Posted on 04/23/2023 9:45:54 AM PDT by simpson96
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
That observation comes from the great 20th century journalist, satirist, and iconoclast H.L. Mencken.
Who would have guessed that Mencken’s warning would come true for Chicago so soon?
Less than two weeks after Chicago voters endorsed the hard-left mayoral candidacy of Brandon Johnson, throngs of riotous youths with mayhem and anarchy in their hearts invaded downtown Chicago, bringing fear, gunfire wounding two, a car fire-bombed, assault, looting and a vivid picture of a town suffering the logical repercussions of soft-on-crime progressivism.
Soon-to-be mayor Johnson mouthed platitudes condemning “destructive activity,” but he soon revealed his true feelings — “it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”
You’re worried about their feelings Mr. Johnson?
The true victims are not the terrorized Chicagoans and tourists in the Loop but these poor teens suffering from the injustices of oppressive, racist America and low tax rates for corporations and the wealthy?
Lame duck Mayor Lori Lightfoot was just as out of touch. She called the awful spectacle “reckless, disrespectful and unlawful” but also scapegoated the police and then allowed that it “is wrong … to say that it was mayhem.”
The images and testimony of the innocent terrorized — like one woman whose husband was pulled from their vehicle and assaulted — tell a different story.
But like all good progressives, the mayor is adept at calling reality something else.
Recall that during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, a CNN reporter was standing in front of a firebombed business while a caption underneath the video read “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests after Police Shooting.”
“Mostly peaceful protest” was repeated time and again as rioters burned small businesses and looted stores. To the far left, the business owners and residents robbed, firebombed and terrified in those “mostly peaceful protests” were just collateral damage in the noble pursuit of “social justice.”
Then there was the Biden administration official who the other day said he doesn’t “buy the whole argument of chaos” in the humiliating U.S. pullout from Afghanistan in 2021. Those Afghans desperate to escape the Taliban and who clung to the body of an U.S. aircraft as it took off before falling to their deaths might have called that chaos — if they had survived it.
To the Biden administration, they were just collateral damage on the road to an America free of Afghanistan.
Then there’s the reality bending of progressives who tell us that a man can get pregnant. Or assert that biological men have a right to compete in women’s sports.
For daring to challenge that alternative universe, former college swimmer Riley Gaines — denied a trophy by a male swimmer — was assaulted, placed under siege and put in fear of her life by thugs at San Francisco State University who objected to hearing a view they disagreed with.
To progressives, the women athletes denied trophies and championships are just collateral damage on the journey to a trans nirvana.
So, Johnson and Lightfoot have plenty of company in denying reality. Those Chicagoans and tourists left terrorized by the weekend rioting? They’re just collateral damage on the journey to progressive heaven for Chicago.
Actually, the Loop rioting and mayhem shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone.
When you elect a far-left union organizer to be mayor and re-elect a progressive criminal-coddling prosecutor, as Cook County did two years ago, the voters shouldn’t be astonished when law-breaking teens unleash chaos in the Loop. These teens may be poorly educated by the Chicago Teachers Union but they can understand election results and come to the logical conclusion that law and order are out the window.
And make no mistake about it, the progressive vision of criminals as victims of an unjust society seems to be the prevailing view of most Chicago voters.
How else to understand the election results?
A city facing a crime crisis rejected the crime-fighting candidate Paul Vallas to elect the progressive defund-the-police candidate Johnson to replace progressive soft-on-crime incumbent Lightfoot as mayor of the nation’s third largest city.
The defeat of a safe-streets-and-safe-neighborhoods candidate was much worse than indicated by Johnson’s 51 to 49 percent victory margin over Vallas.
Vallas got just under half of the votes of the 33 percent of registered Chicago voters who turned out April 4. Doing the math suggests only about 16 percent of Chicago’s voters wanted to return to the tried-and-true crime-combating policies — broken windows policing, community policing, cops supported by the governing elite — that had made Chicago such a safe city before the BLM riots.
