What follows are merely two of the brutal stories this week from our increasingly unlivable American cities.

The first, in Philadelphia, had a journalist being shot to death in his own home in what may have been a burglary-turned-murder:

Philadelphia journalist and advocate Josh Kruger was shot and killed at his home early Monday morning, according to police. ...

The day before his death, Kruger mocked "Dilbert" cartoonist Scott Adams for a 2020 tweet that stated people would die if soft-on-crime politicians like Biden were elected.

His work built on his own personal experiences living with HIV and experiencing homelessness, according to his LinkedIn profile. In his profile, he described himself as a "destroyer of stigma and bureaucratic silos" and a "believer in the common good."

Whatever "common good" Josh Kruger believed in is, of course, moot at this point; when the common good most mattered to him, he couldn't get at it.

In another grim and awful irony, earlier this year Mr. Kruger had smugly claimed that shootings in Philadelphia were "dropping to levels not seen in years." This was only half-true: Homicides in Philadelphia are still hugely up over previous years, and most of those homicides are done with guns, so even a decline in those murders will still leave it greatly elevated over recent figures, a distinction this young man may or may not have realized in the unfortunate last moments of his life.

In New York, meanwhile, we saw a similar deadly tragedy play out this week:

Ryan Carson, a social justice advocate who was on a mission to make New York a better place, was stabbed to death on the streets of Crown Heights on Monday.

People who knew Carson, 32, said he dedicated his life to trying to change things for the better.

I am sorry to report, for Mr. Carson's sake, that "trying to change things for the better" didn't work. New York is not, in fact, a "better place." It is decidedly worse than it has been in several decades. You can tell because "social justice advocates" are getting stabbed randomly in the street by insane, violent killers. That's your tip-off; you don't need a magnifying glass to see it.

The video of Carson being stabbed in front of his girlfriend is horrific. This version has the worst of it cut and blurred out:

[Warning: Violence]

Carson was apparently well-loved, and was so affable that he reportedly once "literally talked a guy out of mugging him," according to one of his friends. That's a great anecdote, the sort of thing you might tell the rest of your life. But in New York "the rest of your life" is increasingly an uncertain variable, and the muggings are getting more frequent. The city's descent into increasingly violent chaos means you may very well have to talk yourself out of numerous violent altercations over the course of your time there. And sometimes you won't be able to talk yourself out of anything.

Much has been made on social media of these two terrible murders — the gaping irony of two progressive activists being murdered by violent criminals who were doubtlessly enabled by the very same progressive policies that the victims themselves advocated. Yes, the darkly grim incongruity at play here is worth remarking on, if only to underscore that progressivism does invariably lead to this sort of deadly breakdown in civil order.

Yet ultimately all we are left with here are two miserable tragedies: Two young men killed by squalid crime, murdered in cold blood, their lives cut short and wasted — an utter waste of precious human life, a reprehensible thievery that can never be repaid in kind. These men are dead; whatever stupid ideas they believed in while alive did not even remotely justify a death sentence. They deserved better than this.

Everyone does. Yet these cities and many more throughout the country are increasingly unable to deliver anything better than either violent crime or the constant, pervasive fear of it. Whatever else their merits, New York and Philadelphia and our other top cities have for years been able to lay some justifiable claim to greatness — to being towering monuments of human ingenuity, human capital, engineering, civic planning, public order. All of that is rapidly fading. Walk down any street in any one of these city centers and see for yourself.

Fixing these problems will require from city leaders determination, conviction, a willingness to do difficult things. I am not sure they have it in them. Maybe these two young men thought it possible. But they cannot tell us at this point, for obvious reasons.

The cities they left behind will likely continue their ongoing and protracted declines. Do not expect to find much "common good" in them anytime soon.

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