We don’t have to live this way

Last year, I lived for nearly five months in an extended-stay hotel across from a major teaching hospital in Aurora, Colorado.

It was my third extended stay there in three years. In total, I have spent more than 10 months in that community during my wife’s hospitalizations.

Disorder becomes permanent when citizens treat it as background noise.

That is long enough to know the difference between an exception and a pattern.

A sign at the city limits reads, “Welcome to Aurora — America’s City.”

At first, it seemed ironic. By the time I left, it read like an indictment.

Near the hospital, everyday life felt needlessly strained.

The grocery store lines were enormous. Entire banks of self-checkout lanes sat dark. Staffed lanes were closed, allegedly because of staffing shortages. This store belongs to one of the largest grocery chains in the country.

Resources were not the issue. Priorities were.

Basic necessities sat locked behind glass: detergent, deodorant, toothpaste. To buy them, I had to find a manager and request access.

Two armed police officers stood near the checkout lanes.

Then I reached for a bag.

Colorado charges for shopping bags. Fine. Charge for them. But none were available. I stood there with paid-for groceries and no way to carry them, scanning for an employee who could authorize the privilege of buying one.

Charge for the bag if you must. But if you charge for it, make it obtainable.

I speak Spanish well and know a few phrases in several other languages. While useful in Aurora, requesting una bolsa did not make one appear any faster.

Outside, carts sat scattered across the parking lot. Trash gathered along the curbs. Panhandlers approached vehicles at the entrance. Customers moved quickly, eyes down.

The hotel where I stayed was a national chain: key-card entry, corporate standards. The staff were decent, hardworking people. They were not hired to enforce the law. Yet I watched them physically confront individuals who slipped into the building and helped themselves to the breakfast buffet without apology and without fear of consequence.

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When behavior is brazen, it signals confidence that no one will stop it.

Walking across the street to the hospital, I passed men and women sprawled on sidewalks, drug paraphernalia near bus stops, people shouting into empty air. While living there, I heard more gunfire than I hear during hunting season where I live in Montana.

Live somewhere for 10 months, and you start to feel the pulse of a place. It is a community living inside lowered expectations.

Standards rarely collapse in a single moment. They erode when enough people decide they are optional. At what point did we accept that this was simply how modern American cities function?

If Aurora is "America’s City," then we no longer agree on what America means.

Years ago, my wife and I launched a prosthetic limb outreach in Ghana. I have seen clinics there operate with greater cleanliness and clearer systems than the community surrounding one of America’s premier teaching hospitals.

That is not meant to be an insult to Ghana. It is a warning to us.

Compassion and order are not enemies.

A society can care for the vulnerable and still insist on standards. In fact, it must. Compassion without structure becomes chaos, and chaos harms the very people it claims to protect.

Government exists to protect life and property. That is not partisan. It is foundational.

The reflexive answer to visible disorder is often another funding package. But public officials are not spending their own money. They are allocating earnings entrusted to them by citizens who expect order in return. When outcomes deteriorate while budgets expand, the issue is not funding. It is stewardship.

For more than 40 years, I have navigated surgeons, pain specialists, prosthetists, and hospital systems while advocating for someone who cannot afford substandard care. In those settings, standards are measurable, not merely aspirational.

One does not respect what one does not inspect. When professionals know their work will be reviewed, outcomes improve. When oversight weakens, so do results.

When an area becomes known for disorder, the mystery is not the criminals. It is the complying silence surrounding those charged with enforcing law and order. Those entrusted with authority must themselves be examined.

Advocacy is rarely glamorous or lucrative. It is repetitive, exacting, and sometimes unwelcome. But when the advocate steps away, small failures compound, and the vulnerable suffer more.

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A healthy society requires the same vigilance from its citizens.

Unenforced borders invite unlawful crossings. Unenforced laws embolden lawlessness. Unenforced standards always open the door to mediocrity and worse.

This is not complicated. It just requires will.

As I walked past those police officers, groceries in the bags I finally managed to buy, I said plainly, “We don’t have to live this way.”

They shrugged. They did not argue.

A deserter was once brought before Alexander the Great for judgment. Asked his name, the soldier nervously replied, “Alexander.”

The general paused.

“Either change your conduct,” he said, “or change your name.”

Names imply standards. So do cities.

If a city claims to be "America’s City," its conduct should reflect it.

We should expect more — of ourselves, of our communities, of our elected officials, and of our courts.

America is not a nation of voiceless citizens. If standards are collapsing, enough of us have abdicated oversight and responsibility.

Disorder becomes permanent when citizens treat it as background noise.

The first act of resolve is refusing to call dysfunction normal.

We do not need another commission. We need resolve.

We don’t have to live this way.