Sorry, But There Is No Bottom
It’s quite disheartening to see that no, crime and deteriorating conditions aren’t enough to affect political change.
It seems in Chicago, 2020’s “Summer of Love” never ended:
https://twitter.com/rawsalerts/status/1647457314494971910
Granted, this is something which pre-dates 2020. Chicago hasn’t only been one of the country’s more violent cities, but smaller-scale instances of civil unrest occurred prior to that tumultuous moment three years ago.
Here’s a rundown on events from a local Chicago news station:
On Friday night, hundreds of young people went to 31st Street Beach, running around and lighting a fire. They brazenly chased police cars and smashed a window on a squad car. A 14-year-old was shot nearby.
On Saturday night, hundreds of teenagers went to Chicago's Loop. They tried to get into Millennium Park and ran up and down Michigan Avenue. They jumped on cars and a CTA bus. One woman told FOX 32 Chicago that people jumped on her windshield, smashed it, and then attacked her husband as he sat inside the vehicle.
By the end of Saturday night, two teenagers had been shot. Chicago police said six juveniles and nine adults were arrested.
Should anyone worry about what happened here? Not according to current Mayor Lori Lightfoot:
https://twitter.com/ChicagoContrar1/status/1648014530444664855
Human masses rampaging entire city blocks. Attacking cops. A shooting. Assaulting motorists. But don’t call it mayhem! Lest you think it really wasn’t that bad, watching this compilation of videos from that night. It was intolerably bad, just short of a full-blown riot:
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1648509759132409861
Incoming Mayor Brandon Johnson, despite having an opportunity to change the city’s course, appears to be on the same page as the person he’s replacing:
"In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend," Johnson said in a statement. "It is unacceptable and has no place in our city. However, it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities."
Johnson said there needs to be a comprehensive approach to these sorts of problems.
"Our city must work together to create spaces for youth to gather safely and responsibly, 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."
There’s always a caveat, isn’t there? It’s never enough to just say, “This is unacceptable, we’re going to stop it.” There always needs to be a qualifier, as if these leaders feel like they need to defend the honor of the criminals. The question is, why? Is the job of city leaders not to provide for public safety and to stand by those victimized by crime? Why do these leaders feel the need to instead tell us what we’re supposed to think of these people, as if that’s just as important as keeping their residents and taxpayers safe?
It even led one progressive Democrat to question if the city government is serious about holding law-breakers accountable:
https://twitter.com/dewforpolitics/status/1648001944781193216
Here’s the thing - accountability only exists in the presence of a consensus on the rules and a shared set of values. That doesn’t exist in America today. What you see in Chicago are people who think the rules don’t apply to them and leaders at the highest levels, including the mayor, who make excuses for them. The idea that these youths are pillaging the city and terrorizing people because they have nothing better to do very loudly declares that is a cultural problem and that problem isn’t something we can fix, not through political means. Accountability requires these youths to feel like they’ve done something wrong, but I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say the only thing they feel is that they’ve got nothing to lose, except perhaps their lives.
The idea that “opportunities” (a meaningless term if there ever was one) are what stands between Chicago and anarchy is basically another way of holding the city hostage to these violent youths. Not to mention it’s far from the answer - you can give people all the opportunities in the world, but it won’t matter unless they value something greater, like family, faith, or even their well-being, to hold onto and make the best of the opportunities they’ve been given. “The beatings will continue until you give us well-paying jobs” isn’t a solution, it’s a threat. We should never give into it.
Really, does anyone think you’re going to restore order to this by giving these people something else to do? What makes anyone believe they’re capable of being productive members of society given the way they treat other people?
https://twitter.com/CWBChicago/status/1647998114542829571
If you didn’t watch the video and I understand if you didn’t, that’s a couple being randomly attacked. Both survived the incident and were later interviewed:
https://twitter.com/AmericaRpts/status/1648411214538739712
I found their reactions to be underwhelming. Maybe the benefit of time and a few good nights’ sleep cooled them off, and I certainly don’t want to feel outraged on their behalf. But it’s become all too common where victims of this sort of violence, like the woman, regard it the same way as they’d regard a natural disaster - just something that “happens” which we all need to put up with or stay out of the way from. The man, judging from his swearing, seems a bit angrier about the ordeal, especially since he suffered injuries as a result. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but overall, their reaction seems subdued and controlled, as if they don’t take what happened to them all that personally.
