Chapter IX: The Rage That Whispers
This isn’t just a simmer. It’s a festering wound. What started as a scratch—an irritation, a small injustice, a quiet frustration—has turned into something darker. Reddened. Inflamed. Then infected. Now it’s oozing. It stinks. It smells like the choking stench of urban gangrene. And we’re dying, walking around pretending not to notice.
There’s a silent fury in this country, building under the surface like a pressure cooker with a rusted valve. It’s the look on the face of a father paying $9 for eggs while watching his kid walk past addicts to school. It’s the mother who won’t let her child play in the park because there are syringes in the sandbox. It’s the store owner who’s been robbed three times in one month and is told by the DA’s office to “file a report online.”
This isn’t outrage. Outrage is loud. This is something worse. This is the quiet kind. The kind that burns behind the eyes and clenches in the jaw. The kind that doesn’t make the news—until it explodes.
We’ve been told to tolerate the intolerable, rationalize the irrational, and explain away the obvious. We’ve watched civic decay dressed up in euphemisms and sold back to us as “progress.” We’ve been gaslit by smiling politicians who confuse hashtags with heroism and task forces with action.
Blinded by hashtags and buried in a smog of political, social, and DEI psychobabble—from both sides of the aisle—we’ve watched the language of leadership mutate into an international dialect of delusion. It's not just local, statewide, or national anymore. The infection has gone global. For over a decade now, we’ve parroted nonsense like “houseless community members,” “gendered labor outcomes,” “safe injection autonomy,” and “inclusionary zoning justice” like mantras from a self-help cult. Millions have lined up to drink the Kool-Aid, seduced by the promise of absolution, virtual virtue, and eternal ideological life.
And every time we said, “This doesn’t feel right,” we were told to be quiet. To be polite. To be compassionate.
But what we feel now isn’t fear. It’s betrayal.
The social contract has been breached. The deal was simple: we pay the taxes, obey the laws, respect the system—and in return, we get safety, opportunity, and order. That was the handshake. That was the deal.
The deal is off.
Now the streets belong to the loudest, the angriest, the most chaotic. And those who ask for order are told they lack empathy. Those who seek truth are branded dangerous. The people who built this country are watching it be dismantled one press conference at a time.
And still the rage simmers—no, festers. Every fentanyl tent, every abandoned storefront, every broken promise deepens it. Every politician who postures instead of acts. Every bureaucrat who shrugs. Every law that goes unenforced. It’s a drip of poison into the bloodstream of a once-great nation.
We don’t need permission to be angry anymore. We need direction. We need truth. And we need someone to say out loud what so many already feel:
This isn’t okay. This isn’t progress. This is collapse.
The rage isn’t screaming. It’s whispering. And that whisper is getting louder. One resignation letter, one U-Haul, one silent voter at a time.
Ignore it at your peril. Because when enough people whisper together, it becomes a roar. And when that roar comes, it won’t be poetic. It will be primal.
And it will be earned.
Chapter X: The Great Urban Surrender
Welcome to the end of the beginning. The middle class is gone. The cops are gone. The stores are gone. And what’s left? Botox clinics, mobile meth dens, yoga studios that double as panic rooms, and a Whole Foods that closes at 3 p.m. due to "ongoing safety concerns."
This isn’t decline. It’s surrender. Not with a bang, but with a shrug. One city at a time.
Walk through what’s left of downtown San Francisco, Portland, LA, Seattle, New York, Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Philadelphia or New Orleans. What used to be flagship retail corridors now look like a crossover episode between The Walking Dead and The Price is Right. Glass shards crunch underfoot, every third doorway smells like urine, and your $8 coffee comes with a complimentary dose of paranoia.
City leaders? They’ve traded law enforcement for performance art. Security for slogans. Order for optics. Their toolkits now consist of curated tweets, community engagement liaisons, and HR-approved apologies for the weather. Accountability? That’s just a microaggression now.
It didn’t happen overnight. The social contract was broken slowly, methodically, like a frog boiled on a stove of bad policy and worse leadership. Now we’re all standing here, stunned, holding a torch with no idea if it’s for light—or if we’re supposed to burn it all down.
