Writing off the news

I know some friends of the blog are unenthusiastic when I post galleries of Phoenix history. But history is one of Rogue Columnist's missions. And the traffic goes through the roof. People love the photos. But back to the serious stuff.

The New York Times did an in-depth look at the astonishing lack of care in advance of the deadly crowd trampling at the rapper's concert on Friday. It says in part:

Concert organizers and Houston city officials knew that the crowd at a music festival planned by Travis Scott, a favorite local rapper turned megastar, could be difficult to control. That’s what happened two years earlier, the last time Mr. Scott held his Astroworld Festival.

For months, they braced themselves, adding dozens more officers from the Houston Police Department and more private security hired by Live Nation, the concert organizer.

The Houston police chief, who knows Mr. Scott personally and felt the musician had been trying to do good for his hometown, said that he visited Mr. Scott in his trailer before his show on Friday and conveyed concerns about the energy in the crowd, according to a person with knowledge of the chief’s account.

But I urge you to read the whole thing here. I'll wait.

The concerns went unheeded and worse. Some 50,000 fans were allowed into the venue (part of a redevelopment of the old Astrodome). The Times writes, "But the anticipation gave way to dread almost as soon as Mr. Scott took the stage at 9 p.m. on Friday as the crowd surged uncontrollably and the worst fears of officials and concert organizers came to pass. Two teenagers, ages 14 and 16, were among the eight who died in the crush and chaos."

A "mass casualty event" was declared by officials but the rapper continued for a shocking 40 more minutes. "One question surrounding the tragedy was whether the officials could have stopped the show sooner; they said that doing so would have had its own perils, including inciting a riot," the Times reports. The fire chief said, “The one person who can really call for and get a tactical pause when something goes wrong is that performer. They have that bully pulpit and they have a responsibility.” 

But Scott didn't. Meanwhile, a 56-page emergency plan prepared in advance was useless. In addition to the deaths, dozens of others were injured. I didn't even know this kind of crowd managementi  was allowed after the 1979 catastrophe at a concert by The Who at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum, where 11 died.

I come away from reading this and think, Are we insane?

• Meanwhile Virginia voted in a Republican governor with Glenn Youngkin ousting the incumbent Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Much has been written about how Youngkin successfully distanced himself just enough from Trump to avoid antagonizing Trump and his base. And how it's a playbook for 2022, which is looking very bad for Democrats.

But I wonder how much other issues were in play, too. Teaching Critical Race Theory in school was a big one. So is defunding the police. Both these balls-and-chains of the Democratic left are going to kill them in '22 (even Seattle had a backlash against the left in the most recent mayoral, City Council, and city attorney election).

Andrew Sullivan commented on his Substack column:

Look at recent polling. A big survey from the Manhattan Institute of the 20th biggest metropolitan areas found that the public, 54-29, wants to remove CRT concepts such as “white privilege” or “systemic racism” from K-12 education. That includes black parents by a margin of 54-38. And that’s in big cities. A new Harris poll asked, “Do you think the schools should promote the idea that people are victims and oppressors based on their race or should they teach children to ignore race in all decisions to judge people by their character?” Americans favored the latter 63-37.

And when the Democrats and the mainstream media insist that CRT is not being taught in high schools, they’re being way too cute. Of course K-12 kids in Virginia’s public schools are not explicitly reading the collected works of Derrick Bell or Richard Delgado — no more than Catholic school kids in third grade are studying critiques of Aquinas. But they are being taught in a school system now thoroughly committed to the ideology and worldview of CRT, by teachers who have been marinated in it, and whose unions have championed it.

And in Virginia, this is very much the case. The state’s Department of Education embraced CRT in 2015, arguing for the need to “re-engineer attitudes and belief systems” in education. In 2019, the department sent out a memo that explicitly endorsed critical race and queer theory as essential tools for teaching high school. Check out the VA DOE’s “Road Map to Equity,” where it argues that “courageous conversation” on “social justice, systemic inequity, disparate student outcomes and racism in our school communities is our responsibility and professional obligation. Now is the time to double down on equity strategies.” (My itals.) Check out the Youtube site for Virginia’s virtual 2020 summit on equity in education, where Governor Northam endorsed “antiracist school communities,” using  Ibram X Kendi's language.

