No, they don’t have peg legs and eye patches or often exclaim “Arrrgh, Matey!” and you won’t taste a cutlass’ cold steel if interrupting their nefarious activities. But the fact remains that crime has become so pervasive in California that pirates — yes, pirates — are now a problem in the San Francisco Bay area.
Well, it is said that the Golden State is a trendsetter. And as one commentator puts it, “Why stop at Detroit when you can become the next Somalia?”
As trade journal BoatBlurb reports:
It’s a headline you don’t expect to see in North America, but pirates are now operating in San Francisco Bay.
Major news outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle, CBS News, and ABC have all reported the sudden appearance of thieves and marauders targeting marinas and boaters under the cover of darkness.
According to ABC, thieves are arriving at night aboard small watercraft and using bolt cutters and other break-in tools to gain access to unoccupied boats. Several sailboats have been stolen, as well as small watercraft, dinghies, tools, and outboard motors.
Boat owners are blaming nearby homeless encampments, while police have so far declined to issue a public statement. Boaters are also pointing the finger at ‘anchor outs’ — people who keep boats, which are often stolen, and live rent-free by continually moving their anchor location to avoid police.
According to both boaters and coastal residents, crime has skyrocketed over the last six months.
Regarding this, an incredulous Monica Showalter remarks, “So in addition to having to watch the house, the car and the shop for break-ins by armed robbers, some of whom have been found to be connected to Mexico’s notorious cartels, heaven help them if they’ve got a boat.” Showalter then quotes the Daily Mail.
“Boat and yacht owners who spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle regarding the shocking rise in water theft incidents described it as ‘the Wild West,’” the paper relates.
“’It’s almost as if you were on a ship and there are pirates out there, and there’s no government, no one to protect you,’ said Steve Meckfessel, from a local harbor.”
“’We’ve all gotten to the point where we know there is going to be no response’ from police, said boat owner Jonathan DeLong,” the Mail continues.
This reflects a strikingly sad regression. Not only were there pirates in early America, but a district in San Francisco became so crime ridden in the mid-19th century that it became known as “The Barbary Coast Trail.” The area was, of course, “named for an expanse of North African coastline, from Morocco to modern-day Libya, that was home to dreaded pirates and slave traders who terrorized the coastal villages of Europe,” explained website Culture Trip in 2016. “Similar to its namesake, the Barbary Coast of San Francisco was defined by the lawlessness and danger always present within its boundaries.”
The problem started because the 1849 gold rush attracted vast numbers of new residents, including many miscreants, and authorities were overwhelmed. As Culture Trip further informed, “Without the presence of a strong government, various criminals thrived and transformed the Barbary Coast area into the epicenter of their illicit activities.”
Where the 19th-century San Francisco government couldn’t quell crime, however, today’s situation is different: It’s “Can’t lives on Won’t Street.”
California’s government certainly is powerful enough to try to force everyone into electric cars, prohibit parents from exempting their children from school lessons referencing topics such as “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” impose widespread Covid lockdowns (including arresting people swimming in the ocean), enforce mandates regulating everything from soup to nuts to nuttiness, and generally become the “omnipotent moral busybodies” C.S. Lewis warned could deliver the “the most oppressive” of tyrannies — only, Golden State statists are worse: They’re immoral busybodies. Yet they won’t use 1/100th of their massive Big Brother resources, and that’s all it would take if they were employed effectively, to perform a most basic government role: ensuring domestic tranquility and protecting the innocent.
Of course, there’s always the remedy effected by the 19th-century San Franciscans. That is, they created Vigilance Committees to combat the thugs. And, eventually, “the size and organizational prowess of the vigilante groups allowed them to drive the criminals from the city,” Culture Trip also tells us.
Only, there’s a problem: The same left-wing state that enables criminals via acts of omission also isn’t keen on citizen self-defense — and is powerful enough to punish you for practicing it.
In other words, government today is increasingly like both a cancer and an autoimmune disease, being like a group of very abnormal cells that attack healthy ones in the body. And the irony, Showalter states, is that while we’re becoming more like Somalia, well known for modern day piracy, Somalia is becoming more like what we used to be: It has cracked down on its pirates.
So America is cracking up, in both senses of the word. While crime runs rampant (and drives up those prices everyone complains about, as theft costs are handed down to consumers), our pseudo-elites concern themselves with all-important causes such as how to facilitate kids’ “gender transitions.”
It won’t change, either — until prejudiced voters, who are getting the government they deserve, change. As columnist Larry Elder put it in 2021, “As long as California Democrats hate Republicans more than they hate” bad policy, the state “will continue having these problems.”
