One of the dominant messages during the first night of the Republican National Convention was that American cities, particularly those governed by Democrats, are under persistent attack by their own policies, alongside the mobs, drugs, and violent criminals.

The night was largely a reprise of “American carnage,” a notable subtheme of President Trump’s 2016 inaugural address, in which he decried the “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation” and “the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.”