I’m so done with Seattle.

It was only 2.5 years ago that I went from merely being excited about living in Seattle to really feeling like this is home—I belong here—to feeling like I love it here.

My job, the neighborhood, the buildings downtown, all the lakes and what-not that are so reminiscent of the Bosphorus, being in a city again—I loved it all. But no more. Living in Capitol Hill, seemingly the world capital of inconsiderate jerks, has worn me out.

What’s more, Seattle is also the epicenter of so much that’s wrong with “America” today. Not all that’s wrong, and by far not the worst of what’s wrong, but we are the enablers of the greater wrongs.

What has primarily chipped away at my love and like of Seattle has been the fake goodness. It doesn’t matter how many BLACK LIVES MATTER stickers and rainbow flags you display if you park your Rivian in the parking lot of the African American church on Sunday when it’s not open to public parking (and you don’t go in); if you don’t pick up your dog’s poop from the same church’s front lawn (right next to the signs they put up that say “Be a good neighbor. Pick up after your dog.”); if you park your Nazimobile (you know which one that is) right across a crosswalk, fully blocking the curbcut (blocking wheelchair access) or the bike lane; if you cannot wait 15 seconds for the car in front of you to parallel-park and must launch into oncoming traffic, nearly hitting a pedestrian in the process; if you come to a four-way stop and, seeing the other three cars stopped, go right through without waiting your turn; if you can’t make room for the single pedestrian or the wheelchair coming toward you as you and your friends walk three abreast and take up the whole sidewalk, forcing the other person to squish themselves against a tree or a wall (or, if they’re in a wheelchair, stop and yell “Excuse me” three times before you’ll notice); or if you can’t once be bothered to greet your neighbor who greets you every time you run into each other outside the elevator.

If you can’t do the little things that simply constitute common decency, then it doesn’t matter how you voted or how many rainbow flags and BLM stickers you display: You can’t care for abstract strangers (poor people, Black people, non-tech immigrants, people in wartorn countries, etc.) if you can’t be bothered to be merely decent to your neighbors.

Seattle has become a place for the good-and-evil buffet where you can choose any combination of symbolic virtues and practical evils you can: You continue using amazon because it’s ten cents cheaper. Never mind that you have a mid-six-figure salary! That dime you can save is more important than doing what’s right (supporting local stores and brick-and-mortar bookstores* or resisting a multi-monopoly). Or you ignore and disrespect the Black community, protected by your BLM bumper sticker.

So, yeah, I’m sick of the fake liberal/progressive nonsense of Seattle. Gimme fewer stickers and more decency, common courtesy, or just some situational awareness and consideration for others; then I’ll reconsider.

* PS: As an example, a used-book store in Capitol Hill has signs asking people to stop taking photos of their books and then ordering them on amazon (while still standing in the aisles of the store).