A man shot two women on Detroit's east side Friday night — killing one and critically wounding the other — before fleeing on foot, and the most remarkable thing about it is how unremarkable Detroit's establishment finds that fact.
Detroit police issued a statement around 6:30 a.m. Saturday seeking the public's help identifying the "armed and dangerous" suspect, according to WDIV. By 9 a.m., the department confirmed the man was in custody. The shooting happened around 11:15 p.m. in the 15500 block of E. Warren Ave. The investigation remains open.
One woman dead, another fighting for her life, and the machinery of the city swings into its familiar rhythm: put out a tip line, issue a press release, move on.
Detroit has been governed exclusively by Democrats since 1962. That is 64 years of uninterrupted one-party rule. In that time, the city filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history, saw its population cut in half, and watched its homicide rate climb to levels that would trigger federal intervention if they occurred overseas. The current mayor's office, like every one before it going back to the Kennedy administration, campaigns on turnaround narratives that never quite turn around.
The pattern repeats wherever single-party progressive governance goes unchallenged. Hartford, Connecticut — another city under continuous Democratic control — saw two police officers shot late Friday after an attempted arrest turned into a car chase and gun battle that left the suspect dead, the New York Post reported. The officers are in stable condition; a firearm was recovered at the scene. Little Rock, Arkansas, saw two houses gutted by fire Friday night on Bender Street — one destroyed, the other damaged — with firefighters spending over an hour mopping up spot fires, according to Arkansas Online. No injuries, but the decay of the housing stock tells its own story.
Even smaller cities aren't immune. In La Crosse, Wisconsin, a road-rage shooting Thursday led to the arrest of 50-year-old Marchun Holeyfield, charged with second-degree recklessly endangering safety, WEAU reported. La Crosse Police Chief Shawn Kudron credited the arrest to a combination of victim reporting, investigative work, and the city's Genetec camera system — noting that "modern technology" plays a "vital role in public safety." He's not wrong about the tools. But cameras after the fact are a bandage, not a cure.
The establishment press covers each of these incidents in isolation — a shooting here, a fire there, an arrest over there. What they refuse to do is name the thread connecting them: one-party progressive governance has failed urban America, and the people paying the price are the working-class residents these politicians claim to serve. Detroit's east side didn't decay overnight. It decayed over 64 years of votes that were taken for granted and leaders who were never held accountable because there was never a real alternative.
The suspect in Detroit is in custody. The woman he killed is still dead. And next election cycle, the same party that has run the city since the Beatles were a new act will ask for another term. The only question is whether anyone will bother to ask what they've done with the last 64.
