Most of you unfamiliar with Utah probably think of it as some strange hybrid of white-bread Mormons, tough-as-nails cowboys, pristine mountain ranges, magnificent arches and hoodoos, and, of course, movie stars hobnobbing at Sundance or in Park City. And that is a popular narrative and one that even the locals would like to think is true. And to some degree, it is.
Prima facie, that would appear to be the case. At least that is what the advertisements would have you believe. But as someone who used to follow politics and crime, Utah has been losing its “quaint” status for more than 20 years. Probably longer if you do a deep dive into the history of the state. To be fair, it is still safer than many other parts of the nation, but it also sees its fair share of protests, rampant drug use, and homelessness. And more than its fair share of child abuse cases. Maybe an old veneer is finally wearing away, or maybe it is the influx of the real world into what had once been a quasi-hermetically sealed state.
Having covered many court cases, I can tell you from firsthand experience that sadly the abuse issue has long been a prevailing problem in Utah. The state got a dose of activism during the Summer of Floyd, and drug use has been on the rise for years. And the homeless continue to arrive, turning entire city blocks into colonies.
And then there is this: KSL reports that 28-year-old Christian Francis Taele is in custody for suspicion of one murder and attempted homicide. The first incident took place in Spanish Fork, Utah, and the second in Ogden. In the first case, the body was found near a dumpster not far from a well-traveled shopping area. Taele claims to be responsible for it and has provided police with clues that were not made known to the general public. In the second, Taele is accused of strangling a man and kicking him numerous times before dragging him into the gym at an apartment complex and hanging him by his neck from a piece of equipment. The victim is unconscious and there is no sign of “brain activity.” A witness saw the second attack, and it is not known if this person just decided not to intervene or if they even tried to contact the police.
A GoFundMe account has been set up for the first victim’s family.
For his part, Taele has admitted to his crimes and expressed no remorse for his actions.
By way of explanation, Taele claims that he was purging the city at the behest of a “higher power.” At the moment, nothing has been made public about how Taele arrived at this place. We do know that he is also facing charges of disarming an officer and resisting arrest. He was riding a commuter train without a ticket and pulled a Taser from an officer’s hand.
This is not a screed in defense of the Second Amendment. Taele may have been on drugs or extraordinarily mentally ill, and by all indications so far, he did not use a firearm in the commission of his crimes. If Taele was driven by drugs or mental illness, why didn’t someone notice his struggles and intervene? As it turns out, it probably would not have mattered. Red flags or not. A source in the healthcare industry reliably informs me that there are simply not enough beds, facilities, or providers to address the issue. And an average walk down any street in an American city can tell you that. I remember taking my wife out to dinner for her birthday and seeing a large homeless man having an increasingly violent disagreement with someone only he could see. And he was headed our way. We beat a hasty retreat to the restaurant.
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Indicators aside that matter, why did the person who witnessed his second crime decide to keep his or her head down and stay out of it?
Utah is not unique, especially in terms of protests, drugs, perversion, or murder. The bodies in Chicago continue to pile up. In my day job, I have a client in Portland, Oregon. I mentioned that my wife and I had always wanted to see the Oregon coast. The client advised me to stay away for my own safety. And the comments in every news story predictably read: “San Francisco/Chicago/Philadelphia/Seattle used to be a nice place. Until…”
Banning firearms won’t stop murders, just like a Supreme Court ruling won’t stop abortions. People always find a workaround. Prohibition was repealed, and even in Utah you can still find someone to serve you a scotch on Sunday. The war on drugs was abandoned and fentanyl continues to flow across our border.
Abortion, violence, drugs, abuse, porn — these things will not abate until the nature of the country itself changes. Joe Biden, in between heading up the most embarrassing first family in the history of the land and consistently bungling the role of the president, has not abandoned the cause of abortion and is working feverishly to federalize it. As Jeff Reynolds pointed out, after Oregon decriminalized hard drugs, drug overdoses shot up by 700%. And then there are the cartel members who were recently caught with $1.2 million in meth and released, courtesy of the state of New York. Or how about the drug dealers with $150,000 in fentanyl who were sent on their merry way after two days of easy time in the local clink by the people who are allegedly in charge of California? Keep the narrative going, right guys? No matter who suffers or who dies, let your donkey freak flag fly!
Like the person or persons who watched Christian Taele strangle a man, kick him, and drag him away, Americans for too long preferred not to get involved. And now, every American is involved. Involved at the pump, involved in an assault, involved in high gas prices, involved in seeing their children turned into genderless mockeries of humans, involved in getting run out of their jobs because of what they said or, moreover, did not say. Just because “it,” whatever it may be, does not involve you at the moment, it or something else will sooner or later.
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