One of the most frightening episodes of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” was the tale of Anthony, a 6-year-old boy with mental powers that allowed him to read other people’s minds and act on them with his thoughts.
Anthony could turn a cat into a rug. He could make a rat devour itself until it died of pain. He could turn a man who was singing into a jack-in-the-box, the man reduced to a bouncing head. (Anthony hated singing). Then he flung what was left of the man into a cornfield that had become a graveyard for anyone who displeased him or had negative thoughts about him.
Consequently, everyone in Anthony’s life tried to maintain good thoughts. Whatever Anthony did was good. Even if he committed an especially cruel act, somebody would intervene and say how it was actually “a very good thing.”
This episode of “The Twilight Zone” was based on Jerome Bixby’s short story, “It’s a Good Life.” It was regarded as one of the most disturbing in the show because of its hopelessnes. The adults around Anthony didn’t fight back.
Serling gave Bixby’s story a slight twist at the end. While Anthony is preoccupied using his mind to destroy someone, the adults appear to have thoughts of stopping Anthony. His aunt contemplates a fireplace poker. You want her to pick up the poker and beat the boy in the head before he can read her mind. She doesn’t. Nobody does anything.
When I first saw this “Twilight Zone” years ago, I thought it was about tyranny and how decent people allow themselves to be controlled – even though they outnumber the tyrants (Bixby wrote the story in 1953).
Now I look at it and think about the ways people cave in to the point of helplessness.
Here in Portland, Ore., if you utter thoughts that are not progressive enough, there are true believers who will pounce. (If Jordan Peele remade this episode of “The Twilight Zone,” he would likely portray Anthony as a young Donald Trump.)
Nowhere is the paralysis of decent people in Portland more obvious than with the so-called “homeless crisis.” Drug-addled burglars, thieves, thugs, vandals do what they want to do, while our elected leaders and organizations ranging from the League of Women Voters to the ACLU urge us to keep good thoughts and sympathy for the homeless. Practice empathy. There but for the grace of God go you. Open your hearts. Maybe even your home or at least your garage. How about your car? Do you really need a car? Somebody could live in that car, you know.
However, there may be a sign of hope for Portland.
A couple of weeks ago, the Goose Hollow Neighborhood Association met to hear from neighbors who are tired of being robbed and accosted, of being made to feel as if something is wrong with them because they want laws respected.
People like Tiffany Hammer, a young mother and business owner, who has had to deal with “campers” breaking into her home in the Gander Ridge area.
On one occasion, she called 9-1-1, and the dispatcher asked her, “Has he assaulted you?”
“Not yet,” she said.
The dispatcher transferred her to the non-emergency line.
Another time, a camper and his lady friend both made it into her home. Hammer later saw a picture of this man, cleaned up in The Oregonian, to illustrate a sympathetic story about how the homeless account for a majority of arrests in 2017.
“Today he is out there menacing other homeowners,” she said.
Other residents had stories about calling the police to report someone on their porch or in their yard – only to have officers do nothing. One resident said an officer moved a man from his porch to his neighbor’s porch.
What made this neighborhood association meeting different from others in Portland is that it was held at the exclusive Multnomah Athletic Club (monthly dues run about $300). The MAC is located in the Goose Hollow neighborhood, a quirky slice of Portland and home to former Mayor Bud Clark.
Clark owned a pub, The Goose Hollow Inn, and had himself photographed standing in front of a sculpture with his trench coat wide open and the caption: “Expose yourself to art.”
Quite a guy. As mayor back in 1992, he had a 12-point plan to deal with the homeless. So what happened?
He left office, and succeeding mayors all had plans to end homelessness. The drugs kept coming, homelessness and crime increased, and Portlanders kept electing progressive politicians who insisted that with more funding, life could be good.
In fact, there is an apartment building for the formerly homeless called Bud Clark Commons named for the ex-mayor. Based on Google reviews, it’s a great place to buy drugs and trade food stamps. No eviction worries. The area around the Bud Clark Commons has the look and feel of a service-dependent ghetto.
But now even Goose Hollow, Bud Clark’s neighborhood, is fed up with the scummy people. Why is this a sign of hope?
Because the homeless – and their criminal activities – are moving into nicer neighborhoods. Portland residents might finally realize: Progressive isn’t working.
Last year I went to a community forum in the working-class Foster-Powell neighborhood where the City of Portland and Multnomah County are building a 120-bed shelter. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Commission Chair Deborah Kafoury were invited. Neither attended.
Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association, did attend. He listened to the residents and gave them straight – not political – answers. He told them most shelters house a certain number of people, but they also attract hangers-on. These are people who don’t want to abide by the rules of a shelter but would like access to any free services they can get. They drift out into the neighborhood and cause trouble.
“You don’t build a two-lane street for semis,” Turner said.
Many of the people at this meeting seemed almost apologetic for complaining and kept saying “We’re not anti-shelter.” Decades of Portland’s progressive politics had left them feeling guilty for wanting to protect what little they have in their humble neighborhood.
Back at the exclusive Multnomah Athletic Club and the meeting of the Goose Hollow Neighborhood Association, a deputy district attorney who doesn’t work in Portland but lives here, explained problems in the criminal justice system. She began with a cliche that Oregon politicians demand from their prosecutors: “We are not going to arrest our way out of this problem.”
State legislators are focused on treatment programs saving the world, the prosecutor said. These legislators have changed sentencing laws in an effort to reduce the state prison population.
In Portland, Multnomah County commissioners have refused to fund empty jail beds.
“They have dorms that are closed,” the prosecutor said.
Consequently, all the “homeless” burglars, thieves, vandals, thugs who are arrested don’t actually spend much time in jail – if at all. It isn’t the fault of police.
The state’s sentencing guidelines are aimed at repeat offenders, so unless a burglar or ID thief is caught several times not much is likely to happen. Criminals know this.
While the prosecutor urged residents to speak up for more jail funding, she seemed more resigned to people doing what they can on their own – things like Neighborhood Watch.
“It doesn’t get rid of crime in your neighborhood, but it helps a lot,” she said.
It wasn’t that long ago that Neighborhood Watch was immediately associated with George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter, but the media branded him a racist.
In his famous 9-1-1 call, Zimmerman summed up how a lot of crime victims feel and what compelled him to pull a gun: “These assholes always get away.”
Why are they getting away in Portland? It’s the progressive answer. Pay your taxes, and don’t be judgmental. Pretend it’s all good.
We end up with a deputy District Attorney urging Portlanders to join Neighborhood Watch, while at the same time the Oregon state legislature is considering a bill (HB 3216) that could have a chilling effect on neighborhood watchdogs: If someone calls 9-1-1, and it turns out that a suspicious circumstance was not actually a crime, the call could be deemed “malicious summoning” of police – especially if the person arousing suspicion is black. The caller could face a $250 fine. If you like to case neighborhoods and break into people’s homes, this bill could help.
Better to silence potential crime victims than acknowledge that decades of bad political decisions have led to bad results. It is a rare politician who can admit his or her politics have been wrong.
Look at the reaction to “Seattle is Dying,” an hour-long documentary by KOMO, the ABC affiliate in that city. More than a million viewers have watched it. The general public’s reaction seems to be overwhelmingly “Finally! Somebody’s telling the truth about the ‘homeless’ crisis.”
But as Christopher F. Rufo points out in City Journal, Seattle’s “political, cultural and academic elites are conducting their own revolt – against the people.”
Notably, Bill Gates was among those who contributed money and hired a PR firm to produce their own campaign, #SeattleForAll to reassure citizens who must live with the results of failed progressive policies that the city is making progress to end “homelessness.” The city just needs to spend more.
In other words, it’s almost all good.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
After reading this I wondered what happened to old Bud Clark and then I saw the news about Frank Ivancie dying. There was a quote from old Bud, very much alive.
I met Bud when I was a college student and liked him. I think Portland’s decline began with him. Not his fault so much as the times changing. I enjoyed his 12 point plan you linked to about the homeless, particularly the “person down” and “street sanitation”ideas. They did ‘t work then, won’t work now.
Bud was the first mayor I ever voted. Spent some of my college days at his pub. I think you’re right that things started changing about then. Right off the bat he fired the police chief and then, I think, he fired a second police chief. The city’s had a long running feud with its cops ever since. I don’t really know why. I’ve held a business and family together. It’s not getting any easier for us who have homes.
Yes, Clark did fire two of his police chiefs within his first 16 months in office. He fired Penny Harrington (first woman police chief of a large American city) and then, later, he fired Jim Davis.
A couple of months ago, one of the Pamplin newspapers had a peculiar story with Clark reminiscing about how he fired Davis while they were having breakfast at Fat City Cafe. The story has a lighthearted touch that seems out of place. What’s so amusing about firing two police chiefs?
