Peak Blue Governance?

Some things are too on-the-nose to be believed immediately, so when Jonathan Turley read about the City of Ann Arbor, Michigan spending $18,000 to remove Community Watch signs in order to foster “inclusivity,” he had to check whether it was a Babylon Bee story or if it was real. 

I had to check to be sure that this was not a hilarious addition to the Babylon Bee. The Democratic city council of Ann Arbor, Michigan, unanimously voted to order the removal of anti-crime signs in order to be more “inclusive”… https://t.co/HdUXjyxyq7

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) April 30, 2026

It was, of course, real, because Ann Arbor isn’t just a Blue city, but a Blue city with a far-left academic population that considers itself the most virtuous group of people in the world. 

And virtue, these days, does not mean what it used to mean, but rather something closer to one-upping everybody else on making symbolic moves that either don’t make things better or make things significantly worse. 

Now removing Neighborhood Watch signs is an example of the former. Nobody takes Neighborhood Watch signs seriously, and Neighborhood Watch groups almost never really exist; when they do, city authorities work mightily to ensure they do nothing that actually reduces crime. That would be vigilantism, which is a no-no, and these days, reporting a crime is almost a purely symbolic act unless there is blood flowing in the streets. 

I don’t know about your city, but here in Minneapolis, the reports of shots fired is just another day at the office for a 911 dispatcher, and it is rarely a priority unless it was a drive-by shooting or somebody winds up in the hospital. Burglaries? Smashing car windows? What’s the point, right?

So virtue signaling to prove how wonderful you are was the only reason to spend $18,000, and the City Council of Ann Arbor has milked this one for all it’s worth. Listen to the smug bastards:

10 people sit on Ann Arbor’s city council.

10 voted to spend $18k taking down “unwelcoming” Neighborhood Watch signs.

0 said “wait, this sounds insane.”

At every level of government, Democrats prioritize the feelings of criminals over the citizens they were elected to serve. pic.twitter.com/kql5I1EwKS

— Lisa McClain (@LisaForCongress) April 29, 2026

I can assure you that precisely nobody except some racial-grievances professors and activists gave these signs a thought, and they only did because finding examples of actual racism in Ann Arbor requires the SPLC or a local variant staging it. 

Of course, on college campuses, racial hoaxes are a thing, but in real-world college towns, real racism is rather scarce on the ground. 

Now Ann Arbor is a beautiful little town, but petty crime is a thing because there are so many easy targets and a government that is exquisitely conscious that actually punishing a criminal, especially if they have any feet on the intersectional ladder of grievance and victimhood, is a big no-no. Getting arrested is rare, prosecuted rarer. 

The bizarre thing is, this virtue signaling works great with the people of Ann Arbor. They feel good about themselves for having voted for people who spend their limited time thinking up ways to make them all feel morally superior, and life is comfortable enough in this wealthy little community that they can imagine they are making the world a better place by removing Neighborhood Watch signs. 

These are the type of people who nod along to Martha Raddatz and think she had a real “gotcha” when she confronted J.D. Vance over Tren de Aragua only having terrorized a few apartment buildings. 

See? Only a few! Why are you making such a big deal about it? 

As I pointed out in my previous essay, this line of thinking goes well beyond mere symbolic acts. It has very real world consequences, as we saw in another pretty little town and home of a similarly liberal institution, the Mayo Clinic. In Rochester, Minnesota, even rape, if done by somebody with oppression points, gets you insane leniency. 

This sounded so outrageous that I worried it was fake. I fact checked.

IT IS REAL. Let that sink in. IT IS REAL. The prosecutors struck an insane plea bargain, and the judge followed it, over the objections of the victims’ parents! Could you imagine if the rape victims were… https://t.co/ghOcoSsdFN

— Jim Walden (@jimfornyc) March 13, 2026

This sounded so outrageous that I worried it was fake. I fact checked. 

IT IS REAL. Let that sink in. IT IS REAL. The prosecutors struck an insane plea bargain, and the judge followed it, over the objections of the victims’ parents!  Could you imagine if the rape victims were your daughters?  

How can this happen? Oh, yes, it’s Minnesota. Strike that off my travel bucket list. I struck Dearborn off yesterday.

“Rochester man.” Heh. 

It may seem a bizarre way of thinking, but it is pervasive on the left. They are so focused on ensuring that they don’t make anybody who fits into their “victimhood” category that they are willing to let people be victimized. 

Luckily, in Ann Arbor, the chances that taking down these signs would lead to more crime are basically zero, but, then again, the chances that they did any harm were also zero. It was a modestly expensive, meaningless gesture. 

But it is for the same reasons that these people also demand that our borders be open, that illegal aliens be dumped into places like El Paso, and who believe that rioting to ensure rapists and human traffickers stay in America. They live in a parallel universe where consequences don’t matter, and symbolism is everything. 

Ann Arbor would have been a perfect place for Ron DeSantis or Governor Abbott to bus illegal aliens. Obviously, the City Council needs real problems to worry about, and a lesson in how the real world works would do them a bit of good. 

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