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Public transport as exemplification of leftist failure
Something crazy happened the other day.
It all began last month, when a serious cold spell hit on the Front Range. The air hurt my face, I was wrapping a scarf below my eyes and wearing sweats underneath my ski pants (not that I ski; I’m simply happy to sit in a chalet consuming large quantities of cheese as other people ski). The dawn was bright and painful after our coldest night of the year so far, like a gash on the horizon.
And then my car died on the side of the highway. It shrieked hysterically about how the engine wasn’t getting enough power, and refused to accelerate. My son and I waited for a couple of hours for a tow truck to show up, running the heater, staring at the snow bristling on the mountains, and muttering how our mechanics must've done us dirty.
After all, our car is incredibly reliable. We’d had it checked out and serviced just the other month! Even the tow truck driver was surprised. “These things don’t just die,” he said as he loaded us up.
The mechanics cleared their good name immediately - I felt bad for doubting them - after they sent us a picture of an honest to God mouse nest on our engine. The enterprising bastards had posted up in the cold, warming themselves against the engine, and chewed through a wire like the ungrateful spawns of hell that they are.
We were incredibly lucky it was just the one wire and not the entire electrical harness. The neighbors drove my son to school for a couple of days. I had to ask a mysterious man I hate asking for favors to take me grocery shopping.
It remains cold at night. The mice are gorging on poison traps in our pristine but sadly still infested garage. Our cat is no use here - our garage is detached and very cold, we can’t lock her in there and have her go to town. And I am maniacally spraying peppermint under the hood and pretty much everywhere, checking for signs that the mice are back, and dreading that telltale engine alarm.
All of this is just to say that I understand people who hate cars. I do.
A good portion of my life was spent in cities with sprawling public transport networks. It’s nice to be able to hop onto a metro train and zone out, and go places. It’s cheaper too. I love my privacy, and I love driving - PTSD from a different chapter of my life notwithstanding - but I GET it.
I get why public transportation is important.
And because I get why it’s important, I CANNOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND the number of “progressive” people in the United States who still insist that public transportation should be a carnival sideshow for criminals and the mentally ill.
Whenever I bring public safety on public transportation, I usually get into useless “debates” like these:
Note that I was accused of “shrieking” about “the concept of cars,” when I actually like public transportation! I just don’t like deranged people infesting it and trying to grab my kid!
And then I regularly see hot takes such as these:
You will note that in the first screenshot above, I was asked what I actually want with regard to making public transport safer. I tried to explain to the best of my ability, but naturally the guy didn’t want to listen.
I will tell you now that more security presence, including good old security theater, can play a good role. I was glad to hear that the DC metro has been ramping it up. Is it a foolproof solution? Obviously not. But it’s a start.
In the case of poor Debrina Kawam, who was burned to death on the NYC subway late last year, the cops initially LET HER MURDERER GO. So when we talk about policing, we must talk about effective policing, and not nonsense. Of course, if you do that, a noodle-armed weirdo with bad piercings will call you a “fascist.”
When I consider the “fascist” label, regularly applied to me because I’m a horrible Gestapo henchwoman who likes safety and cleanliness, I have to wonder if online progressives are invested in public transportation at all.
I mean, the idea is, you WANT people to take public transport, right? Why wouldn’t you want it to be safe?
There has been a lot of capital “D” Discourse about public transportation on social media in the last few years, and it flares up again every time something awful happens. I try to not be a Discourse person, I think it can be exhausting. However, when it comes to Discourse, one can discern patterns.
I keep thinking about the insistence that public transportation should be a piss-covered aggressive nightmare in light of just how badly progressivism lost the elections last year in America.
I assume I don’t need to pull up the stats for you - this country has passionately swung right.
I think there are many reasons why this happened. I do think images of lawlessness and grime in Democratic strongholds played a part. Call it propaganda, or call it common sense, but the left wing of the Democratic Party in particular has been characterized as a bunch of anarchist loons intent on public disorder.
I’m not big on politics, but I am big on finding solutions to help people lead more normal lives, hence my advocacy for a Normie Restoration. Moving to Colorado was a big part of my own normie journey. Again, I made this decision for many reasons - I love DC, and I miss it, but it was time.
