Is Denver Circling The Drain?

You Tell Me

Note: I wrote the first draft of this piece on July 17, 2023

Today, a new Denver Mayor was sworn into office. Michael Hancock has been Mayor for the past twelve years, from 2011 to 2023. Starting today, Mike Johnston is the new Mayor.

This transfer of municipal mayoral power, from one Democrat to another, points to an obvious question: Is Denver better or worse than it was twelve years ago?

There’s both good news and bad.

If you’re a sports fan in Denver, there’s plenty of good news (if you ignore the Rockies). Within the past twelve years, the Denver Broncos went to the Superbowl twice and won once. The Avalanche won their third Stanley Cup in 2022. The Nuggets won their first NBA championship, ever, in 2023, and much of the world learned about and fell in love with with a guy named Nikola Jokić.

If you’re a cultural or political progressive, there’s also good news: There are more Black Lives Matter yard signs than there were twelve years ago. There are also more rainbow flags, progressive pride flags, and trans flags, in more neighborhoods, than twelve years ago. United States flags are now rarely seen in the Mile High City.

In terms of visual symbols, it's a good time to be a progressive in Denver.

There are more tax dollar-funded, empty commuter trains now than there were twelve years ago, more gun-free zones where law-abiding citizens are utterly defenseless against armed criminals, more bins full of recycling that don’t actually get recycled but end up being thrown in the dump, and more people donning Kente cloths and clothing with pan-African colors.

Many students in Denver Public Schools cannot read or do math at grade level, but they now know better than to call a man “him” or a woman “her,” and many know what turns on cross-dressing middle-aged men.

Progressive Denverites are more willing to mock Christianity than they used to be, while they’ve become deeply reverent about Islam as well as the religions of socialism, communism, and fascism, even though many of them know little about any of these religions.

Growing numbers of people in Denver think business owners are greedy, bad, and untrustworthy, while assuming (progressive) politicians are charitable, generous, caring, truthful, and smart, and unelected, unionized government bureaucrats are even better.

Compared to twelve years ago, in general, Denver is much more progressive now. Like the old cigarette slogan, we’ve come a long way, baby!

And that points to the bad news.

As Denver has become more progressive, the problems of homelessness, public obscenity, and sheer filth, have become much worse. In those respects, Denver now resembles Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, all of which are failing progressive cities from which people are fleeing.

Many neighborhoods in Denver are simply disgusting. Large numbers of Denver businesses are closing for many reasons, including store fronts that customers don’t dare enter because of the sprawling homeless camps complete with deranged people living in tents and make-shift shacks, human feces, and used drug paraphernalia scattered on the ground.

Progressive regulations, progressive restrictions, progressive subsidies, and progressive taxation have driven housing costs up and up and out of reach of growing numbers of people in Denver.

Property crimes are on the rise. Unlike twelve years ago, Denver now is setting records for the numbers of cars stolen each month. We also have more mob violence downtown, including attacks on government buildings and businesses, as well as random violent assaults on the 16th Street Mall, which is why many Denver residents now refuse to go downtown.

Teenage depression wasn’t a widespread problem twelve years ago. It is now. Many of the same kids in DPS schools who can neither read nor write sit alone in dark depression and worry that every breath they take is killing their planet. They're scared to marry and have children because they don’t want the breaths of their children to kill the Earth.

Teen suicides now are much higher in Denver and across Colorado than they were twelve years ago. That alone is a sign of something terrible happening.

More people in Denver, now, find themselves without any purpose in their lives, without meaning. Some of these people go into public spaces and murder large numbers of strangers. Mass murders of random strangers are much more frequent in Denver and surrounding cities than it was twelve years ago.

There you have it. From some points of view, Denver is better now than when Michael Hancock became Mayor twelve years ago. From other perspectives, Denver has gone down and, in some respects, is circling the drain. For those who are proud to make America more progressive, we ask you: Are you satisfied yet?

—Thomas L. Krannawitter, Ph.D.

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