Seattle: it’s a beautiful liberal city that many call home. Too bad it’s a crime-riddled, drug-infested hellscape straight out of Beau is Afraid—at least, that’s what Fox News would have us believe in a recent segment.
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Referring to “dem cities” as places where crime and drug abuse run rampant, Judge Jeanine Piro of Fox New’s “The Five” segment opened a briefing about Seattle’s nonexistent crime wave by calling the city a “progressive hellscape.” But when the time came to interview actual Seattle residents, things started unraveling quite quickly.
Along with responders who stated that the report didn’t match their lived experience of the vibrant city, one interviewee wisely took the time to state that “crime is a social issue that could be solved by giving people their basic needs.” Truer words have perhaps never been spoken. Another respondent openly mocked the Fox News reporter who claimed that he’d seen a lot of people “shooting up” during his drive through the city.
Seattle was not having this nonsense, and rightly so: according to Seattle.gov’s reports for 2022, only 42 homicides were reported for the total year. Violent crime incidents on the whole came in at under 4,000. Compared to Dallas, Texas, which is now the largest American city with a Republican mayor, that’s less than half the total amount of violent incidents for the year. What a shock that Fox New’s data doesn’t check out!
But what do I know, I live in a decaying liberal hellscape myself. As hellscapes go, they’re a lot less hellish than most.