Retailers are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship. Target, Walgreens, Macy’s, Banana Republic, Old Navy, In-N-Out Burger, Office Depot, Crate & Barrel, and Anthropologie. Over 50% of pre-COVID retail tenants gone. Salesforce, Meta, PayPal, Snap, Airbnb, X (Twitter), and Autodesk? Corporate headquarters pulling out like they just spotted the iceberg. And conventions? Down 35%. The hospitality sector is being held together by a 20% automatic “service charge” and a 5% “cost of living” fee that gets tacked onto your bill like a participation trophy for economic ruin.
You wanted Blade Runner? You got it. Except there's no Harrison Ford. Just a guy named Daryl shooting up behind a preschool.
The city’s soul? Sublet to despair.
This isn’t just San Francisco or LA anymore. The LA “peaceful demonstrations” alone have done over $1 billion in damage in less than a week—from looting to firebombs, to obliterated storefronts and shattered livelihoods. Entire blocks were reduced to war zones. A miracle no one’s been killed—yet. But buckle up, Sports Fans: it ain’t over.
In Philadelphia, a pregnant nurse was beaten in broad daylight waiting for the subway—and the mayor said little more than “we’re aware of the situation.” In Chicago, mobs of teens ransacked the Magnificent Mile, livestreaming the carnage while the city council debated whether police patrols were too “traumatizing.” And in New York, a subway hero who subdued a violent man was dragged into court, while the city cheered for TikTok activists blaming capitalism for the rats.
And what’s truly galling is the new social etiquette: speak up and you’re heartless. Question it and you’re dangerous. Act on it and you’re an extremist. Because in Bizarro America, concern for basic civic order is now a fringe position.
Try laughing. It helps. You’ll need to, when a $2 million condo in San Francisco comes with a bonus homeless encampment outside, and a man in a clown wig selling homemade fentanyl popsicles from a shopping cart tells you to “check your privilege.”
We’ve gone from a functioning civil society to a dystopian theme park with no exit signs. This isn’t urban evolution—it’s civic auto-erotic asphyxiation. And we’re paying to watch.
The descent wasn’t loud. It was a slow-motion faceplant in an open manhole of hubris. The press claps. The influencers post. The bureaucrats hold a Zoom meeting about "vibrant urban synergies." Meanwhile, you step over a puddle of human excrement to get to your Uber, which now requires hazard pay.
You say, “That’s outrageous,” “That’s insane,” “That couldn’t be real”—but it is. And you want to wake up from the nightmare, but you can’t. Because you’re living in it. A fever dream of hallucinated governance, hashtag empathy, and bureaucratic cosplay.
We used to build cities that reached for the sky. Now we manage them like trauma centers. The goal is no longer greatness. It’s survival.
And that, my friends, is the abyss. Look deeply into it - because it's looking back at you.
Chapter XI: What Would Frank Do?
If we want to claw our way out of this mess, we start by tossing the script. No more hashtags. No more curated apologies. No more million-dollar studies that conclude water is wet. We go back to the basics: Truth. Accountability. Boundaries. Courage.
Start by demanding truth in language and policy. It’s not a “houseless neighbor,” it’s a person in crisis. It’s not a “harm reduction site,” it’s a shooting gallery with a government logo. Euphemisms are anesthetics. They numb us to the pain of reality. And we’ve been numb for far too long.
Next: enforce the damn law. With dignity, yes—but with resolve. Compassion without boundaries is chaos. Empathy without action is abandonment. Public safety is not optional. It’s the first promise a government makes.
Look the mayors in the eye. The city councils. The police chiefs. The fire chiefs. The directors of Public Works, Homeless Services, Housing Authorities, Public Health, and Transit Agencies. Look at the civic leaders who attend ribbon cuttings but skip neighborhood patrols. Then go up the chain—state governors, U.S. senators, members of Congress, federal cabinet secretaries, and yes, the President himself. Ask them all one thing: “Are you proud of what you see?”
If the answer is no, they need to act. If the answer is yes, they need to be replaced.
Fire the actors. Hire the adults. The ones who will make hard calls and own the consequences. Who won’t fold under a hashtag campaign or a viral video. Who understand that real leadership isn’t about likes—it’s about legacy.
