San Francisco was ready to fix its main problem – not for Americans, but for Xi Jinping — RT World News

Residents of California’s fourth-largest city were surprised this week to find their streets empty of homeless encampments, drug addicts, pimps and dealers. Did a political revolution happen while they were sleeping, or is there something else going on?

Just as San Franciscans finally get used to the smell of human urine in the morning, street cleaners come to turn the status quo upside down. Is this a sign that voters’ hefty tax dollars are finally being put to good use? Well, we can dream. The truth is that this democratic city, which hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit (November 14-16), has made great strides to hide its bad side from the world’s eyes. This old trick has been tried before.

In 1787, when Russia was on the brink of war with the Ottoman Empire, Russian Empress Catherine II and several foreign ambassadors made a long journey to Novorossia. One of the main goals of the trip was to convince Russia’s allies before the start of hostilities. To this end, as the historical tale goes, Russian military leader and statesman Grigory Potemkin built “mobile villages” along the banks of the Dnieper River. As soon as the ship carrying the Empress and her retinue appeared, Potemkin’s men, posing as happy and well-fed peasants, populated the improvised village. After the ship passed, the entire complex was quickly dismantled and rebuilt downstream, hence the term “Potemkin Village.”

It must be said that this story is considered largely fictional nowadays. Potemkin clearly tried to make the devastated countryside look more beautiful, but how far this went remains a matter of dispute. Allegations that he was actually trying to deceive the Empress and the ambassadors, rather than simply making things look prettier or announcing the ongoing post-war reconstruction, have been attributed to many of his critics at court.

The task facing San Francisco is only slightly more difficult than that faced by Imperial Russia. While many of the city’s marginalized residents are sent to remote areas of the empire lest anyone suspect how much of a wreck the Ship of State is, that leaves Uncle Sam with the problem of all of them. Empty storefront properties. Imagine the embarrassment that would occur if Chinese President Xi Jinping, the chief guest at the summit, ordered his motorcade to stop for some American fast food in Union Square, a major mall in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Xi will soon discover, if he has not heard the news already, that several popular retail chains have done so It simply disappeared.

Business prospects in the once legendary “City by the Bay” are not looking rosy, in large part because of rampant crime, an urban phenomenon that the city’s Democratic leaders seem content to live with. In August, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Advise Hundreds of federal employees in San Francisco are working from home “In the foreseeable future” Due to safety concerns.

“Given the conditions at the Federal Building, we recommend that employees maximize the use of telework for the foreseeable future.” The memo stated that.

Doubly embarrassing for the Democratic Party, which largely controls San Francisco, as well as the majority of California’s luxury real estate, is that the office complex in question is officially named “Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Federal Building.”

All this translates into a mass exodus from the legendary city on the bay, which was lost 65000 people, or approximately 7% of its population, from July 2020 to July 2022.

The same can be said about the thousands of homeless people – many of them addicted to a variety of highly addictive drugs, such as methamphetamine, heroin, or other opioids – who have been temporarily banished from the streets of San Fran. God forbid a world leader (Joe Biden?) accidentally stumbles into a zombie apocalypse. Which begs the question: Why do ordinary Americans have to endure such deplorable conditions on a daily basis, when a false façade is created once every few years when an international event comes to town?

Amid the devastation of San Francisco, what will US President Joe Biden and Xi talk about during the bilateral meeting scheduled on the sidelines of the APEC summit? While the US Democratic leader might be expected to want to chat about the usual talking points, like climate change, forever war, and promoting “democracy” half a world away, perhaps Xi will play the rude guest and put Biden in the hot seat through it. He asks what happened to the beautiful city overlooking the bay. Yes, we can dream