Indianapolis Has Fallen A Red State Surrenders Its Capitol
By Richard Moss, MD
I had known this mid-size metropolis since the seventies when I lived here as a medical student, attending the Indiana University School of Medicine. Then, Indianapolis was referred to as India-no-place or Naptown. But Indianapolis has come a long way since then attracting professional sports teams, stadiums, arenas, and major corporations. There are cultural and art districts, comedy clubs, and trendy, upscale neighborhoods. It has an array of tech-schools and universities, gondola rides along its canal, distilleries, symphony halls, theaters, ethnic restaurants, an excellent zoo, and several museums including the largest children’s museum in the world. My children and I have enjoyed much of what this city has to offer, in particular its downtown area, known as Monument Circle. Here, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument inspires and dazzles, with its glorious fountains, pools, and statues honoring our valiant soldiers and sailors from Indiana who fought and died in each of our nation’s wars. The Christmas lights are iconic and splendid, and each year we visited the great memorial at night, lit up brilliantly, our Rockefeller Center. It had always been a clean and safe downtown, a place I had felt comfortable visiting with my young family – until now.
This year, Monument Circle swarmed not with tourists and patrons but with a succession of homeless encampments, bedecked with tents, sleeping bags, blankets, cardboard shelters, cigarette butts, newspapers, plastic bags, bottles, cans, and, of course, hundreds of vagrants sleeping or milling about. What had been one of the cleanest, most scenic, and safe downtown centers in the country had deteriorated into a third world, garbage strewn, and threatening urban nightmare.
The entrances to the Hilbert Circle Theater and the nearby Indiana Repertory Theater were boarded up, closed, and crammed with itinerants, trash, and debris. It was demoralizing and disgusting, an urban cesspool of dystopia and vagrancy.
The next morning, we walked around a trendy and historic neighborhood, adjacent to downtown, known as Lockerbie Square. Here are individual homes, tree lined streets, coffee shops, yoga studios, and delightful, antique cobblestone roads. The former home of James Whitcomb Riley, Indiana’s great poet laureate, is located here. I did not see vagrants or garbage, but there was a plethora of BLM (Black Lives Matter) signs, with the clenched fist emblem, and other expressions of solidarity for the racist, Marxist, anti-Semitic organization. Had the neighborhood gone “woke,†upscale, lefty-ish, and chic as it was? Or were the signs a form of insurance, some of the homeowners hoping to avoid the wrath and destruction of marauding peaceful protesters from nearby downtown?Â
Post George Floyd, the burning, looting, riots, and violence that occurred in cities throughout the country, also beset Indianapolis. Then, of course, there was the pandemic, with its crushing raft of lockdowns, closures, mask and social distance mandates, devastating to small businesses everywhere. Â
Democrat Mayor Joe Hogsett, voiced standard liberal bromides about “inequities†and “underlying†causes. In a recent article, he and two associates wrote:
“…many cities still use punitive measures to respond to homelessness. Using police to sweep homeless encampments or issue citations and arrests doesn’t reduce homelessness or help people find stability. Instead, it traps people in a homelessness-jail cycle…Â
Yes, Mayor, of course.
“This pandemic has exposed failures and inequities across our society, including in how we respond to homelessness. But we know what works. Now is the time for policymakers at all levels of government to invest in housing with services that address the underlying problem, rather than using punitive responses that fail to help anyone…â€
And so on. Â
Mayor Giuliani, where are you? Â
But, no, Mayor Hogsett, the answer is to hold the “homeless†(vagrants, drug addicts, bums) to the same middle-class bourgeois standards that we hold everyone else to. These include taking a shower, dressing up, not drinking or using drugs, learning a skill, finding a job, obtaining a dwelling, and getting off the street.
There is also a cornucopia of welfare programs that provide assistance for those in need. Some of these include food stamps, direct financial aid, Medicaid, housing and heating subsidies, and more. There are church or faith-based charities. Such public generosity should require a minimum of 20 hours community service, beginning with cleaning up the messes they have made.