According to the story, Mayor Clark and Chief Davis were arguing about the budget. The mayor wanted “to switch more patrol to community policing duties and hold the line on new hires.”
https://pamplinmedia.com/scc/103-news/424126-326982-the-day-mayor-bud-clark-fired-the-chief-of-police-over-breakfast-in-multnomah-village
Today, some members of the City Council are still pushing for more community policing, but the city is having trouble filling vacancies in the police bureau.
Very good analogy, that television episode (little smug that I recalled the male lead as Billy Mumy).
I’m also old enough to recall when I automatically deferred to the League of Women Voters: good citizens whose judgment could be trusted or at least a group whose efforts required reason to refute. Don’t get me started on the American Association of University Women. Is there any institution that cannot be delegitimatized by leftist ideologues?
Frankly, what’s to choose? The adult depredations of Neil Goldshmidt or the juvenile antics of Bud Clark.
“Decades of Portland’s progressive politics had left them feeling guilty for wanting to protect what little [F-P folks] have in their humble neighborhood.”
The above para catches one of the most bizarre truths of our time: adults apologize for lives of responsibility.
Zimmerman was driven to madness and self-destruction because his society nurtured irresponsibility and called it tolerance.
A couple of weeks ago in N Portland a black man and white woman cooked to death in a Ford Econoline. I may have been one of the last to speak to him. I was not kind. I acted and spoke in the way that I did so that those who endure the hardship, dullness, sacrifice, and etc. of working and supporting themselves might do it without fearing the night prowler who came among them as they slept.
I spoke with the van owner and he claimed to have given the perished couple the rig so that they might have shelter against life’s inclemency.
Long ago I gave a heroin addict a lift “home” from a recovery meeting. It was November and cold and raining.
I chose not to let him sleep on my couch and dropped him off at a brick power station outside of which he’d been nesting. That night he slept out wet and cold. Something similar had happened to me many years before.
Both he and I decided that we didn’t want to live like that anymore and made changes.
Not a sovereign remedy but I’d bet at least as effective as most recovery programs. Imprisonment is often a helpful part of the mix, too.
I’ve been thinking about your observations. In light of the current legislative session in Oregon, what you have pointed out — adults apologizing for lives of responsibility — will get worse.
The state legislature wants to postpone adulthood for as long as possible. Legislators passed SB 1008, which means that teenagers who commit violent crimes will no longer have their cases automatically moved to adult court. They will remain in juvenile court. Among the excuses offered for the change was that “Kids make mistakes.”
Aggravated assault, rape, armed robbery, homicide — these now are regarded as mistakes.
Meanwhile, another bill proposed by Rep. Janelle Bynum that should be of concern to people in your line of work, Larry, would make it a civil offense to “maliciously summon” police. In other words, if you see a black person who might be doing something suspicious, keep it to yourself. See nothing, hear nothing — and you won’t get sued. This bill hasn’t passed yet. The fact that it was ever proposed is disturbing enough.
I read about the man and woman in the Ford Econoline. You may have been kinder to that man than most of us would have been. You had to deal with him. The rest of us didn’t, so thanks for your service.
As you note, imprisonment can be helpful. The never-used Wapato Jail sits empty. Instead of sleeping in a Ford Econoline parked on the street, that man and woman could have been housed at Wapato.
I wonder if Multnomah County Commission Chair Deborah Kafoury ever feels a shred of guilt about selling Wapato at a loss.
It is always difficult to provide constructive comment as societal nonsense is pervasive but treated like wisdom.
So, I offer up an anecdote that may lend a little heart to those still occupied with this world.
The blod Legal Insurrection has been following a lawsuit against Oberlin college. This week saw the jury decide against Oberlin to the tune of 11+ million dollars.
A small bakery that had been in the town since 1885 provided baked goods to the school and community. It also sold grocery items.
The store owner’s son caught a black Oberlin student caught stealing wine. They ended up wrestling on the ground. Two black girls who were Oberlin students kicked and stomped a bit on the fellow holding back the thief.
The school overtly and covertly supported the resultant black Lives matter protest that damaged to destroyed Gibson’s Bakery.
