I had my checkup yesterday at the dentist’s, and while I was paying the bill afterwards, my dentist—whom I’ve been with for nearly 30 years—told me he’s seriously contemplating leaving his Oakland premises and moving elsewhere.
He owns a very successful practice in a good neighborhood and could surely remain there for the rest of his career. But, he told me, things are getting so bad in Oakland for him and his staff that he’s been forced to contemplate the once-unthinkable thought: Maybe his day in Oakland is done.
I suspect my dentist is hardly alone. He’s a liberal in all respects (he makes annual volunteer trips to Central America to fix people’s teeth for free), but the current government of Oakland is simply too leftish for him. It’s not only business taxes that are straining him, it’s the crime and fear, and he added that it’s getting harder to obtain good help because so many qualified candidates are leaving the city for safer, more amenable places.
He specifically objected to the radical socialist policies that current leaders are imposing on the population. My dentist is by no means a conservative, but he keeps up with the news and understands that we are currently governed by far-left fanatics whose addiction to social tinkering, in the name of “equity,” allows them to ignore the very real problems that plague Oakland. It is people like my dentist—hard-working, tax-paying citizens any city would be proud to have among its residents—whom the current Mayor and City Council are entirely ignoring. In my dentist’s thoughts about leaving Oakland, I see the entire problem here in a nutshell: we are governed by extremist ideologues who are so obsessive about “racial justice” that they’re happy to see Oakland go to hell, as long as they’re able to put into practice their crazy ideas.
Do our current leaders realize that there are thousands of professionals in Oakland, like my dentist, who feel they’re being driven out of town? I think they do. Of course, people such as Carroll Fife, Nikki Bas and Sheng Thao would never admit it, because they’re fundamentally dishonest, but I believe they want successful, upper-middle class people like my dentist to leave town. Why? To make Oakland poorer, more run-down and destitute. Why would that be their goal? Two reasons: (1) to drive down rents and home prices, so that poor people will be able to live here, and (2) to thereby increase the population of people who will vote for them, thus perpetuating their political lives.
These are horrible goals. I don’t demean the desire of politicians to be re-elected, but the question always is, How low are you willing to sink in order to do it? I look at the current City Council and Mayor and see people whose lack of skills makes them unable to get decent jobs anywhere but in politics. Where else could someone like Carroll Fife possibly find gainful employment? Nowhere. She’s got the job of a lifetime, with all its perks and power, and she’s not about to give any of it up without a fight. Ditto for her BFF, Nikki Bas. I wish I could introduce them to my dentist, a person who has accomplished far more in his lifetime than anyone on the City Council; but even if I could bring them together, it wouldn’t do any good. My dentist would express his unhappiness, while Ms. Fife and Ms. Bas simply closed their minds to his entreaties.
I saw this the one time I had a sitdown with Bas. As I expressed my support of the police, I saw in her eyes a loathing for me that was frightening; at one point I thought she might hit me. This is not a person who’s interested in hearing from thoughtful constituents. This is a fanatic who wants only to impose her ideology on the rest of us, and has no patience whatsoever for opposing views. She doesn’t care how much she and Fife and the others tear Oakland apart. She doesn’t mind if successful taxpayers and employers like my dentist leave town. “Good riddance to them” is her attitude; unless they bow down to her woke ideology, she has no interest in them remaining in Oakland.
I’ll feel bad if my dentist moves, not just because I’ll be losing a good dentist but because there are thousands of other successful professionals who are moving away and taking jobs and tax dollars with them. Sometimes I can’t stand seeing Oakland being driven into the gutter by the likes of these people who are our electeds. But I have no choice but to remain and fight them, because I know it’s the good fight.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Steve Heimoff