One of the solid hits that Ron DeSantis landed on Gavin Newsom during their Thursday night debate was his waving a map graphically illustrating that San Francisco is covered with human fecal matter (aka poop), something that magically vanished only when a Chinese dictator came to town. San Francisco may be the worst city for human poop, but it’s not the only problem facing urban America. In Baltimore, the fact that the city has become a giant urinal is destroying the city’s historic buildings.

Until the modern era, cities were vast dung heaps, crawling with human and animal fecal matter. One of the hazards of narrow urban streets from the Roman era to the 19th century was that an upstairs window might open and, suddenly and without warning, someone would empty a chamber pot on your head as you walked by. Cesspits, where human waste was dumped, might not be cleaned for decades and, when they were, the stench was reputed to be so awful that the men tasked with the job sometimes died on the spot.

On busy streets, human fecal matter was outweighed by animal fecal matter from the horses, oxen, and other livestock that traveled through cities. In some areas, the effluvia could be ankle-deep. That’s why, when the car came along—the same vehicle we view as a pollutant—it was hailed as the answer to clean cities. For once, the roads were no longer an odorous slurry of animal urine and feces.

As you can imagine the fact that cities were giant, open sewers meant that the stench was unbearable. Indeed, in London, during the unusually hot summer of 1858, London experienced what became known as the “Great Stink.” Until then, the Thames was not only the main waterway but also the main sewage line. However, in 1858, human waste, combined with animal waste from the London butcheries, overwhelmed the Thames to such an extent that Parliament came to a standstill and finally passed legislation to build a modern sewage system.

However, thanks to Democrat policies in cities across America, we’re reverting to the pre-modern era. As noted, San Franciscans need poop maps to navigate their once-lovely city:

It’s not just San Francisco, though. In Baltimore, a Democrat hellhole with gorgeous 19th- and early 20th-century architecture, public urination is eating away at the buildings:

Many of downtown Baltimore’s buildings are slowly being washed away. The problem is less flooding and rain, more golden showers.

That’s right, pee is eroding thousands of historic buildings downtown, the exterior bases corroding with every spurt.

Like a yellow Sharpie, it’s highlighting long-standing tensions in Baltimore: the decline of a once bustling city center, dwindling public spaces and the enduring needs of the local homeless population.

As the article points out, the same problem is eating away at other of the world’s historic buildings:

The acidic liquid is also wreaking havoc on the world’s tallest church in Germany, the historic streets of Paris, and medieval inns in London, where cities have opted to install “urine deflectors” and “open sidewalk urinals” to redirect bold tinklers.

Baltimore is planning to install more public restrooms, but that’s not necessarily the cure it seems. As drug use and homelessness rise in cities, restrooms cease to be places in which people can go to relieve themselves. Instead, they become places for the homeless to camp out, prostitutes to ply their trade, and drug users to shoot up.

In addition, all the cities that have opened their doors to overwhelming influxes of third-world “refugees,” especially from the Middle East, are discovering that those people don’t even have a concept of toilets. In Germany, the Muslims really like to use swimming pools. In Italy, they use the public fountains as bidets.

While today’s pee story is about Baltimore, the fact is that we are rapidly “de-civilizing.” Thanks to the breakdown in Western norms, we are returning to a pre-modern world and, I can assure you, it will be smelly, inconvenient, and rife with deadly diseases we once believed were long gone from the West.

Image: DeSantis and the poop map. X screen grab.