Tucsonians’ Short Travels Suddenly Eye-Opening on How Badly Screwed They Are

“Do we have go back and live in that boring, crime-ridden, congested & ugly, corrupt Sh*thole?” 

Talk about something that has floored me over the last several months, is the sheer number of friends, acquaintances, and perfect strangers (friends of friends), who have expressed this growing awareness.  It recently happened with some friends here, who are Tucson “near-natives” and totally apolitical, on a 2 week road trip over to see relatives in New Mexico & Colorado.  Every epiphany-story I recall started like this, with outside travel.

Admittedly, this is anecdotal data, but it would still pass the Tucson RedStar’s yellow-journalism standards for accuracy; it came as a complete surprise to me.   As ADI readers know, for years now there’s been a small group of us, discontented observers in Tucson, who have personally known how dynamic, promising and vibrant the City was prior to the end of the Cold War Era.  And we travel, and we know what’s possible from an urban development standpoint.

We’ve written about it, and detailed its root-causes: i.e. The allowed takeover by the radical Hard-Left, their feckless social & urban doctrines from UA, the organized, govt-political mafiosa manpower from the county/city’s notorious Grijalva Gang La Familia, giant political contributions from wealthy & transient trophy-home owning expats and ineffective uber-liberal foundations, and a distinct, screeching cacophony of middling, working-class, white retirees from Blue states (the Geezer Gang), easily manipulated by a desperate, fossilized print media.  (their motto: “how can we gaslight ‘em today?”)

Other than UA’s sinecured faculty poo-bahs, and the trust-baby aristocrats, the rest hardly ever travels out of here.  Prompting us to always wonder:

• “WTF is wrong with these other people? Don’t they know there are other cities nearby, with nearly the same base-metrics as the Tucson Metro, that don’t put up with the crap that passes for S.O.P. here?”

Taken at face value, it would seem these newfound realizations about Tucson have 1 obvious source: those who WERE TRAVELING in the Southwest to similar-sized Metros.   Whether to Austin-San Antonio, San Diego-La Jolla, Albuquerque-Santa Fe, Las Vegas, SLC, Colorado Springs-Denver, even Phoenix and El Paso.

I would posit to our ADI critics, something big has changed; this is a relatively new development.  While Facebook has been out since early 2004, and only in January 2021 did I start the private FB group, Tucson EPT News, for specialized economic, political, and tech news (now with ~580 members).

But in just the last 2-5 years a plethora of other Tucson-critical FB Sites have arisen, some with high 5-figure membership.  Tucson people are getting seriously pissed, ….to say the least, about the liberal groupies, and the parasitic unaccomplished, who are strangely allowed to run things here.

Excluding the official and/or overtly political sites, checkout the following larger public, non-affiliated FB sites, their active member numbers & their starts, including:

• Tucson Crime Free Coalition [44,000 members, Feb. ‘24]
• 857 Tucson Community [24,000 members, Jan.’24]
• Tucson Community Police Scanner [19,000 members, July ‘21]
• Tucson Police Crime/News UNCENSORED [36,000 members, Aug. ‘20]
• Tucson Parks are Wrecked [2000 members, Jan. ‘26]
• Crime in Tucson [37,000 members, July 2020]
• RR: No Longer Relevant [8300 members, revised Nov. ‘24]
• Defunct Tucson Businesses & Restaurants [1200 members, revised Jan. ‘26]
• Come on, Arizona [2500 members, late ‘25]
• Tucson Bad Drivers [15,000 members, 2018]

I did not include several dozen other FB sites of fewer than 1000 active members, who have sprung-up in the time frame mentioned, as more special interest or problem-specific venues.   But they all share a similarity; they’re pissed and disappointed at Tucson’s awful urban performance.

One can only hope the Arizona Republicans, and any remaining unweaponized Democrats of goodwill, will see these numbers and realize how badly Tucson-the-City, is being held hostage.

Sellers is a Southpark, Roosevelt-Republican (Teddy) living in incorporated Oro Valley; his background is federal technology commercialization