Rebuild the social contract with teeth—and tenderness. People want to believe in something again. Give them something real: Clean streets. Safe transit. Honest policing. Humane housing. A shared sense of future.
It won’t be easy. But it’s not impossible. It starts with someone—anyone—standing up and saying: “This ends here.”
So, what would Frank do?
He’d show up. Tell the truth. Put on gloves. Grab a shovel. Stiffen his back. And get to work.
He’d walk into the war zone with a clipboard in one hand and a trash bag in the other. He’d stop pontificating and start participating. He’d demand performance, not platitudes. He’d tell the nonprofits to justify every dollar, the contractors to meet every deadline, and the politicians to earn every vote.
He’d rebuild trust one block at a time. Clean the streets. Light the alleys. Staff the precincts. Open the schools. Not someday—today. Because hope doesn’t scale until someone leads.
And if the leaders won’t do it? Then step aside. Because this country doesn’t need more caretakers of collapse—it needs architects of renewal.
Because leadership isn’t a tweet—it’s a tenacity. It’s not about spin—it’s about sweat. It’s not showing up to a press conference—it’s showing up for people.
Leaders lead. They deliver results. And if they can’t? They need to step aside and make room for those who will.
So, rise up. Roll up your sleeves. The spotlight is on. The curtain’s up. The audience is standing.
This is your moment. Now lead.
Chapter XII: The Veritas Way
This is not about being right or left. It’s about being real.
The Veritas Way begins where the slogans end. It starts at street level—where truth isn’t a talking point but a lifeline. We don’t solve problems with branding. We solve them with backbone.
1. Data Over Dogma.
Don’t tell us it’s working. Show us. Show us the dashboards. The numbers. The metrics that prove your program didn’t just employ consultants—it saved lives. Or housed people. Or cleaned up a city block. No more vanity metrics. No more measuring success by the size of the ribbon at the opening ceremony.
2. Metrics, Mandates, and Moral Courage.
You want results? Start with mandates. Hold every agency, every official, every grantee accountable. If a $3 million homelessness grant yields six tents and a press release—pull it. Reallocate. Reboot. Reward results, not résumés. If it doesn’t work, admit it. Fix it. If it works, scale it with speed.
And yes, demand moral courage. Require it like a credential. Enough with the careerists who duck the hard choices because they’re chasing their next job. Let’s build a new generation of civic leaders who don’t blink when the pressure hits—they step up. Leaders lead. They take action. And if they can’t deliver results, they need to step aside and make room for those who will.
3. Rebuild From the Sidewalk Up.
Forget the top-down task forces. The real magic starts curbside. Fix the sidewalks. Turn on the streetlights. Open the community center. Staff the local school. Let people see, feel, and touch the change on their own block. When your neighborhood looks like it matters, you start to believe you matter.
4. Not Right or Left—Just Real.
This isn’t about winning arguments on cable news. It’s about making cities work. It’s about cleaning what’s dirty, fixing what’s broken, and protecting what matters. Common sense is not partisan. Safety is not extremist. Hope is not a luxury item.
The Veritas Way means policies rooted in outcomes, not optics. Courage measured in consequences, not coverage. Empathy grounded in action, not applause.
So, stop spinning fairy tales. Stop pretending failure is progress. Stop bullshitting the public—and yourselves. If it’s broken, say it. If it’s not working, fix it. If it’s working, scale it. The rest is just noise and nodding heads.
So, stop tweeting. Start building. The cities are burning. The people are waiting. And the truth?
It’s not red. It’s not blue.
It’s Veritas.
And it’s long overdue.
And while we’re at it, stop letting these fools spoon-feed us this crap. Speak up. Demand better.
Vox Populi—more on that later, sports fans…..
Epilogue: We’re All Bozos on This Bus
So here we are. The cities are smoldering. The storefronts are hollowed out. The sirens never stop, and the silence of leadership is deafening.
We used to dream about the future—now we’re surviving it. And let’s be honest: it looks less like The Jetsons and more like a deleted scene from Mad Max meets Blade Runner, with a fentanyl chaser and a $15 delivery fee.
We laughed off the warning signs. Shrugged at the smoke. Reposted the hashtags. Retweeted the outrage. But we never hit the brakes.