When the Great Mouse Debacle occurred earlier this year, I was frustrated, but I also recalled the incident I described in the screenshot above, where a crazy guy tried to grab my son. It happened on the Gallery Place- Chinatown metro stop (last year, another progressive warrior accused me of lying about this incident “for attention”; I even double-checked the details with my son, who obviously remembers it), and it was ungood.
What was even more disturbing to me was that some shrimpy guy watched the whole thing happen from a few feet away. He didn’t intervene, of course, but he did become upset that I screamed “I’ll kill you!” at the crazy guy.
The crazy guy screamed some back, but he did quickly shuffle away. That’s when the shrimpy guy bravely spoke up - how bold and selfless of him! - and told me I had “escalated” the situation.
I’m not proud of what I did next, but I was high on adrenaline, so I ended up screaming at my critic. I may not may not have yelled that I’d kill him too if it came down to it. Honestly, I was little upset.
There is something very visceral about having to protect your child as some weirdo is pawing at his hoodie, and we were close enough to the tracks where a number of scenarios were possible.
I’m not a violent person, I’m not some badass, but I am a mom, and fuck you if you try to grab my kid AND if you watch and let it happen, then decide to run your mouth.
I’m sure the shrimpy guy went home and told all of his friends about the appalling blonde bitch on the metro, and how she made a scene when a member of a marginalized community of the criminally deranged got in her face. He probably left the part about my child out. Or maybe he just hadn’t seen how it played out, and assumed that I was screaming for no reason.
Of course, I hadn’t escalated shit (I’m pretty sure I screamed a variation of this at shrimpy guy, honestly, I was extremely riled up).
It’s very weird to me why so many people who insist on calling themselves “progressive” think that my actions were wrong. Or that it’s wrong of me to insist that such incidents shouldn’t happen (I’ve had a few unpleasant incidents on public transportation, this just happened to be the worst).
Yet progressive judgment is not weird when you consider that these people have built a movement out of Guilt™️. It’s very Dostoyevskian. We are all guilty, there can never be justice, and how dare someone with a relatively functioning brain get mad at a person whose brain is sadly not functioning and protect herself and her family from him. Dostoyevsky, however, doesn’t win elections, nor should he.
The truth is, serious crime is now down on the DC metro, and we no longer have nearly a quarter of respondents complaining about safety, as they did in 2023. This is GOOD NEWS, but it came as the result of action. It didn’t come as the result of people turning up their music in their headphones, trying to not make too much eye contact, and ignoring shit go down.
I think there is a lesson in here for all of us. The backlash against progressivism may be inorganic in part, but a whole lot of it is actually pretty fucking organic. I know a lot of people will get upset and disagree with me here, but at this point, I don’t really care.
Like everyone else, I get to live in a world created by this backlash, and the truth is, the world I want is normie. It’s basic. A world in which I am cool with my neighbors, living in a rich and powerful country I believe in, a country that can still inspire other countries.
In fact, I don’t trust people who try to evoke Guilt™️ from us at every turn precisely because I believe in this country, and I don’t think wailing and handwringing will fix it. But sanity just might.
I see a lot of people at each other’s throats today. I see gleeful revanchism. I see angry justifications and Americans angrily saying that they want to be American no longer. I think all of that is childish. I think positive ideas are the only way forward.
One of my positive ideas is being able to take a nice little tram to a nice little place, to have options in transportation, especially if there are evil mice breeding under the hood of my car. But if I can’t have that, I’ll take the car, and occasionally having to ask mysterious men for rides, over disorder and lunacy, please and thank you. I know I’m in the majority when I say this, which makes me feel weird as a habitual contrarian, but I do think understanding what the majority wants can help stabilize this country in the long run.
As always, thank you for reading.
I'm old enough to remember when people actually took the "no eating or drinking on the Metro" rule seriously - and it was enforced, not only rather often by Metro police officers, but also by ordinary passengers, who weren't afraid to gently inform someone unwrapping their lunch about the law.