I hate having to bring race into the mix, but face it - if the mob was White, would they be as calm, and detached about the whole matter? Or would they have been angry and despondent, demanding justice? I doubt the attack would’ve been regarded as merely random then, nor would it have been treated like a natural disaster. A moral panic would’ve ensued and we’d have a litany of academics, journalists, politicians (including the president) calling for the complete upending of the country over the incident. By the way, has President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris had anything to say about the events in Chicago? If they did, it sure was quiet.
Meanwhile, nobody’s expecting the individuals who comprise these mobs to change their behavior, while the rest of us need to adjust our behavior and lives around it. There exists a concerted effort at all levels to control the narrative, to shape how the public thinks and talks about the incident. We all know why, but it gets tiring - can we just not look at what’s happening and judge it for what it is? This isn’t an interpersonal spat between two individuals, this is masses of people wreaking havoc on the city. How much more context is needed? How many “lenses” do we need to view this event through before we can point out things that ought to be obvious to everyone?
The answer is likely to upset many people: not only can this go on for a very long time, it’s likely to get worse. Scott Greer, in the latest on his own Substack, explained how the election of Mayor-Elect Johnson proves, at least in Chicago, voters are willing to double-down on the kind of politics that throw fuel on the fire:
Johnson represents the future of urban leadership in America. The mayors, district attorneys, and councilors who run these cities don’t care about crime. They just want to stick up for the interests of non-whites and damn the interests of whites. This proves to be a winning message in many major cities.
Chicago is a city plagued by crime and poor governance. It’s why Lori Lightfoot didn’t even make it to the mayoral run-off. That battle pitted Johnson against Paul Vallas, a white moderate who promised to restore law and order. Johnson defeated Vallas with the promise of something else. “This is about Black labor versus white wealth. That’s what this battle is about,” the black politician said at one debate. “This is about providing community access to the very public accommodations which Black people fought for, especially after emancipation. It’s what the descendants of slaves in this room are fighting for: public education, public transportation, affordable housing, healthcare and access to jobs.”
That appeal to racial socialism triumphed over the appeal to law and order. Johnson won by uniting minorities together against the city’s remaining white population. Non-white Chicagoans care more about the promise of more wealth redistribution than they do about cops arresting more criminals who look like themselves.
It’s worth mentioning the election was decided by less than five percentage points, but that’s still a decisive win. Interestingly, Vallas garnered more votes than Johnson in the first round and polls showed Vallas ahead in the run-up to the second round. According to a Brookings Institution report, Vallas also ran as a moderate, while Johnson was very clearly the radical. Conventional wisdom holds radicals tend to be election-losers while voters seek moderation in politics, but that wasn’t the case in Chicago.
The Brookings Institution report notes Johnson was buoyed by what has become, nationwide, a formidable political coalition [bold mine]:
Although exit polls are not yet available, preliminary results from Chicago’s 50 wards paint a clear picture. Johnson racked up nearly 80% of the Black vote on Chicago’s South Side and ran strongly among white liberals on the Lakefront. Vallas prevailed in the mostly white working-class wards in the Northwest and Southwest sections of the city, but his margins were not large enough to overcome Johnson’s margins elsewhere. With no Hispanic candidate on the ballot, turnout in the Hispanic-majority wards was reportedly anemic. Overall turnout, though, was higher than usual, which the Johnson campaign attributes in part to a surge among younger voters. We do not yet have enough information to confirm this assessment.
In case the irony is lost on anyone, it is precisely these very White liberals whose wealth would be targeted if Johnson had his way. I’m not convinced the real dividing line in our country is race, but there’s no question Johnson, like Lightfoot before him, resorted to bluntly racial appeals in order to galvanize Black voters, who were likely to vote overwhelmingly for him, anyway. It’s just interesting that White liberals are supporting someone who very clearly views people like them as part of the problem.
All this is to say that U.S. politics in general are likely to trend in the same direction across the country. Again, conventional wisdom holds that when conditions get bad enough, people opt for a change in leadership, but I think we have plenty of evidence from across the decades proving this is flat-out untrue. Violent cities like Chicago have been controlled exclusively by the Democratic Party for years, but nobody in these cities ever seem to ever consider voting for someone else. A big part of the story is that the considerable Black populations of these cities vote reflexively for Democrats and will vote for radical candidates like Brandon Johnson as long as he makes the right racial appeals and is, of course, Black himself. White leftists, if only to signal virtue, will also vote for such candidates. This is a doubling-down of the status quo.
