A Recipe for Disaster

In the latest round of city defacements, last week's being the French capital following a footie result - this week's being the most populous city in the most populous state in America, it seems that the trend of citizens taking to the streets for one reason or another is becoming more and more popular. Following Immigration and Customs Enforcement doing their job of arresting illegal immigrants, mass rioting ensued. And dare I say that the Californians may have outmatched the Parisians when it came to their violence.

Ironically, in a backdoor sort of way, football plays into this story like last week. Here's what the Los Angeles Football Club had to say about the demonstrations:

You'll notice that they had to provide two versions of that message - one for the English speakers and one for the non-English speakers. That's probably due to the fact that 56% of people living in Los Angeles reside in homes where English isn't spoken according to 2019-2023 census data. Or because over 35% of people in LA are foreign-born. If you take the number of people who reside in homes where English isn't spoken and times it by the number of foreign-born citizens, that gets you to just under 20% of people in LA: people who aren't originally from America and predominantly speak in a foreign tongue. You can probably see why LAFC opted for the bi-lingual message...

Anyhow, LAFC say "that the true strength of our community comes from the people and cultures that make up the tapestry of this beautiful and diverse city." Well if the "strength" of said "community" comes from the people, then perhaps the club should retract the statement, in it being evident that many locals seem to be there illegally. And in real terms, the riots have absolutely nothing to do with perfectly warranted arrests; they appear to be a resistance to law altogether. Burning cars, looting shopfronts, throwing all manner of paraphernalia at coppers: all in a days work for your average "protester". Also, a question for LAFC: don't you need a ticket to enter the stadium?

As for California Governor Gavin Newsom's response to the deploying of the national guard following the widespread resistance...well, there really wasn't any. Unfortunately for Newsom, he couldn't do much apart from stand back and watch as one of the hallmark cities of his state retreated into the hollow and decrepit hole that it has become. Newsom has rolled out complaint after complaint on Trump, alleging that his attempts to quell the hysteria are having the opposite effects. Maybe they are. But is it Trump's fault that hundreds of people are vandalising downtown Los Angeles? Is it his fault that tens of masked men participated in the looting of an Apple Store the other night?

Was it Trump who made theft legal in San Francisco in 2021? An article from the Hoover Institute in 2021:

In San Francisco, there is no attempt to conceal theft, and there is almost never any effort by store employees, including security personnel, to confront the thieves...

...state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go.

"If you're going to San Francisco, you're gonna meet some not so gentle people there". That'll be the new lyric.

California has become victim to the criminal mentality: that crime is actually alright in the Bay Area, as is unregulated immigration.

So yeah, if sending the national guard in is what it takes to secure these cities then by all means. It's at least better than the sheepish attempts of the French armed forces last week in Paris. Because when California rejoins (is rejoining, slowly) Mexico, by the means of undocumented hispanic immigration, you won't know when the southern border starts and where it ends.