And now?
Now we’re passengers on a bus with no driver, no route, and no plan—just a big red nose and a fuel tank full of denial. The horn still works though. Honk honk.
We let the charlatans drive. We let the cowardly speak for us. We let the grownups get drowned out by the tantrum parade. And we told ourselves it was normal.
We’re all Bozos on this bus—clown suits optional, denial mandatory.
But here’s the thing about buses: they don’t stop on their own. Somebody has to pull the cord. Somebody has to grab the wheel. Somebody has to say, “That’s enough. Let me off. Or better yet—let me drive.”
Because if we don’t?
The next Bozo will. And he’ll have a podcast, a TikTok, a smug grin, and a $3,000 blazer paid for by your tax dollars.
We thought we were passengers. But maybe—just maybe—we were the drivers all along. Maybe we handed over the keys out of fear, laziness, or the misguided hope that someone else knew where we were going.
And while we bickered about hashtags, someone swapped the road signs.
The bus didn’t go off the cliff by accident. We just didn’t grab the wheel in time.
So now, what?
It’s not too late Sports Fans – There are no victims, there are only volunteers.
The horn’s still blaring. The engine’s still running. The people are still watching.
If no one else will lead, then maybe—just maybe—it’s time for you to stand up.
Say the quiet part out loud. Call out the lunacy. Cut through the noise. Grab the damn wheel.
Do something about it, because if you don’t, no one else will.
Because if not you… it will be the next Bozo.
And you already know how that ends……
Vox Populi – We’re Listening to You
For years, I’ve been writing a column called Compensation in Context—and if we’re being honest, it hasn’t been about compensation for quite a while now.
It started with executive pay. It wandered into governance, taxes, incentives, metrics, and accountability. But then something shifted. The world got louder. The spin got bolder. And our readers? They kept writing in—by the hundreds, then thousands. They didn’t want spreadsheets. They wanted sanity. They didn’t need equity dilution curves. They needed someone to call out the emperor’s lack of clothes—and maybe crack a smile doing it.
That’s when I realized: Compensation in Context wasn’t about pay anymore. It was about truth. Satire. Outrage. Laughter. The deep ache of watching systems crack—and the stubborn hope that we can still fix them.
So we’re doing something bold. Something overdue.
We’re changing the name.
Starting with our next edition, Compensation in Context becomes Vox Populi.
The Voice of the People.
Why? Because that’s who we write for now. That’s who we’ve always written for. You. The readers. The reformers. The quiet screamers. The ones who forward the newsletter to a friend with the words, “Read this. This is what I’ve been trying to say.”
You’ve spoken. We’ve heard you. And now we speak with you—not just to you.
This is your space now. This is your voice. And I’m honored to be holding the microphone.
Vox Populi will still have the bite, the wit, and the wild-eyed honesty you’ve come to expect. But now, it’s bigger. Broader. Deeper. It’s about the systems that need fixing and the courage it takes to speak up. It’s about accountability with a soul. Compassion with a backbone. And truth without an apology.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: I am not afraid to say what needs to be said.
And Sports Fans - neither are you.
We are the grownups in the room. The truth-tellers. The wisecrackers with calloused hands and tired eyes who still believe that reality matters—and that it can be beautiful again.
So, to all of you who’ve written in, challenged me, shared your stories, and said, “Thank you for saying it out loud,” this next chapter is for you.
Because this time, we’re all writing it together.
Vox Populi.
We’re not just listening.
We’re answering.
FBG (Dedicated to Dr. Charles Shabica—Chas, your candle lit the path through the darkness, and your wisdom shaped every word that followed.)
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PS: If this piece made you laugh, nod in agreement, or mutter “he’s talking about me behind my back, isn’t he?”—I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line at fglassner@veritasecc.com. I personally read and reply to every message—no assistants, no AI, just me (usually with a strong espresso in hand). Whether you’re a board member, CEO, CFO, burned-out executive, investment banker, activist shareholder, client, consultant, lawyer, accountant, ex-wife, one of my beloved twin sons, AI Bot, or just a fellow traveler in the great corporate circus, I welcome the conversation.
Thanks!