You might drill down in the story until you get to the footage of the theft, its prevention, and the arrests. And, the student body machinations.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/06/oberlin-college-mass-email-criticizing-jurors-could-influence-punitive-damages-hearing-in-gibsons-bakery-case/#more-285770
Thanks, Larry. You’re only the second person I’ve seen comment on this. Andy Ngo was the first person I read online who pointed out this verdict. It hasn’t received much attention by the media, certainly nothing to match the coverage of the protests against the bakery.
By the way, if you follow Ngo on Twitter, a few days ago he posted a long series of hate hoaxes. I had no idea there had been so many. Most of them have received little coverage by the mainstream media. When I worked on the rewrite desk at USA Today, the joke was that anything more than two is a trend. (The news media love trend stories.) For some reason, this trend in hate hoaxes has been ignored by the media.
Thank you for pointing me to Andy Ngo. And, the droll trends anecdote.
Hopefully, this Oberlin verdict is the beginning of a trend. Or perhaps the end of the beginning (however the Churchillian line goes).
Young men ruined without due process in school and universities; free speech is hate speech; stating that there are two genders ruins lives and careers – an ever lengthening list of . . . absurdities?
Coming to a state near you:
https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/01/canadian-court-rules-parents-cant-stop-14-year-old-taking-trans-hormones/
We’ve such a long way to go to where we were much less to go to where we should be.
I’m filling in for a friend and co-worker who was in a lather to get to the gay pride day festivities. While I hope that he enjoys himself it is in my view a second-rate celebration of second rate societal progress.
Families and motherhood very nearly demonized.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/01/canadian-court-rules-parents-cant-stop-14-year-old-taking-trans-hormones/
Unfortunately the NEW Twilight Zone, produced by Jordan Peele, is execrable. One “woke” political lecture after another, what was once (half a century ago) a great show is now a showcase for the worst kind of politically correct lecturing; evil cops, violent piggish white males, unrelentingly PC.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/30/reboot-culture-transformed-new-twilight-zone-hyper-woke-bummer/
I’m watching the old film of an HG Wells book: The Shape of Things to Come. Not so much a movie as a series of socialist lectures on how to overcome Western Civ. ‘Course, it has Raymond Massey who can very nearly make that preachy, didactic dialogue work.
I wish I could resist popping in my two-bits on films and television.
The lawless idealism of Open Borders is an Anthony-like whim.
Progressive people do not wish to recall the complexities nor the individuals involved in the Civil War.
This determined ignorance is in line with the open borders/sanctuary city mentality. However, it is a stupid hypocrisy that these sanctuary communities demand that their boundaries be respected.
They feel free to operate under local governance and to bid defiance to the central government with regard to national boundaries; except, of course, when some hater who will bake you a cake every day of the year save for that of your same sex nuptial comes under scrutiny: then Federal mandates will prevail.
I would much rather it were the reverse as that would align with the founder’s design and an adult sensibility and needs.
Some, perhaps a significant number of adults will decide that they cannot survive with Anthony’s dictates and whims. Then, we will revisit the Civil War with a thoroughness beyond most imaginations.
I’ve been thinking a lot about open borders myself, primarily because it’s the season of blooms. In my neighborhood, the summer greenery is fighting with horsetail — an invasive species that is the illegal alien of the plant world.
It’s hideous. As near as I can tell, master gardeners have surrendered.
“There’s nothing you can do,” the experts say.
What if it had been dealt with seriously before it became ubiquitous? Would it have been able to take over like it has? The answers are usually along the lines of, “Too late now. It’s here to stay.”
You can imagine the reaction in Portland when you compare horsetail to illegal immigrants.
I said to one of my neighbors, who complained about how the horsetail had overrun a rose garden: “We’ve become a sanctuary city for horsetail.”
He went through the motions of being offended. He’s probably a progressive who doesn’t understand why things have gone to hell in Portland, even though his team keeps winning elections.
I’m surprised he didn’t tell me that he and I, being white, were invasive species to Native Americans. True, but what did the white man find when he landed in America? Indian tribes who spoke different languages, fought with one another and, in some cases, kidnapped and enslaved enemy tribes. They could not unite and successfully fight the white invaders.
Think of all the tribes (and weapons) we now have. The last Civil War might seem like a skirmish compared to the one we could have today.
Today there appeared a much lauded column in the Washington Post. It is penned by the restaurateur who drove Sarah Sanders out of her establishment and henpecked her down the street.
The upshot is she regrets nothing and progressivism’s enemies must expect this from now on. The comments celebrate her hate.
The waitress who spit in Trump Jr’s face was suspended?
