A Woke City Pretends to be Patriotic

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In planning for the nation’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration, the city of Philadelphia under Mayor Frank Rizzo pulled out all the stops and spent over a billion dollars in preparation for an expected 100 million visitors.

Chestnut Street along the Center City corridor saw the banishment of cars when it was redesigned as a pedestrian and bus transitway. Large clocks with a gingerbread motif were stationed at bus stops; concrete furniture including benches, trash cans and planters were built to accommodate the new space where buses raced down the middle of the road and pedestrians walked on the sides.

The project was hailed as a Bicentennial crown jewel, along with a proposed World’s Fair that never happened.

Yet mixing buses with pedestrians proved to be a toxic mix. The buses ran over people and at night, with many of the businesses gone, the street was a ghost town. Very quickly, the infrastructure began to fall apart: bricks fell out of the sidewalk; trees died and were left standing while street lamps remained broken after they were vandalized. The Bicentennial was an embarrassing failure, with just a million visitors showing up on July 4. It didn’t help that most of the people sitting on those concrete benches tended to be paper bag alcoholics. (This was years before the city’s fentanyl epidemic would turn neighboring Kensington into an international drug market.)

The transitway got so seedy it was phased out in the 1980s but it took until 2000 before it was completely eliminated. The design fiasco called to mind one of Samuel Butler’s most interesting quotes: “Thus do we build castles in the air when flushed with wine and conquest.”

Castle-building is alive and well in Philly this year under Mayor Cherell Parker. The celebration this time is the 250th birthday of the nation, or the 2026 Semi-quincentennial when the city will host a number of international sporting events. Mayor Parker hails the celebration as if it’s the catalyst that will propel Philadelphia into a world-class city. Her enthusiasm is reminiscent of Mayor Rizzo’s excitement in 1976 when he believed the city was on the cusp of something truly remarkable.

“With the MLB All-Star Game, FIFA Men’s World Cup games, golf’s PGA Championship, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps 250th anniversary and many more events set for 2026 for the Philadelphia region, almost $60 million has been committed by Philadelphia to the cause,” the mayor’s office revealed in 2025.

This spring the city announced a $1 million grant program for community organizations to host events in neighborhoods across Philadelphia. Grants will range from $25,000 to $100,000, with applications open until the end of April.

“No matter your race, your class, your socioeconomic status, zip code, religion, sexual orientation, or identity – this 250th Semi-quincentennial celebration is for you,” Parker said.

In the meantime, Kathryn Ott Lovell, president & CEO of the Philadelphia Visitor Center and Philadelphia250 said. “All eyes will be on our city as the epicenter of American democracy in 2026. The resources committed today will allow Philadelphia’s cultural, historical, and community partners to bring their ambitious plans to life, welcoming millions of residents and visitors to be part of Philadelphia’s extraordinary celebrations in 2026.”

Philadelphia may have been the epicenter of American democracy once upon a time, but it has in fact eclipsed that status with its left-of-center radical policies in nearly all branches of government. From the public schools (where Islam, anti-ICE and pro-Palestinian protests are encouraged), to its high taxes, dysfunctional government, and urban blight, the city is still “The Little Engine That Could” — meaning, it has never quite become the world-class city it aspires to.

In 2022, Forbes rated Philly, a majority black city, as the dirtiest in America; in 2020, the city was rated the poorest in the country. Then there’s the Philly attitude: the city was voted the rudest in the U.S. in 2024, and Eagles fans were voted the worst in the nation.

When you combine radical woke politics with rudeness and a disproportionate race population (whites are fleeing the city), what you get is a city that probably won’t attract that many international tourists for the big 250th birthday celebration. Or, if the city does manage to con the average tourist in Belgium to spend money to travel here, once they ride the subways they’ll experience something comparable to an electric chair shock: the sight of so many drug addicted homeless covered in open sores and urine-soaked clothes, or masses of loud black teens running from train car to car despite the posted warnings that train “surfing” can be fatal.

Philly’s subculture of fentanyl-meth consumption — both drugs laced with “tranq,” a veterinary sedative that sends users to the floor after they take their first puff and that often results in death – is significant enough to stand out as a “Philly Thing,” with users bent over at the waist and walking in circles or spread out on the sidewalks like the shot victims of a revolution. “Dead or alive?” is the question many Philadelphians ask as they step over these bodies and make their way to the latest “No Kings” protest.

You see, woke politics – anti-ICE, pro-Islamist, pro-gender queer rainbow hair – goes hand-in-hand with urban decay, homelessness, and the widespread use of fentanyl.  It’s part of the reason why leftwing radicals and “No Kings” protesters look like homeless people themselves. One must always dress down for leftist revolutions; a “vote” for the decline of Western culture manifests itself in looking like a slob.

Ironically, just a few weeks ago, Philly DA Larry Krasner called ICE “a small bunch of wannabe Nazis,’ while he emphasized the need for “ICE OUT” legislation in order to maintain civil society.

“You can hardly see a more chaotic situation in America” than Minneapolis, Krasner said. “We are the ones who believe in law and order. They are the ones who believe in crime and disorder… We are going to fight against federal overreach.”

Krasner plans on fighting ICE enforcement as soon as the city’s 250^th anniversary kicks in. To that end, City Council plans on passing a legislative package in April or May that would restrict federal immigration enforcement in city-owned spaces. The new legislation would also ban ICE from obtaining residents’ data.

What may be mounting here is a Minneapolis-style perfect storm as the FIFA World Cup and WAWA Welcome America takes off in the summer.  From June 11 to July 20, 2026, certain bars in the city will remain open until 4 a.m. so that tourists can watch soccer, eat, and drink while taking in an angry Philly ICE protest in front of City Hall. In the fall, visitors can also look forward to the MLB All-Star game — which happens to coincide with Mawlid al-Nabl, celebrating the birth of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.