RUTHFULLY YOURS

My first blog post on the subject of Chicago was way back in 2012. In that post, I placed Chicago in the special category of American cities that I called the “basket cases” — places with declining populations, astoundingly high rates of violent crime, in every case mostly black on black, and, of course, uninterrupted rule by leftist Democrats for generations. I had this to say about Chicago:

You may ask, is Chicago really basket case? . . . The downtown is in good shape, with new condos and office towers; the near north side is upscale and attractive.  But the population has gone from a peak of 3,620,962 in the 1950 census to just 2,695,598 in 2010.  [And if instead of staying downtown you take] the Green Line el south from the loop to the end of the line, . . . you will observe huge deteriorated public housing projects surrounded by vast vacant areas and abandoned private buildings.

The violent crime rate also clearly qualifies Chicago for the label of basket case. Murders hit a peak of 756 in 2016 (about 28 per hundred thousand people, compared to a rate for the U.S. as a whole of about 5 per 100,000). After a few years of modest declines, murders are on track to equal or top the 756 this year, with 440 through July. In fact, July 2020 just set a new record for most murders in a month, with 105.

Of course, Chicago has been ruled entirely by Democrats for generations. Its last Republican mayor left office in 1931. Of 50 alderman in the city, 46 are Democrats and the other 4 are Independents. In the 2016 election, the city of Chicago voted for Clinton over Trump by 84% to 13%.

Which brings us up to the last couple of days. Apparently, on Sunday there was an incident where the Chicago police shot and injured a black suspect. The police claim that the suspect was armed and had shot at them first; but they have no video to prove that. Whether the police behaved wrongly remains to be established, and if they did, the officers in question should be dealt with accordingly.

But there is no justifying what followed. On Sunday night into Monday there was a first wave of looting in the downtown area. On Monday, the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter put out a press release that dropped all pretense of “peaceful protests” and explicitly sought to justify the looting, while also threatening further violence:

The mayor clearly has not learned anything since [the killing of George Floyd in] May, and she would be wise to understand that the people will keep rising up until the CPD is abolished and our Black communities are fully invested in. Contrary to Mayor Lightfoot’s position, Black lives are and always will be more important than downtown corporations who siphon Tax Increment Financing (T.I.F.) money, while avoiding taxes, and exploiting the labor of Black and Brown Chicagoans. These corporations have “looted” more from our communities than a few protesters ever could. . . . [Some] commentators seem to believe that the immense wealth that has been hoarded in downtown Chicago is in some way all of ours. The South and West sides have seen no benefits to this hoarding. . . . When protesters attack high-end retail stores that are owned by the wealthy and service the wealthy, that is not “our” city and has never been meant for us.

At a BLM demonstration yesterday, a large banner explicitly advocated looting:

Then last night, a second wave of looting erupted in Chicago, including both in the downtown and in the luxury shopping district just north of downtown known as the “Miracle Mile.” There are many videos of the looting, which appears to have been orchestrated on social media.

I’m just completely mystified about the thought process. Let’s assume the worst for the police as to the incident on Sunday. Even so, how is that somehow a bigger issue than the well-over-300 blacks murdered so far this year in Chicago by people who are not the police? And again, even if you assume the worst about the police incident, how is looting an appropriate response? Encouraging young black people to go out on looting sprees is making them completely unemployable in any professional job and ruining whatever chance they might have had for high paying jobs and careers. The demonstrators shout “black lives matter” while they destroy black lives by the hundreds or thousands.

We are witnessing the complete dead end of the progressive movement in Marxist idiocy. Over to you, Mayor Lightfoot. You have gotten where you are by mouthing trendy progressive mumbo jumbo. What’s your next move?