Our Declaration of Independence proclaims an inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.â€Â Nowhere does it mention a “right†to a home. That, dear liberals, is up the individual.
We stayed on Pennsylvania Avenue, a block away from Monument Circle. Next to my building was the office of Senator Mike Braun, also from Jasper, one of our two Republican, allegedly conservative, senators. On the other side of the Circle, a mere block away, was the state Capitol, a majestic, classical structure. All of our representatives must have seen what I saw. Â
In the state of Indiana, a very red, pro-Trump state, both houses of our bicameral state assembly are overwhelmingly Republican. The governor, who recently won a second term, is also a Republican. Our two US Senators are Republican and seven out of nine Congressmen are Republican. Vice President Mike Pence was an Indiana Congressman and then governor before ascending to the vice presidency. Â
While recognizing that state and federal representatives do not operate on the local level, and that the current Mayor of Indianapolis is a Democrat, is there no influence they could exert on local officials to clean up this nauseating mess in our capitol city?
The filth and squalor of America’s Democrat run cities, well before the George Floyd incident and far worse after, exacerbated by the plague and our absurd and destructive overreaction to it, is well known. We have seen and heard the horror stories of New York City, LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, DC, and elsewhere. There is rampant homelessness, public defecation, open drug abuse, skyrocketing crime, shuttering of businesses, and closing of parks, schools, churches, and temples. We have witnessed and experienced the destruction of the economy and the forfeiture of our civil and religious liberties, and the humiliating forced wearing of Chinese facial diapers, by tyrannical left-wing mayors and governors. Â
But we don’t expect this to occur in deep red states. Â
Yet it does. Â
Other than Florida and South Dakota, which have both given a good account of themselves through the pandemic, Republican run states have been as slovenly, craven, and ruthless as any blue state. They have given over to the mindless anarchy and violence of BLM/Antifa/SJW mobs running our streets and the homeless bivouacs. Likewise, they have been as tyrannical as the Democrats, enforcing demeaning masks of submission mandates, lockdowns and closures, including, unfortunately, here in Indiana. Â
Indianapolis is the crown jewel of Indiana, particularly Monument Circle. And so it should remain.Â
When will our elected Republican leaders at all levels of government stand up to the degradation of our cities, the anarchy and tyranny in open display? When will they challenge a level of oppression that King George III never dreamed of imposing upon the colonies in his day? Â
If Republicans other than Trump are unwilling to fight as Democrats do, then a new model of organization and defiance for patriots is needed, a Liberty Alliance, or some such formulation. Modeled after the Tea Party movement, it should avoid the mistakes of that crusade. It should remain independent and prevent the Republican Party from co-opting it. We will require a more local, county-level system of defense, aid, and resistance, apart from either party, but in particular the ineffective and worthless Republicans, who have been happy to take our money and votes and do nothing. Â
Who will stand up for regular, scorned, tax paying, working, patriotic Americans? Who will defend the deplorables that love their country? Â
Hoosiers, their elected representatives, and a new grassroots coalition of patriots must restore our beloved capitol city, Indianapolis, even as we push back against the jackals in what must remain the freest and greatest nation in the world.
FOOTNOTE:  Richard Moss, M.D., a surgeon practicing in Jasper, IN, was a candidate for Congress in 2016 and 2018. He has written “A Surgeon’s Odyssey†and “Matilda’s Triumph,†available on amazon.com. Contact him at richardmossmd.com or Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The City-County Observer posted this article without bias, editing or opinion.
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The liberty mentioned in the Fourteenth amendment guarantees people to be free and secure in all their faculties and all lawful ways. It also allows them to live and where work where they want and they may obtain that by contractual means.
You lost me at ‘Chinese facial diaper.’ 350 thousand dead and that’s what you have to say? As a doctor you should be ashamed of yourself. Give me a break… you’d have to be one mega-snowflake to think wearing a mask ‘infringes on your liberty.’ Do you seriously think this is equivalent to the oppression of the American colonies? Get a grip man. Your logic is as sound as that of a BLM psycho.