Finally, the mania to take down Confederate statues was another overreach that backfired. Richmond even cut apart the famous equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee. But many counties voted to keep their statues. And you look at the election map and outside Richmond, Charlottesville (a college town), and the blue counties near D.C. — and the state is turned red. Tearing down the statues did nothing to help black Americans in economic and social opportunity, or historical memory. I'm not offering a popular view among Rogue readers but here it is.

• Closer to home: Howard Hughes Corp. and Jerry Colangelo spent $600 million to "build the city of the future" far west of Phoenix (north of Buckeye but in its huge planning area). 

According to AZ Big Media, "Douglas Ranch will become an industry-leading community focused on sustainable development and technological advancement which will help serve and drive the substantial growth that is taking place in the Phoenix region...The city’s West Valley showed outsized growth in new home construction in the region at over 8% per year and captured 57% of all housing demand in Phoenix. The area is positioned for exponential growth as longterm migration of residents and businesses is projected to continue."

This "city of the future" would be entirely car-dependent, no commuter rail to Phoenix, no transit, no walkability on inviting shady streets, and very sketchy water availability, especially long term. If anything, it's the "city" of the past.

Again I ask: Are we insane?

Yes. "It's Chinatown, Jonny." The bet on another huge Ponzi scheme. Sweet revenge for Colangelo, who did so much to revive downtown and was vilified. If you can't beat the Real Estate Industrial Complex, join it. But the movie Chinatown was inspired by the California water wars of the early 20th century, especially securing Owens Valley water for Los Angeles. Here, it's backwards. There's no water to be had north of Buckeye. I don’t trust the state Department of Water Resources.

Whatever. The promoters will be rich and long gone when the catastrophe hits.

 

 

 

 

Houston

Virginia election

Douglas Ranch

 

Comments

[DoggieCombover]

Yes we are insane. In virtually any direction I look, I see outlandish things happening that I couldn't make up in my wildest imagination. And Democrats could fuck up a bowling ball...

[soleri]

I've been saying this for months and I'll say it again: woke bullshit is killing the Democrats. The idea that middle America (and not just whites) want to be instructed by sanctimonious poseurs spouting arcane theories about intersectionality and privilege is so insane it makes my fingers hurt just to type these words. No, Americans don't want to feel shamed and "guilted" by people whose intellectual compass involves knowing exactly who to blame for every bad thing that's ever happened to a person of color. You would have to be upper-middle class and detached from the lives of ordinary people to think they crave your penetrating insights into their personal complicity.

This is no longer politics so much as a religion, and a painfully dumb one since it involves barely a shred of self-awareness on the part of people calling themselves "woke". The amount of social anxiety that they evince in their certitude suggests they're mostly putting on a show to convince others that they're worthy of respect from their peers. In other words, any are simply cowards unwilling to puzzle through some fairly complex history and evolutionary psychology. That they see themselves as the "elect" is doubly ironic given the political catastrophe they're going to visit on the Democrats.

[Cal Lash]

By 2024 Democrats will be the
Bowling Pins with no spare standing.
You see how Trump throws.

[Dave Parish]

Houston, we have a problem. History revert from space age tragedy to overcrowded area crush. One an accident while the other was predictable. Neither a memorable picture.

[Cal Lash]

Sam Houston is alive and per QAnon going to appear in Garden City Texas and declare Donald Trump President of the Republic of Texas?
Music to be performed by Ted Nugent?

Creeping to LA.
Chinatown is a great Film.
"The water comes at night."
The Aquifer previously owned by Toyota will allow construction of the Douglas Ranch for a while. But doubful for a 100 years.

Jon.The history and accompaning photos are great. But occasionally
"A pen warmed up in hell" is needed.
And the Front pages and Arizona/Phoenix stuff is good.
You still need $50 Grand to do the 800 page History book?

Dont forget to mention,
"Those who are gone."

HoHoKam.

[Ex Phx Planner]

I also cringe at the victim mentality and black/white thinking of many within the woke / CRT ideological circles. However, the counterpoint that we should "ignore race and judge everyone by their character alone" is laughable and brings up memories of Stephen Colbert saying to black guests "oh, you're black? I didn't know, I don't see race."