It’s worth repeating: Only one third of Chicago’s registered voters turned out for the runoff. Two thirds of the voters — more than a million of them — sat out this critical election.
An obvious, reasonable and logical conclusion is that the vast majority of Chicagoans were satisfied with the way things were going in Chicago.
They watched BLM rioting, looting and arson, they’ve seen the stories of constant carjackings and permissive local prosecutors and judges releasing the violent, and they saw no reason to go to the polls to return the city to safety.
They watched crime and fear of it creep into once safe neighborhoods and saw no reason to put in the mayor’s office a candidate committed to rebuilding police ranks and cop morale.
They watched businesses buckle and some of them close under the stress of unrestrained and unpunished shoplifting, other crime and fear of “mostly peaceful protests” and saw no reason to come out at the polls to change the direction of the city.
They watched earlier outbreaks of teens wreaking havoc in the Loop and along Michigan Avenue and decided they didn’t need to register any displeasure at the ballot box.
They watched leftist extremists in the state legislature abolish cash bail for criminals and saw no reason to shout no with their votes.
Perhaps someone should update that wonderful song about a once wonderful city made famous by Frank Sinatra along the lines of …
This is a progressive kind of town,
Chicago is a woke kind of town,
Chicago is a crime kind of town,
Chicago is one town that will let you down,
Chicago is a progressive kind of town.
Now we’ll see how the wisdom of Mencken plays out:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
The people will repent or they will disappear. It is that simple.
It doesn’t matter if that’s what they said. It doesn’t even matter if they deserve it. They are going to continue to get more of the same.
The idea that people are going to rise up against a corrupt, incompetent political system is mistaken. Mostly they just go along with how things are, whether they are truly satisfied or not.
A once great city is now totally lost. It’s now Gotham and anyone who thinks otherwise is blind to reality.
"Escape from New York"
"Escape from L.A."
"Escape from Chicago"
The media tyranny thing is especially corrosive. The Founders put a free press in the very first Amendment for good reason.
But I’m sure they’d never guess that the press would eventually censor themselves, and do so very efficiently. Trump litters once, and it’s headline news. Biden sniffs little girls constantly, and no one says a thing.
I don’t believe the election.
The leftists/progressives/liberals/socialists/communists/Marxists/anarchists always get what the vote for, and the city’s decline into madness is a sad thing to watch.
My Family lived in the NW Suburbs — Arlington Heights — during the mid-50s and late-60s, and moved to NJ in ‘67, before the ‘68 riots. It’s been a downward spiral ever since.
My Best friend lives in the 19th Ward - Heavy Irish Catholic - Cops - Firemen - City workers - when he went to vote on Election Day there was only one person in front of him waiting to vote.
He called me and said Vallas had no chance of winning.
Two candidates 1 black 1 white. The outcome was never in doubt
Why are RATS still having trouble with this?
In the runoff, Brandon Johnson and Lori Lightfoot got more votes than Paul Vallas, the white guy. It was predictable that Lightfoot voters would go to Johnson.
Paul Vallas should have run as a Republican, just like Bloomberg ran as a Republican to be Mayor of New York. But Chicago Dems don't do that kind of thing.
The election of Paul Vallas might have slowed down the decline of Chicago, at least for a short time. Electing Brandon Johnson will accelerate the decline. Eventually Chicago will look east to Detroit as a role model. For a little history, the white settlers at Fort Dearborn were on their way to Fort Wayne when the mostly peaceful Indians committed the massacre. (Mostly children.)
Chicago politics is about as legitimate as Kalifornia politics and our current US justice system, it ain’t!
All Chicago needs is it’s own Joker
(Geraldine Conrad)
I live here happily, use CTA many times daily (not always happily), am sad about all the people who diminish it. Flee to red states, where water is running out, where car travel is required everywhere, where many wealthy have new residences so current inhabitants cannot afford housing?
Sounds like she is describing Kalifornia.
Meigs Field...
Screw Kass. He’s just as responsible for this as the rest of them.
L
Chicago just another blue city with a NO GO ZONE at it’s city limits.
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