The Left Has A Dream. I Call it a Nightmare! Chicago, Part III

By Rich Kozlovich

As we watch the insanity going on in America's cities it's important to define how this occurred, and who's responsible.  First, let's cut to the chase.  America's major cities are crime infested sewers, and the Democrats own that completely.  So, I've now given you the answer, here's the evidence, and we're going to view the evidence one city at at time, starting with Chicago.  

Stephan Moore in his April 11th article, The left has killed our great cities, points out:

Tuesday, April 4, as the night Chicago died.That's when we learned that Second City voters narrowly elected Brandon Johnson as their next mayor. This is a city that was flattened during the reign of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who lost in the first round of voting for Chicago mayor because she didn't finish in one of the top two spots. Lightfoot, elected in 2019 after a career as a federal prosecutor who then held several appointed positions in Chicago, shut down the city for more than a year during COVID-19. She also bankrupted small businesses, allowed rioters to burn down whole neighborhoods, presided over the worst crime wave in 50 years and let the schools go to hell............Now, the voters have selected Johnson..........The incoming mayor may turn out to be a worse mayor than Lightfoot...........The fact that Chicagoans have elected not a reformer, but a deformer, suggests that inner-city residents still don't get it -- or they don't care. Or they are all on the payroll of the city governments that are going bankrupt. Alas, our cities can't be saved if the voters in these metropolises don't want to be saved.

Well, it turns out Brandon Johnson is most likely going to be far worse than Lightfoot.  Last week rioting broke out, vehicles were burned, people were beaten, and had their lives threatened, and the police did nothing, and made it clear as long as Johnson was mayor, that was the way it was going to be.  The police are sworn to protect, but the left sent a message long ago, if they do what needs to be done, they're going to be prosecuted and possibly sent to prison.  In Seattle they've been told they have to offer a "sincere apology" for enforcing the law.  They're left with crossroads decisions daily; "to be or to do".  Guess which one they've chosen?  

Mayor Johnson's response to all this?  

In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend.  It is unacceptable and has no place in our city.

Okay, that makes sense, and it sounds like responsible thinking, but is it reality, or just nice sounding talking points?   Then he goes on to demonstrate what he really thinks by babbling irrationally saying:

However, it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.  Our communities must work together to create spaces for youth to gather safely and responsible, under adult guidance and supervision, to ensure that every part of our city remains welcome for both residents and visitors.  This is one aspect of my comprehensive approach to improve public safety and make Chicago livable for everyone.

He continued to blather this same nonsense, "In on-camera comments that Julio covered yesterday, the incoming mayor doubled down" saying:

Demonizing children is wrong.....they're children, and children sometimes make silly decisions...."

• Starved of opportunities?  Really?  What opportunities have been denied them and if so, who's responsible?  Democrat mayors have run Chicago for as long as I've been alive and longer (1931 the last Republican mayor left office) and Democrats have ruled Illinois for decades, so who is responsible for this alleged starvation of opportunities? 
  
• Silly decisions?  Really?  Choosing to commit violent crimes are "silly decisions"?  These aren't children, they're violent criminals and thugs, I don't care what their chronological age may be.  They are what they do.   Law enforcement in Chicago is expecting a lot more "silly" decisions as the weather warms, and yes it is right to demonize those who riot and commit crimes of property destruction, violent harm to others, and theft.
• Because of leftist insanity these aren't criminals, "they're misunderstood victims of an impoverished society", and people on the left, just like Mayor Johnson, are responsible for promoting this "entitlement" mentality, and are even pushing to legalize their criminal behavior.  

Here was another "silly decision" by a "mob" of thugs who violently beat a helpless woman in Chicago.  The video of this has been taken down, I wonder why?   Here's another piece about Johnson's "children", hundreds of them, making "silly decisions" as Violence Erupts in Chicago as Hundreds of Thugs Destroy Parts of the City:

 ..........smashing car windows.......at least one person in a car was attacked. Shots were fired near the corner of Madison and Michigan, and FOX 32 Chicago decided that it was unsafe to keep our news crew on the scene. A woman whose car was smashed by people jumping on the windshield said her husband was beaten as he sat in the driver’s seat.............Video posted on social media shows people standing on top of a CTA bus and dancing. The CTA said that some service through the downtown area was disrupted on Saturday night because of police activity........... a 14-year-old was shot.............