Ngo had a rough day with the anti-facists today, too. Police stood down.
No, matters are not headed in a good direction. The Army of Anthony appears to either be in or think it is in the driver’s seat.
Perhaps it will all be solved (or triggered) by a sympathetic algorithm.
I’ve been busy with my regular work and trying to process the recently concluded legislative session. It does appear the Army of Anthony has reason to gloat — for now.
If our governor or state Rep. Jennifer Williamson (a likely candidate for state Attorney General) were still practicing law, either of them would probably be happy to represent Anthony in a court of law. The poor kid’s brain is still developing.
On the upside, the last time I checked, Ngo had raised more than $160,000 on his Gofundme account. That has to annoy the Antifas.
Your incorrect about Horsetail. From the OSU extension site “Horsetail (Equisetum arvense) is a primitive spore-bearing plant in the family Equisetaceae. It is native to the Pacific Northwest, however, it is also one of the most difficult-to-control weeds in nursery crops.
Horsetail spreads by spores or creeping rhizomes and tubers. Rhizomes can grow to a depth of 6 feet, making control difficult even with herbicides. Rhizomes and tubers are spread with cultivating equipment, and through this mechanism they can infest nurseries quickly. I grew up here and have seen it but have never encountered it in the garden but I understand it is difficult to get rid of but it was here before us.
Thanks for the history lesson, Tom. I grew up in Oregon but never saw horsetail until I returned to the Portland area several years ago. When I inquired about what it was and how to get rid of it at one of the local nurseries, an employee told me it was impossible, that it had been introduced “probably through shipping,” and there were no native or natural predators to fight it.
A master gardener compared horsetail to the gray squirrels, which are supposedly not native and apparently have run off the red squirrels. I used to have both kinds of squirrels. It has been a couple of years since I’ve seen a red squirrel. I know someone who despises gray squirrels so much she adds cayenne pepper to her birdseed. The birds don’t mind it, but it burns the squirrels’ mouths.
It turns out that the gray vs. red squirrel issue is more complicated. Not all red squirrels are native. Personally, I don’t care if the squirrels in my neighborhood are documented or not. Some of the two-legged campers I’d like to run off.
I meant ‘You’re’. sorry.
When you read “horsetail” think Himalayan blackberry or nutria. Or millennial Marxists or Antifa fascists.
I like the Antifa comparison.
Oh yeah. Himalayan blackberry. Now I have a dug a lot of that out of gardens though I do like the berries for pies.
I grew up with Himalayan blackberries. My parents were constantly battling them to prevent a takeover. But like you say, there was a trade-off in pies and cobbler.
I am watching the forwarding material to a re-release of the Bertolucci/Moravia project, The Conformist.
It is a study or contemplation of demoniac times and a societal embrace of madness. It is a rich effort, full of insightful reflection of cultural failure on an individual level.
I have always felt that the artistic and intellectual handling of the HUAC/MaCarthyist period in American history has been superficial and full of unearned piety. Our best minds have fallen short in the examination of the period. I laugh thinking of a university lecture I once listened to during which the Stalinist agents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were referred to as American dissidents.
Both the Italian fascist and the American anti-communist eras where populated by trained and learned people who brought erudition, lived experience, and a learned cultural aesthetic to their efforts.
So, when the artistic and critical analysis of the two eras came to be presented in drama and texts those same people and their inheritors were well able to create complex (the Americans, not so much) representations of a shameful time. The Italians seemingly able to grapple with national cowardice so much better than we do.
Point is that with the extermination of tradition and the vilification of truth how will we ever be able to reflect and correct the excesses and aberrations of our own time, or even to clearly see them.
Maybe it doesn’t require much: recall Cultural Revolution black and white photographs of a “reactionary” in a long dunce cap with a girl standing beside him, clenched fist punching the air.
Those of the last two generations have rejected with exceeding haste all that has come before. I doubt that when sanity returns and adulthood prevails our current degeneracy will be examined with much clarity. Cowardice is an easy vogue to prolong and learning so difficult to acquire.
I was never a fan of that show. My mom liked to joke about being in the Twilight Zone. I found the one you’re talking about and watched it. It was absurd, the way the kid controlled everyone. I hate to say so but people Portland in Portland aren’t much better. They’re afraid to let the cops arrest protesters. They don’t want anybody to fight back. The other guy’s comment is right. It’s like an army of brats allowed to get their way.
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