The impetus for this indignant and ignorant rant is Walmart’s announcement that it is closing 4 of their 8 stores in Chicago, including the one at issue. In announcing the move, Walmart explained,
The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years. The remaining four Chicago stores continue to face the same business difficulties, but we think this decision gives us the best chance to help keep them open and serving the community.
“Business difficulties” is a dumb cover-term. They include looting and escalating shoplifting. The protest rhetoric in the video is complete nonsense: the corporation obviously invested in the community with a store and jobs. It was paid back by intolerable crime, and the failure of activists and community leaders to place the blame where it belongs is one more justification for Walmart to fold its metaphorical tent and leave.
One of the supporting tweets to this video said, “Walmart makes a lot of money nationwide therefore they shall keep a failing store open. It is their duty as a business.” No, it isn’t, but the popular delusion that it is helps cause the situation. The Chatham community in Chicago overwhelmingly voted for the newly elected Marxist mayor who has championed the “decriminalizing” of non-violent crimes, rationalized shoplifting as a reasonable response to poverty, and called for defunding the police.
A retail company would have to be nuts to invest in Chicago now.
It isn’t only Chicago, though, and it isn’t just WalMart. Whole Foods just announced it will be closing its only store in similarly lawless (but not as many murders!) San Francisco, citing concerns for the safety of employees. Walmart just closed its last remaining store in Portland, and the outdoor clothing and equipment giant REI announced yesterday that it plans to close its store in Portland’s Pearl District because of an increase in crime and theft. In an email to customers yesterday, REI said its store in Portland “had its highest number of break-ins and thefts in two decades, despite actions to provide extra security.” In 2022, REI spent more than $800,000 on additional security, and still experienced 10 burglaries or smash and grab raids, including one where an SUV deliberately crashed through a store window.
How dare these corporations abandon such paradises of anti-law enforcement wokeness? Clearly, this is more systemic racism: the outbreak of sympathy for rioters, attacks on police and police departments, rationalizations for crime, treating criminals as victims and the elections of incompetent Black Lives Matter-supported mayors in the wake of the George Floyd Freakout had nothing to do with it.
I wonder when the attitudes and belief systems of the residents of these communities will align with the reality right before their eyes, or if they ever will. In the end, the ethical diagnosis is life incompetence.
Ethics Alarms 
Astonishing that the same side that pushes anti-law enforcement wokeness pushes for stricter gun control laws.
Re Portland: A recent letter to the editor summed up its current state thusly:
“The price of fentanyl and meth in Portland is a fraction of the price found in other cities. The measure has been effective in making those drugs easily available all over the city. It has been effective in decreasing livability due to crime by drug addicts. Combined with our “compassionate” policies of free tents, free tarps, free sleeping bags, free food, and lack of penalties for shoplifting car break-ins, and bicycle theft, the low drug prices and easy drug availability have been effective in attracting homeless addicts from all over the country. They are overdosing and dying on our streets in record numbers.”
Mrs. OB’s stepsister’s grandson was killed by a quarter pill of bad fentanyl. The cops are pursuing the known dealer who provided the pill and will try to have the DA prosecute the dealer for murder.
Saw a piece last week about a black woman apprehended by Target employees attempting to boost something worth around a thousand dollars and she insisted she was entitled to the item for free as reparations. Progressives and the Democrat party have succeeded in creating a permanent, dependent underclass that will last forever. What was it LBJ said about the Civil Rights Act?
Oops. I guess “permanent” means “lasting forever.” Hah!
That woman sounds exactly like an incel.
A surprising number of people do not understand the idea of profit.
Anti-poverty programs in the 1960s and 1970s quickly recognized the links between crime and poverty in the big cities, and I remember reading some monographs on this topic in the 1970s. Community policing literature from the 1980s also reminded practitioners of this relationship, and criminologist James K. Stewart wrote a famous (in community policing circles) 1986 article for the National Institute of Justice journal Policy Review, entitled “Urban Strangler – How Crime Causes Poverty in the Inner City.” Business has always fled from crime-prone areas as a matter of survival. The first step in rebuilding economic viability (among other quality-of-life aspects) of failed communities is establishing basic law and order. It can’t be done any other way.
It’s astonishing to me how it’s readily accepted in the Social Sciences that poverty causes crime, but they push back with alarming vehemence against the idea that crime causes poverty. It’s a strange reluctance, given that the causal line from poverty to crime is rather unclear and often contradicted, while anybody can see how wealth is destroyed when an arsonist torches a business, or a family’s breadwinner is murdered.
More from the political scientists in politics in Chicago (including the mayor elect!: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/illinois-state-senator-defends-chicago-teens-rioting-looting-mass-protest
I meant to say the Social Scientists in politics. Or as N.P. says below, the psychopaths. I’d say sociopaths, but’s that just me.
https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/sociopath-vs-psychopath/
“Sociopaths tend to act more impulsively and erratically compared to psychopaths.
Sociopaths generally struggle to maintain a job or a family life, whereas psychopaths may be able to do so.
While psychopaths generally struggle to form attachments, sociopaths may be able to do so with a like-minded individual.
Psychopaths may be better able to disassociate from their actions and experience less guilt than sociopaths.”
I think psychopath fits better. Either way, bad people.
Thanks for the elucidation on the topic. I’ve been too lazy to book it down myself. Here I thought psychopaths were the more dangerous ones. You know, Psychos. But the sociopaths are the loose cannons. But the psychopaths are more dangerous because they appear to be normal. Great! You’re right, the grievance industry guys are psychopaths. They look normal from the outside. Hah.
“I wonder when the attitudes and belief systems of the residents of these communities will align with the reality right before their eyes, or if they ever will.”
There is a concept in psychology called locus of control, which is the degree to which people believe they have control over the events that impact their lives. Individuals with internal locus of control believe that they can control their own lives, while individuals with external locus of control believe that their lives are controlled by outside factors which they cannot influence.
I think if you were to analyze this characteristic in communities such as the one above, you would find a high percentage of people with external locus of control. I also believe that locus of control is a learned thought pattern that is heavily influenced by culture. Some cultures emphasize personal responsibility and others do not.
It seems to me that the constant reinforcement of external locus of control thought patterns by politicians, journalists, activists and race baiters has left certain communities most likely incapable of recognizing the impact their own actions on their circumstances. I doubt these communities will ever align with reality because they are the prey of psychopaths who find their learned helplessness useful and profitable.
Glenn Loury is good on this problem.
I wonder if those “local leaders” saw this (I bet they did, but as will other Dem operatives, just ignore what’s inconvenient):
Wow.
Here was what my longtime Usenet ally, Christopher Charles Morton, wrote about Chicago.
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/chicago-three-big-reasons-why-murder-city-usa-is-so-unsafe/#comment-2836333