There are consequences for all this.  Migration, closed businesses, and a dropping tax base.  This is the starvation of opportunities Johnson blathers about, and his party is to blame.   Corporate America is leaving, even after so many of them grovelled in the sewer with Antifa, BLM, and totally embraced this insane Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Marxist economic suicide pact.  

As Silvio Canto, Jr. points out in his shoplifting article, with just the right amount of snarc:

Who knew that uncontrolled shoplifting and allowing criminals to run out of stores with jewelry and whiskey bottles would eventually translate into stores closing their doors for good?  Where did we hear that before? Of course, it's more than closing stores to shoppers.  A retail store hires people and pays taxes.  In many locations, it may be the only drugstore around. There are broad consequences to shoplifting.  As stores close in our cities, local governments will lose the tax base that pays for a lot of social services.  The bottom line is that the community will lose.  Are you listening, Democrats?

No, they're not because leftist ideology means you never have to apologize or change, it's always someone else's fault.  Well, Walmart has had it and is closing stores all over the country, including 4 Chicago Stores, because they've lost tens of millions of dollars, and the Democrats are outraged.

How dare they put their profits over the need of these Marxists have for their tax dollars?  Dollars they need to fulfill leftist demands and redistribute that money in order to keep being elected, in order to ultimately put them out of business.  Imagine that!

Well, Walmart isn't the only one seeing this insanity for what it is, as Dan Mitchell points out in his January 2022 piece, Chicago’s Downward Spiral:

The Chicago area saw an exodus of corporate headquarters in 2022, including investment firm Citadel, which moved to Miami along with its billionaire founder, Ken Griffin; Caterpillar, which relocated from north suburban Deerfield to Irving, Texas; and aerospace giant Boeing, which moved to Arlington, Virginia, after more than 20 years in the West Loop. The most recent high-profile departure was announced in November, when Lake Forest-based auto parts manufacturer Tenneco said it was shifting its headquarters to Michigan. …vacancy rates in the central business district rose to 19.6%, while the Chicago metro ticked up to 21.8%… Meanwhile, Citadel principals and employees generated billions of dollars in tax revenue for the city and state over the past decade, according to the firm, money that has also headed south.And why are businesses escaping?

The economic mismanagement of Chicago, and the entire state of Illinois, is getting worse, and this was before Johnson was elected.  The real hidden economic viper in the fruit basket?  Pensions!

Pension costs will consume more than $2.3 billion of the city’s budget, or 21.4 percent of its own source revenue, excluding state and federal grants. That’s more than a $967 million increase in pension spending since Lightfoot became mayor and $461 million more than last year alone.............To make matters worse, Chicago still has major problems with corruption.

• The Left Has A Dream. I Call it a Nightmare, Part I
• The Left Has A Dream. I Call it a Nightmare! California, Part II

The Left Has A Dream. I Call it a Nightmare, Part I

By Rich Kozlovich

The left has "A dream", and their dream is humanities nightmare.  Have no doubt, unless people wake up, we will own nothing and will be happy, or else!  Private ownership will be eliminated.  The concept of personal privacy will be illegal.  Retirement investments will be confiscated.  We will accept the World Health Organization as the final arbiter as to how we're to be treated abandoning any idea of American sovereignty and will accept being digitally tracked.  

Money will be eliminated replaced by digital currencies in order to track what you buy and sell, and if what you're buying or selling violates their vision, you will not be allowed to do either.  And we will eat bugs, or worse! 

This is "the plan", and it's not just in America, it's a worldwide effort that will promote lawlessness, filth, and corruption, as Bob Barr  notes in his Apr 20, 2023 article. U.N.-Sanctioned Report Is a Blueprint for Filth, Degradation, and Lawlessness, saying:

Typical of virtually every report drafted by the United Nations and related international organizations, this one was long in the drafting, taking a full five years to compose. Also, like other U.N.-created reports, it has a ridiculously long and convoluted title:  The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty. A shorter and more accurate title would be How To Destroy Civil Society By Abandoning the Rule of Law.

He goes on to list some goals we're already seeing being implemented in American cities.  Jail should be the last resort for criminals, abortion will not be permitted to be limited to any degree, and should be termed as "pregnancy loss", in order to avoid calling it what it is: Infanticide.  Pederasty would be called a "human right".  There would be no limit on "consensual sex" irrespective of age.  Drug laws would be eliminated.  Prostitution would no longer be a crime, and "no activity undertaken by an individual out of necessity could be prohibited, including panhandling, sleeping or bathing in public, or “urinating and defecating” in public places – all examples of protected “human rights.”

