• @Hobo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “The cradle of our democracy” refers to Washington DC in particular which is directly governed by the House/Senate. It also consistently ranks as one of the top cities in crime in the US by almost any metric (although ranking crime by city gets murky). Additionally it is notoriously poorly governed and has some really strange local laws that are almost entirely nationally political in origin. It also doesn’t really help that the people living in D.C. get a diminished political voice by default.

      I don’t know if there’s really grander conclusions to make other than having people govern a city that have no vested interest in the locals, with their actual constituents possibly 1000s of miles away, is a terrible idea. As for what it says about our government as a whole, I really think it’s a better case for MORE democracy for the locals in D.C. rather than an indictment of the idea…

      To read about D.C. and how it is governed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.

      Basic crime stats for D.C.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C.

    • @frezik@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      It doesn’t have to be zero crime, but Washington DC is a crime-ridden hell hole. Just for starters, the 2021 homicide rate was 32.78 per 100k people. Paris was 1.1, London was 1.1, New York was around 5, Los Angeles around 10.

      It is uniquely awful, both within the US and elsewhere.