I do tend to agree with the concept that policies/laws/systems that produce outcomes that disproportionately hurt non-whites are inherently racist (criminal justice, education, healthcare, finance, policing, and so on.) To white men who cringe at using this term, I'd ask - what else would you call it? Let's remember that national polls aren't necessarily the right measure when judging what is and is not right for minorities - the framers understood this.

Douglass Ranch is nothing new. That messaging could be cut/pasted from any sprawl development over the past 30 years in Arizona. It's simply the inevitable outcome of a political body that values commerce over sustainability. There is no political entity in the state where these values are reversed.

[Ex Phx Planner]

Oh, and as for the tragedy in Houston, also not necessarily new. I was at a festival called Roskilde in 2000 where almost the exact same thing happened during a Pearl Jam set. 9 boys died.

I've been to a few shows where someone walks out and stops the music and the lead singer instructs everyone in the crowd to take 3 steps backward. Incredibly, everyone complied. It seems that there needs to be laws requiring a safety manager at these shows to monitor the crowd and have the authority to stop the show and a responsibility on the part of the performer to comply and address the crowd.

[Gary Nelson]

Ironically, the real estate-industrial complex also has ways of chasing people out of Arizona. This past summer I discovered the existence of an Arizona law that allows an investor who acquires 80 percent of a condo complex to force the remaining 20 percent of owners to sell to him, often with a short deadline for vacating.
Rather than wait for that hammer to drop on us, we accepted an offer from the chief investor in our Chandler complex so we could leave on our terms. Unfortunately, the offer, while generous, did not provide the funds needed to buy anything comparable in Arizona's white-hot market. So our 32-year run in Arizona is over, and we're enjoying autumn in Des Moines. I see no realistic way back to Arizona, even if winter here proves difficult. The thought of living in one of those Arizona trailer parks where palm trees provide the only shade is enough to keep me sloshing around in my galoshes until the day I expire.
Thanks, Jon, for all the hard work you do on this blog.

[Cal Lash]

Gary enjoy Iowa. Likely a smart move.
Arizona started downhill around 1400 when European priest/soliders invaded the Americas in the name of "their," god.
God and greed have been on a Manifest Destiny destructive march, since.
The only recent stop to development took place near Benson Arizona and the San Pedro river. Due to herculean efforts by many. I have been giving thought to purchasing my Grandparents farm, South of Des Moines for my great grandson.
However at 82 i plan on dying in whats left of the Great Sonoran Desert.

[Cal Lash]

John Le Carre,
asks what you owe to your country,
when you know longer recognize it.
From a UK edition of Silverview.

[Cal Lash]

For insanity read
"THE MATH IS BAD FOR MAD
in this columns Front Pages

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/11/08/the_math_is_bad_for_mad_802552.html

[Meditor]

Strike "incumbent" replace with "attempted retread" re: McAuliffe.

[hmls]

Attempted retreads usually perform poorly in the race.

[Diane D'Angelo]

"Tearing down the statues did nothing to help black Americans in economic and social opportunity, or historical memory."

I agree, Jon, from a sociological perspective. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs maintains that the first order of business is to attain basic (in this case, economic) security. Without it, violence erupts - regardless of race. This is why the Culture Wars serve as deflections from the NeoLiberal-induced income inequality that elites in both parties are perfectly content to ignore. Add to this the preponderance of social-media-friendly political "actions" that are simply comprised of good optics, and here we are.

Nevertheless, complaints about "wokeism" strike me as more about white anxieties than anything else. "Wokeism" has replaced "political correctness" as the canard of choice. To pretend that white people and, especially, white men would proactively address all the "isms" (race, gender, etc.) if only the approach were "softer" or "less offensive" is absurd. Never happened, never will.

[AzRebel]

Outstanding comment/analysis Diane.

My comment is titled "Writing off the American justice system".

Aaron Rogers was fined the equivalent of a person with a $70,000 salary being fined $40.
Justice?

Paul Gosar, et al should have been hung for treason, preferably during the past Fourth of July celebrations. Justice?

Meek Merrick Garland is guaranteeing that the Jan. 6th insurrection was a practice run and he is giving the green light to those who will show up next time armed to the teeth accompanied by police, national guard and military sympathetic to their cause. Justice?

