US-EYE
SAN FRANCISCO holds a special place in the American imagination.
In the 1960s, the Haight-Ashbury district was the spiritual base of the “Summer of Love”. In the 1970s, the gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk became “mayor of the Castro”, just a few blocks south. In the 1990s and 2000s, the wider Bay Area was flooded with tech money – Apple, Meta, Google and Salesforce are all headquartered there – and it became the home of the $25 poké bowl.
For conservatives, though, the city has a different reputation: San Fransicko. That’s the title of a 2021 book by Michael Shellenberger, with a self-explanatory subtitle: “Why Progressives Ruin Cities”. San Francisco is a rich blue city in a rich blue state, and yet is plagued by petty crime, homelessness and drug abuse. Surely that proves that bleeding heart governance can’t deal with fallible human nature?