Making America Great Again Means Fixing Its Dystopian Cities

Of all the celebrities promising to leave the country if Donald Trump won this month’s election, at least one has already kept that promise and decamped to supposedly greener pastures. The actress and filmmaker Eva Longoria recently told Marie Claire that she, her husband, and her son now split their time between Spain and Mexico. “It just feels like this chapter in my life”—the chapter in which she is an American, apparently—“is done now.”

On the one hand, it’s a bit surprising that one of the big-talking Hollywood leftists actually kept her promise and allowed politics to rule her life. On the other hand, if any of the Glitteratti were going to run from Donald Trump’s America, Longoria would be the one. She doesn’t just support Democratic politicians, after all. She has dedicated much of her adult life to their cause:

In 2016, Longoria took to her bed after Trump prevailed. “I’ve never been depressed in my life,” she recalls…. Longoria spent the better part of this past summer campaigning for Kamala Harris. She rallied volunteers with Tim Walz. Countless celebrities endorsed the Democratic ticket, but Longoria is more than a famous surrogate. The Washington Post has called her a genuine “political power broker” for the “fierce and productive” work she has done to organize women and Latinos. The Texas Tribune profiled her efforts to recruit and support Hispanic Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.

Needless to say, Longoria is all in on Democratic politics—which makes her reasons for leaving the United States all the more interesting. Although she tells Marie Claire that Trump was an issue for her, he wasn’t the only issue. Indeed, she and her family had moved out of the country before Trump even won the election on November 4. She gave up on this country for far different reasons. It’s “dystopian,” she says, and it’s been getting worse for some time: “I had my whole adult life here…But even before [the pandemic], it was changing. The vibe was different. And then COVID happened, and it pushed it over the edge. Whether it’s the homelessness or the taxes, not that I want to sh*t on California….”

I’m not one to kick a gal when she’s down, but Longoria’s complaints about the United States—dystopian, homelessness, excessive taxes, etc.—have a familiar ring to them. Indeed, they sound a lot like the complaints registered by that other leftist icon…<<checks notes>>…Tucker Carlson?

As you may recall, not quite nine months ago, Carlson won the enmity of both liberals and conservatives for saying that Moscow is “so much nicer than any city in my country.” Like Longoria, Carlson lamented the dystopian nature of much American life, complaining that “If you can’t use your subway, for example, as many people are afraid to in New York City because it’s too dangerous, you have to sort of wonder like, isn’t that the ultimate measure of leadership?” Unlike Longoria, however, Carlson didn’t give up on his country and exercised his “privilege” (her word, not mine) to abandon it. What he did was say that visiting other large cities in the world was “radicalizing” for an American because those cities, “no matter how we’re told they’re run and on what principles they’re run, are wonderful places to live….”

As I say, Carlson was roundly criticized for his comments. Some of that criticism was entirely justified, although much of it was not. And in any case, Longoria will not be criticized at all for her statements, in part because she’s a leftist and, thus, above criticism, and in part because she, like Carlson, has a point. Public spaces in American cities are, in most cases, grotesque. That’s almost inarguable. Among other things, Tucker was bashed because he made what seemed to be a partisan argument. He was clearly and undeniably criticizing urban Democratic politics and policies. The irony here is that Longoria was too, although neither she nor any of her supporters and fans understand that.

As Democrats continue their soul-searching, and as media and other analysts try to dissect the causes of the enormous Republican victory not quite two weeks ago, one lesson will likely go unlearned. The American people really do want their country to be great again. To them, that doesn’t mean that the United States should be an omnipotent global colossus, striding the globe, enforcing its will on everyone and everything. And it doesn’t mean that Americans should win every gold medal at every Olympics or every Nobel Prize or anything like that. Americans just want their country to work again. They just want their cities to function. They want to be able to build homes or power plants or new factories without having to spend countless months and endless resources complying with arcane and ridiculous regulations. They want their country to look and feel and operate like a normal place again.

For at least the last 60 years, American cities have been governed not for the benefit of their residents but for the benefit of political power consolidation. Cities are managed specifically to ensure the application of ideological principles and the maintenance of the partisan status quo. In other words, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco (and practically every city in between) are experiments in liberal-left policies and Democratic machine politics. They are run of, by, and for the machines and their ideological solons, not for the people who live there.

Sometimes, on very rare occasions, cities can break out of this politicized rut, electing new leaders with new ideas—Rudy Giuliani, for example—who change the entire spirit of the metropolis. In time, however, even these breakout efforts fall victim to ideological sniping and partisan grift, leaving the city polarized, politicized, and further degraded.

Eva Longoria doesn’t know this, but she’s not leaving the United States because of Donald Trump. She’s leaving because of Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, London Breed, and all the rest of the party-machine politicians, who see this nation’s cities and states not as places where people live and desire to live well but as opportunities to ply their ideological biases and fulfill their personal ambitions.

Donald Trump is not the dictator his detractors want us all to believe he is. But even if he were, there is nothing he could do to the people of San Francisco that is worse than what London Breed, Edwin Lee, and Gavin Newsom have done to them. There is nothing he could do to the people of Chicago that is worse than what Brandon Johnson and Lori Lightfoot have done to them. There is nothing he could do to the people of New York that is worse than what Eric Adams and Bill DeBlasio have done to them.

So go, Ms. Longoria. Go use your privilege to start the next “chapter” in your life. Go use your privilege to escape the dystopian nightmare of American cities. But as you go, understand that the problems with America and its cities are less about Donald Trump and his indiscretions than about people, like you, who abhor the outcomes of certain ideologies and policies and yet vote for them—and even campaign aggressively for them—time and time again.