Seattle Is Waking Up

A reader compares rape in India to Seattle

A shorter version of this essay originally appeared as a post on X.

---

This morning, a user named SoldierBoyTweet saw that my profile on X says I live in Seattle, and underneath one of my recent posts on sexual violence in India, SoldierBoyTweet shared an image of a headline from a 2016 article, “Seattle girls’ rape claims neglected for years,” along with a question, “Mr David, any words?”

SoldierBoyTweet then shared more images of headlines, including an October 2023 report, “Seattle man awaiting sentencing in child rape case arrested for girlfriend’s murder,” and two reports from 2018, “Seattle University’s Systemic Support of Sexual Abuse,” and “In Seattle, A Rapist's Housing Status Overshadows Horrific Crime.”

So to answer the question, yes SoldierBoyTweet, I have words.

If your purpose is to note that rape also exists in Seattle, that isn’t very insightful, SoldierBoyTweet. But the headlines you share also point to a failure of leadership to address the issue. There’s the rape claim that was neglected for years. Or the man who raped a child and then murdered his girlfriend when he should’ve been in jail. There’s the university’s support for sexual abuse. And finally, you have a story about a 24-year-old homeless man who followed a woman into a bathroom at a car dealership, ripped her out of the stall and raped her, and people were apparently more focused on whether it’s okay say he was homeless than the issue of rape in Seattle.

Now that is insightful. Rape in Seattle does not even begin to approach the level of rape in India, nevertheless rape is a problem in Seattle, and for the same reason it is in India. Namely, a depraved leadership that condones rape and sexual abuse as well as a culture, progressivism in this case, that pretends to care about women but does not.

As in India, women in Seattle cannot even go to police at this point. This is because, as Axios reported in 2022, stretched-thin cops are failing to take reports from rape victims. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue is the fourth-wealthiest metropolitan area in the United State by GDP per capita, so how can it possibly be the case that its police departments lack the resources needed to even file a rape report?

Easy, the answer lies with progressive policies and the Black Lives Matter movement’s war on police, which has devastated cities nationwide. I covered this issue when I wrote about Seneca Scott, the black activist trying to save Oakland from “phony” woke progressives. Across America, pro-BLM city council members got elected and police departments were defunded, leaving many police departments without enough officers or resources to respond to crimes such as rape. And who gets hurt the most?

Black and brown people who live in the neighborhoods most affected by crime. As I discussed in my conversation with author Freddie deBoer, black elites destroyed whatever potential BLM had by turning the movement into a cry for police abolitionism, which was never going to happen. They took their unprecedented level of influence and pissed it all away for money and power by asking for something that looked great to ask for but was utterly impractical.

They betrayed the very people they pretended to care about. Never mind BLM’s deceitful lack of transparency, or that it has numerous shady practices such as not documenting board meetings, or the fact that BLM secretly bought a $6 million home with donated funds. Oh, and let’s forget about the fact that BLM Grassroots is led by Melina Abdullah, who also helped set up the first BLM chapter in the United States in Los Angeles, and who is a member of the black supremacist, anti-white, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ Nation of Islam.

BLM is a scam that virtue signals in the name of minorities while leaving them even more vulnerable to crime. The Black Lives don’t Matter movement is a disgrace. But it is also a product of a much larger problem. Now, Seattle is far from being the rape capital of the U.S. That would be Cleveland or Detroit.

But Seattle is one of the most left-leaning cities in the U.S. and its leftist policy experiments have wrought havoc on its people. All categories of crime are now up. It is now the worst city in the entire country for burglary with 1,260 cases per 100,000 residents in 2023. Seattle police lack the resources to handle the crime problem, not to mention the city’s devastating homelessness and drug problems, and yet still you have people who want to defund the police even further. It’s madness.

They will not stop until women in Seattle are as unsafe as women in India. As bad as it is now, there are still “defund the police” campaigns and activists who want to completely abolish the police altogether. For instance, there’s this little idiot,

DivestSPD

, who as the name suggests, wants to divest from the Seattle Police Department. Here has accused me of “trivializing the Holocaust,” which I have never done and would never do.

But because I have observed that Hitler was a delusional sociopath while Lenin was a type I psychopath, this person and all his little friends claim I am “defending” Hitler. You may be wondering, how the hell is that trivializing the Holocaust or defending Hitler? It obviously is not. This person is clearly an idiot. But there are thousands of idiots like this in Seattle.

In fact, as you no doubt know by now, I was fired from the editorial board of The Seattle Times for criticizing Vladimir Lenin, who murdered millions of people, including members of my family. One person in the Seattle Times boardroom, a self-described communist who is a member of the Blethen family that owns the paper and may one day be in charge of it, said to me about my murdered family members, “I think some of that violence was necessary.”

The truth is, my grandfather was put in a concentration camp and I have spent years as a journalist covering genocidal violence, genocidal rape, and exposing neo-Nazis. These people who attacked me are vicious liars who should be ignored. But here’s the problem. They are not being ignored. Though they are few in number, people of influence in Seattle are actually listening to them. Sometimes closely. Because for the same reason that BLM betrayed black people, it looks good to listen to the leftists even if it harms the public.

The Seattle Times did exactly this when they spinelessly fired me. The Seattle city council did so when they defunded the police. Seattle’s University of Washington did so when terrorists sympathizers rallied on campus for Hamas, Jewish students pleaded for their own safety, and university leadership did nothing.

These should be the institutions leading the way and lifting up a light, but instead, as I noted in my recent conversation with journalist Jonathan Choe, they are opening the gates to the barbarians. And again, it is women in Seattle, black and brown people in Seattle, Jews in Seattle, and everyone else in Seattle who is suffering because of a small group of deranged communist radicals who would have no influence at all if it were not that the city’s “leadership” listens to them.

You might be thinking, perhaps The Seattle Times was worried about its readership. Perhaps the city council was worried about elections. But that’s the craziest part. The people who attacked me do not read and will never read the Times. They hate the paper. The public is sick of leftist policies and their city council votes are showing it. For example, socialist city council member Kshama Sawant was very nearly recalled in 2021, did not run in 2023, and her District 3 is now in the hands of Joy Hollingsworth, a reasonable moderate who wants to increase police numbers.

District 3 should be proud to have her.

In progressive San Francsico, people are sick of this nonsense too. I recommend

Public

co-founder Michael Shellenberger’s book San Fransicko: How progressives ruin cities, for more information there. But right now, the good people of the Golden Gate City are voting on police drones and forced drug treatment. In New York, mayor Eric Adams wants to ditch the city’s sanctuary status in order to deport criminal migrants. In Oregon, the state legislature has recriminalized drug possession after its progressive decriminalization efforts led to a spike in drug deaths.

The point is, SoldierBoyTweet, not only are such leaders betraying the people of Seattle, and many other American cities, but they are doing it for virtually no practical gain. Thankfully, what is true of Seattle and other U.S. cities is true of India in another way. The victims involved are rising up and speaking out. Those responsible will lose in the end and it will be sweet to watch.

Woke city council members are being taken out of office. The Seattle Times is struggling to stay afloat. Progressive policies are being repealed. And everyone is growing sick of the lived experience of woke vocabulary. You can only piss on people for so long and tell them it’s raining, and once the smell reaches their faces, they’re going to hate you.