Historians generally agree that two factors led to the greatest catastrophe in human history, the Second World War.
Both factors—isolationism and appeasement—grew out of the same phenomenon, the First World War. (Churchill called them collectively “a new Thirty Year War.”)
Isolationism referred to the tendency, especially notable in the U.S., to “let Europe stew in its own juices” following the First World War. America had expended so much of its blood and treasure into a continental conflict that, in the end, had resolved nothing. Why bother to become involved yet again in the never-ending, intractable civil wars that had bedeviled Europe since at least the time of Roman and Saxon invasions? America thus turned its back on the League of Nations and, turning inward, cast its vision upon itself.
Appeasement was that foreign policy, exemplified by Britain’s Chamberlain government in the 1930s, which felt that a newly armed and rising Germany deserved a place among the world’s Great Nations, and that Herr Hitler’s demands were not so outrageous after all. Chamberlain gave the German Chancellor nearly everything he wanted at their conferences in September, 1938, for which he, Chamberlain, was hailed as a Prince of Peace. Only later did historians, and public opinion, swing around to the notion that, by making nice to Hitler, Chamberlain laid the path for the Second World War’s immense carnage.
We can take from this brief history lesson what we will, but we also can apply it to the situation today in Oakland, with regard to the looming shadow of our city’s twin Great Crises, police funding and homelessness. Analogies can be made, particularly in the case of appeasement. The current City Council, and to some extent the Oakland Police Commission which runs the Oakland Police Department, have adopted a policy of appeasing the loudest voices of the “Defund the Police” movement. In politics, loud voices, or “squeaky wheels,” often receive the most attention, even if they do not represent the will of the majority. In the case of the City Council, their method of appeasing the Defunders is to, well, defund the police; the Council will reduce OPD’s budget by some significant amount by the end of this month, even though large majorities of Oaklanders are against that wanton and reckless move. In so doing, the City Council hopes, as Chamberlain did 83 years ago, to make nice to the radicals who threaten to disturb the equilibrium of city government, which is something the City Council cannot countenance. Caught between protecting the public by hiring more cops, and trying to protect themselves from the wrath of an angry mob that can picket their homes and bring to a chaotic end City Council meetings, the City Council will choose the path of cravenness and political expediency. The result unquestionably will be Oakland’s own version of the Second World War: a massive increase in crime, whose epic beginnings we already are sadly witnessing.
The analogy with isolationism is a little more complicated, but it can be illustrated this way. Just as the American isolationists in the 1930s told Europe to stew in its own juices, the isolationist City Council members in Oakland today are telling the people of Oakland to stew in the dangers posed by the criminal element and sprawling homeless encampments. Protecting the public and maintaining clean, safe streets, the City Council is saying in effect, is not their goal. Social justice is their goal, and if public health and safety have to be sacrificed on that altar, then so be it: after all, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. That those “broken eggs” include dead Oaklanders, most of them people of color, and ransacked cars, burgled homes, stolen bikes and assaulted Asians matters little to the nabobs of the City Council. It’s the price we all have to pay for racial justice.
To me, and to my colleagues at the Coalition for a Better Oakland, the grim future caused by these bad choices seems guaranteed. Oakland will become increasingly unlivable. Businesses already here will leave, while those who might have considered coming will change their plans. Residents will leave—tax-paying, honest, law-abiding citizens who might have contributed to the revitalization of Oakland, but who have been driven out of town by Woke politicians who do not have their interests in mind. Meanwhile, those of us who choose to remain will have to decide, with each daily insult to our life quality, how much longer we can take the decline and fall of a once-great city.