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I'm really baffled as to where you grew up, Petersburg? As far as my experiences in Virginia, it's overwhelmingly been one of gentrification - admittedly limited to NoVA and Richmond. I can't speak to Norfolk or Charlottesville. In DC, the majority of the city is unaffordable to anyone but wealthy professionals and the politicos, with the poors being pushed across the Anacostia. H street is a filthy den of hipsters (or may have progressed to a fully upscale neighborhood since I left, I don't know) and you have to go pretty far to the northeast to get anywhere grungy. NoVA is a gleaming mass of towers full of consultants milking the feds (where you possibly work making useless software?) and I'm not even sure how far you have to drive outside the city before you stop seeing Mcmansions and nice suburbs.
I don't know Richmond as well but The Fan and Jackson Ward both gentrified pretty heavily. Nice downtown core, UVA seems to be metastasizing, lots of mcmansions and farmers markets.
Are you confident that your quiet suburbia was invaded by illegals rather than most of the successful, law-abiding people being siphoned off by the gentrifying cities? Brain drain to the city cores will hollow out the suburbs and revitalize the downtowns which seems to be what's happening (although I haven't noticed the apocalyptic degradation of the suburbs you write about extensively). It's surprising that I lived in fairly similar areas to you without ever hearing about Teen Dismemberment Tuesdays. Why do you think we had such different experiences?
I can only speak to one part of this, but you don't have to go far in northeast DC to get grungy - you just have to walk around. There are basically two patterns of American urban dysfunction: two sides of the tracks, and block-by-block neighbourhoods. As an example, Chicago is almost entirely side-of-the-tracks, and modern NYC is almost entirely block-by-block. NE DC, you'll be walking through a street of fancy townhomes with Little Free Libraries for five minutes, then you'll be in the hood for three minutes, then you'll be on a nice block again but walking slow because the guy in front of you is cracked out of his head and you don't want to pass him, then you're properly back in In This House We Believe land, then rinse and repeat.
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I've been thinking about this as well and my money is on @WhiningCoil having grown up somewhere around Woodbridge. Maybe just the right part of Fairfax County (Herndon, Springfield).
I also generally agree with his characterization of the changes over the last 20 - 30 years, although with a little less blackpilling.
So, @WhiningCoil is right in that a lack of awareness is not a lack of evidence. My own semi-conspiratorial impression is that both Farifax County and Arlington County police know that most of their calls to the well to do parts of those areas will be for domestic stuff, they over patrol in the immigrant heavy parts of the counties with the clear message of; "you guys can fuck around with each other as much as you want, but if you make trouble for John Q. Taxpayer, we will destroy you."
There's also degeneration at the top. There was a time when Tysons Corner and Northern Arlington had mom and pop shops and restaurants. Local High Schools would host fundraisers and other events at these places. There were weird tarot shops that may have been mild drug fronts and, according to urban legend, classy rub-n-tug joints. You know, the things that make a small town work.
To say that NoVA is now corporatized is an understatement. It's internationally hypercorporatized. If you walk through Tysons II on any given day, perhaps on your way to drinks at the Ritz-Carlton, you will see a Saudi woman in full Burqa (fully face covered except for the ninja-slit) toting bags from luxury stores with doormen in $5000 suits. If you walk through Clarendon on a Friday or Saturday night you will see G-Wagons and Ferraris parked outside of the "clubs" there. How can this be? This isn't Vegas, LA, New York. This is a still heavily milquetoast white people suburbia full of, yes, "consultants" and political operatives who mostly make money siphoning off their portion of The Federal Trillions. Real deal finance isn't there, there is no celebrity entertainment industry, "venture" and "tech" exist but in silly reinvent-the-consulting wheel ways that would make actual Silicon Valley denizens laugh (which is saying something).
Less than two hours away you have multiple counties to the west and south that went for Trump 70/30 or better. You have the border with West Virginia (and not just the eastern pandhandle which is just extended NoVA). You have the area around Thurmont and Frederick Maryland, known as a one of the last super stronghold of the KKK. 90 minutes south on I-95 you have Quantico, VA, Headquarters of the USMC and the major FBI training center.
In 2018, Washington and Lee High School, in Arlington, VA, renamed itself (well, the schoolboard did) to "Washington and Liberty" High School. I guess Lee was removed because he was the loser slave owner instead of the winner one.
While I can't quite bring myself to the level of "intentional race replacement" that @WhinginCoil seems to have signed on to, I do think this is what it looks like when a society lets suicidal empathy and degenerative "inclusivity" run amok. It starts simple enough with an "authentic" arepas restaurant or food truck opening up. What's the harm? It ends, years later, with the high priestesses beginning the government backed erasure of history that displeases them.
Capital One employees catching strays.
It is interesting how despite being the capital city of the US, DC and its surrounding areas are fairly devoid of private sector white-collar jobs, especially in Tech, Finance, generic corporate roles. It's often usurped by cities and their surrounding areas such as NYC, SF, LAX, CHI, sometimes even more minor ones like Boston, Greenwich, Seattle, etc.
Greater DC has an urban area population of 5.2 million vs 9.8 million for London and something similar for Paris (the French don't publish urban area population estimates). Metropolitan area population (defined by commuting patterns) is 6 million for DC, 13 million for Paris, and 15 million for London. And DC hosts a bigger, richer government and so has more government and government-adjacent jobs.
There just aren't the people to staff another industry in DC. The US is a big enough country that (apart from NYC, which does everything except government) its major cities are functionally specialised.
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Plenty of (nominally private-sector) defense-related white collar jobs though. There's a whole mostly-separate tech sector there, for instance. Aside from that, I guess there's Marriott. There's probably still some truly private telecom stuff.
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It's remarkable the things you can be oblivious to if your news diet doesn't tell you. Then one day your coworker and their mother are murdered in their apartment (in one of the gentrified parts of town) in a gang killing. At least, that's how my wife's illusions were shattered.
My local news bends over backwards to not cover crime. Itty bitty little articles, no photos of perps, they usually even decline to provide descriptions of the suspect, though they'll mention the police have released one and if anybody has seen them to call. Never makes their front page either, you have to specifically go to this little "Crime" section that has the feel of a subsection they are just about ready to delete entirely. Sometimes a particularly heinous crime will get some attention on the regional subreddit, but usually posts about crime just get deleted because reddit and agenda pushing.
So yeah, I don't really take your lack of noticing as a proof of absence. You and a million like you.
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