Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, an avowed socialist who has managed to further degrade already degraded Seattle with incredible speed, is now under fire for giving a little spit clean to the city to impress visitors in town for the World Cup. She’s another American politician echoing the famous “Potemkin villages” of 18th-century Russia.
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That phrase originated during the reign of Catherine the Great, a German Princess who ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796. Throughout her reign, she was aided by “favorites,” who were assumed to share her bed as well as her council chamber.
The most famous was Grigory Potemkin. One of the stories that circulated during her reign—and that may be true or an early political attack ad—is that when she toured the Crimea, a dismally poor place reflecting government mismanagement, Potemkin would build fake villages or fake fronts over squalid settlements.
These constructions (whether real or propaganda) were called Potemkin villages. That term now refers to a staged facade meant to impress unwitting visitors by concealing the dismal, impoverished reality. It’s also something usually done by totalitarian regimes, which can force fakery to obscure the truth.
A modern example occurred in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics. It was so obvious that even The Guardian, Britain’s hard-left news outlet, reported on it:
Hundreds of thousands of the migrant workers who built Olympic venues and beautified the city have already been sent home. Now Beijingers whose homes don’t meet the organisers’ high standards are being hidden behind walls and screens.
Last week, the city even offered residents sartorial advice. Combining more than three colours or teaming white socks with black shoes are off-limits.
When authorities can’t re-dress, repaint or replant eyesores, they conceal them. Temporary barriers now obstruct housing and shops as well as building sites and wasteland.
Inspired by the Chinese, in 2023, Gavin Newsom did the same to San Francisco, a once-beautiful city now equally memorable for homeless people, drug addicts, and sidewalks covered with human fecal matter, when Xi Jinping came to town:
The homelessness and crime that has for years plagued San Francisco’s streets is now back in the spotlight as California’s governor admits it’s being cleaned up ahead of Chinese President XiJinping’s [sic] visit for a high-level meeting with President Joe Biden.
“I know folks say, ‘Oh they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town,’ and that’s true because it’s true, but it’s also true for months and months and months prior to APEC we’ve been having different conversations and we’ve raised the bar of expectations between the city the county and the state,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., said at a news conference.
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Yet the crime is so significant that Target, Walgreens and Old Navy are among businesses to close stores permanently and city employees who crack down on illegal street vendors have been offered bulletproof vests or police escorts.
Now, Katie Wilson joins the ranks of politicians whose policies create poverty, decay, and crime, but who spit-shine the detritus to impress visitors. According to Fox News, Wilson has apparently been shoveling the city’s worst people into Chinatown, so that they’re all nicely collected in one place to make the rest of the city look better:
Seattle socialist mayor Katie Wilson is facing protests ahead of today’s U.S. World Cup match in her city as members of the local Chinese and Vietnamese communities are accusing her of abandoning their neighborhoods to crime and open air drug dealing.
One organizer went so far as to accuse progressive Wilson of treating Seattle’s Chinatown International District (CID) as a “human dumping ground” for homeless and drug addicts.
[snip]
At one rally, Gary Lee, a CID advocate, said into a microphone, “Wilson claims to be an advocate for marginalized communities of color, but all she did was turn the CID into a human dumping ground and we’ve had enough,” KIRO 7 reported.
This is what bad leaders with power do: They destroy a region through mismanagement or animus and then hide their sins behind Potemkin villages.
The good thing is that, in America’s cities, voters don’t have to put up with this—but they do need to show up. If they don’t, the radical base wins.
For example, in the 2025 election that gave Wilson control of Seattle, only 55% of eligible voters showed up, and Wilson squeaked into victory with 50.2% of the votes, compared to her rival, who got 49.5%. In other words, only 27.5% of eligible voters wanted her. Who knows what would have happened if more people had bothered to show up? Using the same analysis (eligible voters versus actual voters), only 20% of New York City voters elected Zohran Mamdani.
We’re not tyrannies like 18th-century Russia or 21st-century China. If voters would just meet the Founders’ expectations and become educated and engaged, we could do better.
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Image created using AI.