The Dream of the '90s Died in Portland

[Brian4Liberty]

The Dream of the '90s Died in Portland
Once an up-and-coming city, Portland was destroyed from within by radical activism and political ineptitude.

NANCY ROMMELMANN | FROM THE MAY 2021 ISSUE

...Around the turn of the century, Portland was the new belle on the block, not despoiled like San Francisco or in bed with high tech like Seattle. Oregon was not known nationally for much more than Nike and pinot noir and former Republican Sen. Bob Packwood, but maybe (with the exception of Packwood) that was OK. Maybe the city could debut as a fresh canvas, eco-friendly and affordable, a place to achieve your achievable dreams.

A lot of people were willing to take the chance, including my family. We moved from Los Angeles to Portland in 2004, and for a while, everything seemed on the up. The city in 2009 was, according to The Wall Street Journal, attracting "college-educated, single people between the ages of 25 and 39 at a higher rate than most other cities in the country." New residents built the city they wanted to live in: farm-to-table restaurants and 40 million brewpubs and too many bike paths and aggressively progressive politics.
...
Soon, some who'd come to Portland expecting the city to deliver their dreams grew restless. They couldn't find their footing, or couldn't settle on who they were supposed to be, or both.

"I sometimes think we're the scatterbrained generation," a 26-year-old barista with a degree in anthropology told me for a 2010 article I wrote called "Is Portland the New Neverland?" "You have so many choices, and you know what you end up doing? Nothing. You become the D.J.-fashion-designing-knitting-coffee-maker."

Portland's leadership seemed likewise unserious. Democratic Mayor Sam Adams had to fly home from Obama's first inauguration to face charges of having had a sexual liaison with an underage legislative intern with the readymade name of Beau Breedlove, and in 2019 he was accused by his former executive assistant of sexual harassment. In 2015, Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber resigned amid allegations of influence peddling by his fiancé.

"It's not a well-governed city. It's not a well-governed state. Portland has basically had three failed mayors in a row," says T.B., who previously held a high-ranking position in state government and who asked not to be identified by name. "Tom Potter was a former police chief who became mayor. He was totally hapless. Sam Adams was hyperkinetic, one thing after another and scandalous and so totally ineffective. And then Charlie Hales—I don't know exactly what happened to him, but he also served one term; they all did. And now you have Ted [Wheeler], who I think has had three police chiefs since taking office. There's certainly political instability at the municipal level, to say the least."

Out of instability, good things nevertheless grew—including Portlandia. The comedy series debuted in 2010 and served up the city at its most parodic, with real-life Mayor Sam Adams playing a bumbling mayoral assistant and restaurant diners demanding the life story of the chicken they were about to eat.

The show riffed on slacktivism and five-hour yoga classes and men whose only "safe space" was Reddit. It was often genuinely funny. Who didn't like to laugh at themselves?

As it turned out, a lot of Portlanders.

"$#@! you, Portlandia!" read an anonymous letter printed in one of Portland's alt-weeklies. "I've been here for 20 years. I have watched it change. Portland is now a soulless amusement park for the entitled and wealthy. I hate what this city is becoming and I blame YOU!"
...
Much more: https://reason.com/2021/03/22/the-dr...d-in-portland/

[Brian4Liberty]

Someone needed to take the blame for stagnant wages, and rising rents, and what some saw as the misallocation of social and emotional resources. And so, in a preview of the protests that would come to roil Portland following the death of George Floyd, those who considered themselves more finely calibrated toward injustice than the rest of us took matters into their own hands.

"You probably remember there was massive rioting in the Pearl District the day after Donald Trump was elected. Millions of dollars of damage were inflicted," says journalist Michael Totten. "How many people in the Pearl District voted for Donald Trump? It's probably not even 1 percent. Who on earth are these people who declare war on a place where nobody voted for Donald Trump? That's not how people in a democratic society are supposed to behave. You don't go trash neighborhoods with the opposing political party in a healthy democracy, but they didn't even do that. They declared war on the city as a whole."

If there was zeal in using one's power thus, crude as it was, there was also a mandate: If good citizens needed to fight racism, why not start at home? The food world, which arguably more than any industry had put Portland on the cultural map, was the first target. Andy Ricker, whose restaurant Pok Pok was the only place the late Pulitzer Prize–winning food writer Jonathan Gold wanted me to take him when he visited Portland in the early 2010s, was called out for making Thai food while not being Thai. Two young women closed their burrito cart within days of opening it after they received multiple death threats for making homemade tortillas despite not being Latinas. The local press, which had once lauded such people and places, now published lists of business owners "wantonly cooking the food of other countries, arguably at the expense of people from those very cultures."

So much for ALL being welcome. People instead seemed to be asking: Are you with us or against us?
...
https://reason.com/2021/03/22/the-dr...d-in-portland/

The people in Portland are clearly insane.

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

"Jessie Burke, an entrepreneur who has built several successful businesses in Portland [said]...I do not believe they [activists] wanted to end up staring into a nihilistic fire,..."

Yes, they do want nihilism. Some people are just losers.

[dannno]

[PAF]

I loves me Portlandia

Carrie also plays a mean axe... guitarist of Sleater-Kinney.

[dannno]

Carrie also plays a mean axe... guitarist of Sleater-Kinney.

Yep, I was listening to them 20 years ago in college.

[Occam's Banana]

Yes, they do want nihilism. Some people are just losers.

To borrow a sentiment from Ayn Rand, at their "psycho-epistemological" roots, they hate existence and everything in it (including themselves).

And to borrow another sentiment (this time from Nietzsche), it can be existentially useful and even healthy to gaze into the abyss (and to let the abyss to gaze into you).

The trick is to avoid staring into it too long ... (or diving into it head-first ...)

[TheTexan]

Destruction is the first step to Creation

[TheTexan]

To borrow a sentiment from Ayn Rand, at their "psycho-epistemological" roots, they hate existence and everything in it (including themselves).

I pretty much hate everything except myself. I am awesome. Everything else just sucks in comparison to how awesome I am.

And to borrow another sentiment (this time from Nietzsche), it can be existentially useful and even healthy to gaze into the abyss (and to let the abyss to gaze into you).

The trick is to avoid staring into it too long ... (or diving into it head-first ...)

In that analogy, the abyss == RPF ??

[Pauls' Revere]

Burn Portland ... burn to the ground.

[Occam's Banana]

In that analogy, the abyss == RPF ??

Oh, absolutely ... (especially when @Anti Federalist goes on one of those "sharting POWM" tears ...)

[Anti Federalist]

Oh, absolutely ... (especially when @Anti Federalist goes on one of those "sharting POW" tears ...)

Sadly, the stupid COVIDIOcy has all but shut POWM down.

[Occam's Banana]

Sadly, the stupid COVIDIOcy has all but shut POWM down.

"Sadly" ...

[insert inigo-montoya-you-keep-using-that-word.gif here]