While America under Donald Trump is inarguably doing better in many ways than it has in many years, we still have problems the smart set insists are insoluble. They are not insoluble. They are easy. That is why you are not allowed to talk about them honestly. Say the quiet part out loud, and you are racist, sexist, transphobic, xenophobic, and every other -ist and -phobe that turns you into an officially bad person. You are supposed to shut up and bear the burden of other people’s deviance.
Fortunately, we have a guy in the White House who does not care what they say. Donald Trump is already doing something about some of this. Other problems endure. And here is the part the elite especially do not want discussed: The solutions are easy.
Some problems are complex. These are not. The answers are clear. The consequences can be expensive. They will make leftists scream. They require us to stop being nice and start being real. But the answers themselves are easy. These problems persist not because there is no solution. They persist because we have chosen, as a society, to let them persist.
It is on us. We will not push the easy button.
Take three of the supposedly intractable ones, starting with crime.
Crime wrecks quality of life. A civilized country is supposed to be secure. While crime has come down some — if you believe the crime stats coming out of big blue city police departments, which I don’t — we still have predators on the street and judges who let them walk. Down in Florida, a punk doing 90 in a 45 slammed into a van and killed an elderly couple who spent their lives working, obeying the law, and generally being the kind of Americans we used to assume were the point of the country. Then he walked. Then he got popped again, on a suspended license, doing 130 mph and running from the cops. And he is still walking around. With a green card, no less.
There is an easy solution. You put him in a cell. Failing that, if he is not a citizen, you put him on the next plane to Nigeria or wherever else that isn’t here. You do not let him stroll around free to kill Americans.
The Third World is not usually where we go for instruction, but look at El Salvador. Those people put us to shame. They had a gang slaughter so bad that Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago looked like Provo on a Sunday night. Then they elected a president who solved it. How? He rounded up the gangbangers, stuffed them in a giant prison, and left them there. The murder rate collapsed. Normal people got their lives back.
We could do that. We could take the one percent of criminals who commit the bulk of the serious crime and lock them up. That is how we broke the crime wave of the ’70s through the ’90s. Remember three strikes? Remember mandatory sentences? Remember being able to walk around New York without getting mugged? Then things got so good the left showed up to explain that we were being mean to misunderstood youths, that the real cause of crime was successful, happy people, and that decent citizens should carry the cost of the scumbags, degenerates, losers, junkies, hobos, freaks, and mutants rather than make those people face the reasonable consequences of their own conduct. Now, just like when a lot of us Gen X and older folks were growing up, we once again have liberal judges turning little creeps loose. And we are supposed to take it.
We are also supposed to take the bums. There is an easy solution to street disorder. It is not letting derelicts occupy public space to do drugs, commit crimes, and drop their s**t. For most of this country’s history, we did not let people live like animals in the street. There were always people inclined that way. We just did not let them turn the sidewalk into a Petri dish of social pathologies. Today, we are told we have a moral duty not to take the reasonable steps that let normal people live normal lives. And, of course, there’s the problem of illegal aliens. They chose to break the law. They chose to keep breaking it. Yeah, we’re supposed to just put up with it because… no one’s ever really explained that. Somehow we have an obligation to people who aren’t even supposed to be here at all?
Hard pass. Put the burden on the bad guy. It’s easy.
The solution to crime is easy. Mass shoplifting and mass rioting get you a long stretch. No cashless bail. No soft-touch judges. Mandatory sentences. Commit a crime, and it is going to suck for you. That presents a simple dilemma: risk a long time in a cage, or don’t commit the crime. Citizens should not have to choose between going outside afraid and staying home afraid. Criminals should be afraid. And we should make it easier for a normal person carrying a concealed weapon to use deadly force without a leftist DA turning the defender into the defendant. If a citizen shoots a predator, the jury should see the predator’s record.
Ending homelessness is easy too. No, you cannot live on the street. If you are dangerously insane, you go to an institution. If you are a drug addict, you go to rehab; if that fails, you go to jail. If you are a petty criminal or a lazy slob and we catch you camping in and contaminating public spaces, you get free housing in the stony lonesome. We are done pretending homelessness is something inflicted on the bums by Snidely Whiplash the landlord. Most of the visible street population is mental illness, addiction, and criminality, usually mixed together. The rest of us pay for our housing. They can too, if they work and make better choices. The consequences of bad choices belong on the people making them, not on everyone else.
It’s also easy to deal with illegal aliens. Shut the border. If you came here illegally, you leave. No handouts. No welfare. No amenities that make it convenient to stay. Get on the bus to the airport. You are going home.
The answers are easy. The implementation is hard only because we choose to make it hard. This culture became morally inverted. It decided that normal, decent people have no right to demand a normal, decent life. Somewhere along the line, the Chardonnay-swilling swells with the “Hate Has No Home Here” signs in front of their condos decided that we deserve the consequences of other people’s misconduct.
The solution to that premise is easy too. Reject it. You think I’m mean? I don’t care. You think I’m harsh? So what? You think I’m all the -ists and the -phobes? Pucker up while I stand up. I’ve got something you can kiss.
It is not cruel to impose consequences for bad acts. It is not hateful to blame the blameworthy. It is not bigoted to hold everyone to the same standard. The standard is not impossible. Don’t commit crimes. Don’t live like a bum on the public’s sidewalk. Be here legally.
Solving these big problems is easy. We only make it hard by being soft.
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