And by the way, South Dakota, the state which you claim is so well run, has the 7th highest COVID death rate in the country, behind only those state with a much higher population density.
Ok Dr. Moss, we’ll “sweep” those “Bums” (What year are you still mentally locked in?), vagrants and homeless to your location in Jasper. Then they won’t “interfere” with your very white, very myopic and roundly out of touch view on what Indiana and Indianapolis needs to look like. (I’m guessing for you it might be somewhere in the 1930’s). I note you have absolutely NOTHING to offer as a real solution. No wonder you lost your previous elections.
Even more disconcerting is that as a medical doctor you trash the mandates regarding the necessary acts required by individuals in a pandemic (mandates, I note, the USSC has upheld as constitutional during a health crisis) -that is staying home, closing businesses where the disease is easily spread and GASP,–wearing face masks. Are you really that selfish and self centered?
So you want a “new movement”? I wonder if the “model” you want to see is the seditious one we saw the traitors who attacked the Capitol form? If your extremism is an example of what America needs, I can feel pretty confident you will never see elected office for we only want those who support America and her pluralism to have authority, not authoritarians.
Freedom of speech is so beautiful because it allows folks such as Richard Moss, M.D. to openly share their myopic perspectives in a public forum such as this. This just goes to prove that professional qualifications are no panacea for ignorance. I welcome you to return your small town perspective back to your small town life in Jasper.
Really bad timing, posting this article only days after your fake president, via baseless lies about election “fraud,” attempted a coup and fueled violent sedition and insurrection against the United States government.
If the rest of Indiana is a Trump-supporting red state, the capital city isn’t “fallen” — it’s an oasis in an airless, arid, anti-democratic desert.
Don’t bother to wear a mask…and Covid-19 will clean out the “Moss gene pool”… All talk but no solutions as usual. Doc
Moss is the most insecure, needy person in Indiana.
Seriously. He is so desperate for acceptance, he will say anything and sell his soul, INCLUDING HIS PROFESSIONAL SOUL, to gain the approval of the the uninformed idiots who think wearing masks is a political statement instead of a healthcare initiative.
Thi
Large cities are more liberal because they attract educated professionals who use the density of intellectual capital to build, create, and innovate. Simply saying Indianapolis is becoming a slum because they have a Democratic mayor is incredibly uninformed. I certainly expect more from someone who is college educated, and especially one who has achieved an MD. In contrast, Jasper probably receives more tax dollars per person to maintain roads than Indianapolis. Jasper probably doesn’t have as many homeless people because large cities, which offer more opportunity to climb the ladder, tend to attract homeless people. Given the decline in opportunity for well paying jobs for those without college (especially among while, middle age Caucasians) and the opioid and drug epidemic we are seeing a surge in homeless people. Any solution will need to focus on the epidemic (a medical issue), behavior disorders, and job retraining. We can’t blame the Indy mayor for all of these issues – the Republicans have had a hand in reducing support services and local infrastructure for decades – but rather than assign blame lets pursue innovative solutions to help Indy achieve the greatness it is well positioned to achieve.
And for $100 dollars the question is;
“What do you get when you cross Mo Brooks with Mussolini?
“I know, I know, a doctor from Jasper, Indiana!”
“That is correct Pilgrim, and I would suggest you buy some masks with your well deserved $100 dollars.”
It would do your mother good….
Here’s where I stopped bothering to read: “The entrances to the Hilbert Circle Theater and the nearby Indiana Repertory Theater were boarded up, closed, and crammed with itinerants, trash, and debris. It was demoralizing and disgusting, an urban cesspool of dystopia and vagrancy.”
This is victim blaming
A doctor who derides the use of masks during a pandemic has absolutely nothing of value to say. What was this newspaper thinking giving him a platform?!?
Wow Dr. Moss, what a mature and thoughtful response. How lucky we are to have individuals such as yourself responsible for people’s lives. I’m sure you’re heartbroken to see the current Oval Office resident leaving, as it appears you two share many traits regarding personal responsibility. Maybe one day you’ll grow a heart and pull your head out of the sand, but it appears to be far too late for that.
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