I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

[Kevin A. Kelly]

Phoenix, the magical name that all at once encompasses the city’s past, hope and promise for its future, and a warning ,all at once. But Buckeye isn’t Phoenix with all of Phoenix’s” homeless and crime”, as I have been told by proud Buckanites. So Buckeye continues to keep its future date with Shelley.
The historical photos are always appreciated, as I arrived way too late to be properly educated. Arizona history at Solano Elementary was Anazasi/Hohokam civilizations, Father Kino, the Gadsden Purchase, and the 5 C’s. Learned about Darrell Duppa and Jack Swilling from a neighbor. I have been in love ever since.

[Mike Doughty]

Yes,yes,and yes .We must be insane, if global warming is insanity. We keep re-electing the same clowns and expect a different outcome. It’s been going on for 50 years and I guess it will go on until it all falls down on our heads( or should I say our grandchildren’s heads) I’m tired of Grant Woods type of conversions

[soleri]

Diane, there are many good reasons to validate the impulse for racial understanding and reconciliation. Unfortunately, the woke movement trades one set of toxins for another. Racism against people of color was and remains a stain on our moral well-being. Rectifying this gross injustice by inverting its targets is a dubious strategy, one that is not only ethically flawed but politically inept to the point of malpractice.

Democrats have traded its white working base for an upper-middle class cohort of professionals and academics. For those blessed with high economic and social status, this is mostly a sweet validation of their noblesse oblige. They won't suffer in any way because they've already arrived. For everyone else, the equation inspires a sense of dread that Democrats are now the party of a privileged elite.

I am a lifelong liberal with a crisis of faith when it comes to my political party. I worked for years in a blue-collar field with people who were already skeptical that their party had their own interests at heart. Yes, some of this was "white anxiety" but just as much was the suspicion that their hard work and economic achievements were now being minimized by a party where racial grievance had supplanted class solidarity. Democrats dithered over this minefield and lost its populist edge to the white nationalists.

Identitarian politics, sometimes call Neo-Marxism, posits a struggle for racial equity in its place. The problem is that its battle cry, "social justice", itself is too nebulous a subject to fit easily into any schema where voters can understand their self-interests. It's why the term "woke" engenders to much head-scratching among those attempting to understand its meaning, one that has less to do with the real world than something arcane and abstract. When Republicans explain it to them in their fashion, this confusion quickly turns to rage.

Rich liberals who tell white workers to suck it up and pay higher taxes in exchange for bad schools and less public safety need to examine their own biases. Johnny Harris explains this quite deftly in yesterday's Times. I suggest reading it to understand better what the rage is really about. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-states-legislation.html?searchResultPosition=1

[iaed]

The video at the link Soleri posted should be required viewing.

[AzRebel]

I was astonished to see the map for the 2020 election. This country isn't divided 50/50. It's divided 85/15.

It's San Fran, LA, Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago, and the northeast seaboard against the other 85% of the country.

What a divide!!

Big city versus rural.

Kind of like the Imperial State of Maricopa against the rest of AZ.

You blues use words like IDENTITARIAN. The reds use words like AR-15.

[B. Franklin]

The salient thing is that majority of the population resides in that 15%.

Just like most of Arizona's population resides in the "Imperial State of Maricopa".

The fact that we are seemingly hogtied by minority rule is the chief failing of the Constitution.

And finally, I'd bet that most of the little men who strut around the food court with their AR-15's would run the first time they faced return fire.

[AzRebel]

B. Franklin, you are 100% correct. That twerp in Kenosha was in the middle of high tailing it away to hide behind the first policeman he could find. In the process he shot and murdered two people and injured another.

[AzRebel]

These two trials are going to set and unbelievable precedent going forward.

Your honor, the other person was unarmed and I only had an AR-15, I felt my life was in danger.

Your honor, the other person was unarmed and I only had a shotgun in my hands, I felt my life was in danger.

I guess the next level of defense will be, your honor, the other person was unarmed, sitting on a bench with his back to me. With only my rifle and scope at two hundred yards, I felt my life was in danger.

[Cal Lash]

At this point it mught be wise for citizens of the US to consider another country.

[AzRebel]

The retirement of Brian Williams on MSNBC and Chris Wallace on FOX means that my sources of TV news just dropped to near zero.

I'm now left with the Friday broadcast of Arizona Horizon with its journalist roundtable.