 Let's face it, this is what's being promoted in some states and in America's major cities, and, there's a reason nobody is singing about going ‘Downtown’ anymore.  The mess the Democrats have created has resulted in a "ghost town" kind of environment, overrun by thugs.  Companies have left "downtown" for a number of reasons, and crime and tolerance for thuggery is one of the reasons.  Couple that with high taxes, irresponsible regulations, and corruption, and there's no reason to be there, and that especially goes for people living in the suburbs.  I always loved the playhouse district in Cleveland.  I now refuse to go. I'm old, arthritic and that makes me a target, and Cleveland isn't nearly as bad as Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and others.

Not only are offices closing in cities, retailers are closing down due to crime in three major cities ‘all run by Democrats’.  Not only can these employers protect their employees, they can't protect their customers, and their customers know it, so, guess what?  They're not customers any longer, so they stay home in the suburbs, and dine there, shop there, and socialize there.  And the Democrats know it so, that has to be "fixed".   Death to the Suburbs! 

New York's Governor Kathy Kochul has called for a diversity, inclusion, and equity drive to destroy the suburbs eliminating local control and single family zoning laws replacing them with:

......high-rise "affordable" (read: low-income, taxpayer-subsidized) housing be constructed close to each sleepy village train station — mostly a few miles apart — on Metro North and the Long Island Railroad.  If the affected communities fail to do so "voluntarily," the state will have the power to override local zoning.  Those who fail to applaud this combined coup by warriors for social justice and real estate interests are, you guessed it, racist.

In his article, Wake up, America — we're losing our country! Bob Weir states:

I never thought I'd have to face the prospect of witnessing the decline and fall of the United States, the greatest country in the history of the world.  I've always felt grateful to have been born in this marvelous nation.  Yet, today, as I woke up and was having my morning coffee, I began to realize that things are changing quickly, and the changes are corroding us from the inside.  Regardless of how I vote, or whether I vote, it seems as if it doesn't matter, because something evil has invaded this great land, and our lives are never going to be the same.

He went on to say how shocked he is at the views of family and friends, and how hostile they are in their views, abandoning reason, ignoring facts and reality, and are so willing to accept an "assortment of freakish behaviors".   A Supreme Court justice that doesn't know what a woman is, illegal immigrants are to be given the right to vote, people who never went to college are expected to pay for the dead beats that did, criminals are to be treated with respect and the victims are to be ignored, and we really need to get this; The left isn't just willing to destroy America, it's been their goal from the late 1800's.  

In this thoughtful essay The West Declares War on Itself By J.B. Shurk who starts out with the clear and understandable observation:

For Americans who cherish self-government, free speech, and personal liberty, the reality of today's America is jolting.  

The author then goes on to ask:

• How can Hillary Clinton's campaign, Barack Obama's FBI, and an assortment of sordid Intelligence Community actors conspire to frame Donald Trump as a Russian spy in a veritable coup d'état without suffering any legal consequences?  
• How can the IRS target Americans for their political viewpoints and be rewarded with bigger budgets and more armed agents?  
• How can the FBI illegally spy on a presidential campaign, target parents concerned over the content of their children's public education, and label half of America "extremists," and not be disbanded?  
• How can the Department of (in)Justice seek to punish Americans' speech and religious faith as impermissible expressions of "hate" and deprive Americans of their Second Amendment protections without being immediately defunded as a threat to the Bill of Rights?  
• How can the State Department lecture regimes around the world about violently quelling political dissent and violating human rights when thousands of Americans who protested for fair elections have been persecuted as "insurrectionists," denied impartial justice, and imprisoned for having "incorrect" beliefs?  These are not the actions of any "free" nation and are shockingly antithetical to America's foundations in liberty.

All absolutely valid questions.  Questions he goes on to answer:

From this perspective, it seems apparent that the American government has not so quietly declared war on the American people..........When ordinary citizens lose control over institutions, those institutions gain control over the people.  Western politicians pay lip service to public ideals, while Western institutions act independently from — and often in defiance of — the public's wishes.  This is why Western domestic and foreign policies appear so schizophrenic today.  It is why Americans who adore freedom instead find increasingly insidious forms of tyranny.  And it is why Westerners who reject Soviet-style or Chinese forms of communism will be forced to stand against Western-style oppression, too.  

 

The left is destroying the American culture.  Part II will deal with the Democrat's destruction of America's cities.