It’s quite disheartening to see that no, crime and deteriorating conditions aren’t enough to affect political change. Certainly, there are people who will vote based on whether leaders are providing the basics of civilization, such as safety and stability, but there are lots and lots of people who’ll vote based on other considerations, including racial identity and making sure the “racists” get their comeuppance. In fact, I’m not sure anyone really votes on things like safety and stability anymore. It’s all about signalling - to your tribe, to your sense of self-righteousness.
It bears repeating, but not only is crime a national security issue, crime will be the extent of most Americans’ exposure to the internal conflict that already seems to be here. If you still don’t think anarcho-tyranny is real, just look at Chicago. They can’t even bring themselves to condemn very obvious anarchy and violence, the sort of thing the government is supposed to act as a bulwark against, and even when they do, it’s a whole lot of qualifying and vaccilating on behalf of the forces of anarchy and terror. Worse, far too many, like the victims of the mob-attack caught on video, seem oblivious as to how serious the situation is. These aren’t just misguided youth who need state and society to show them a better time. This is a serious breakdown in culture and the rule of law. Chicago might’ve been hanging on by a thread this whole time, but it seems as though that final thread is on the verge of parting completely.
Where’s this all leading? Don’t get your hopes too up or too down. Things will undoubtedly get worse in places like Chicago, but there won’t be some big tipping point, either. At least, I wouldn’t bet on it. I keep thinking about the 1992 Los Angeles riots, perpetrated by mostly Blacks in response to the acquittal of the four police officers who beat Rodney King into submission a year earlier. Due to a variety of reasons, including demographic transition, the Black population of Los Angeles declined following the riots. Many of the communities that’d been predominantly Black for generations are now majority-Hispanic/Latino and have also become safer since that time.
To quote a line of dialogue from the movie Blade Runner, “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” I’m not suggesting we might see a decline in the Black population of Chicago, but I’m saying that any major blow-up on the level of the ‘92 Los Angeles would likely be to the detriment of Blacks, to say nothing of the other residents of the city. Much of this is due to the fact the riots impacted the predominantly Black areas of the city most. Even if Chicago doesn’t see a major riot, deteriorating conditions will still hit Black areas the hardest. You hurt those closest to you the most.
The impact on other areas and people matter, too. After all, they are, if nothing else, part of the city’s tax base and responsible for much of its commerce. Nobody has to live under Chicago-like conditions if they don’t want to. If they decide not to and leave, the city will manage, certainly. But if anyone thinks it couldn’t get any worse, they’re dead wrong. And there will be nobody left to blame, except for political leadership and the people who voted for them and remain in the city.
Rod Dreher, in his own write-up on the events in Chicago, says:
But what happens to a society in which it is not allowed to talk about its problems for fear of violating taboos? A Chicago native friend texted after the weekend’s events there, and the incoming mayor’s remarks, that there will be an exodus out of the city, and Cook County, and even the State of Illinois. He added, “And now, is there really space for people to think freely and debate ways to address this? No. Certainly not in Chicago.”
People will keep moving away, keep segregating, keep atomizing. The problems will only get worse, because we can’t talk about how to address them. Elites — white and otherwise — who are shielded by their money and privilege from the harsh realities of crime and dysfunction will continue to push pseudo-solutions that do nothing but assuage their own consciences, and offer narrative confirmation. They want to believe the worst threats to black Americans are racist white cops and bigoted elderly white homeowners with guns. It might be calming to think so, but the data indicate otherwise. Very many Americans understand this perfectly well, but they can’t say so publicly for fear of losing their jobs, or worse. So they express their views in other ways. Mostly, they move. They re-segregate.
At some point, you must conclude that nobody wants to fix anything because holding onto grievances is more satisfying. This is why more time is spent policing the speech and thoughts of others than policing their own communities. Part of what makes the turn-around seen in El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele remarkable is the lack of excuses and, more importantly, lack of blame.
In a place like Chicago, people come up with a million reasons they can’t crack down on crime and disorder or, as do officials like Lori Lightfoot and Brandon Johnson, even our own president, come up with ways to deflect the problem, thereby turning it into an excuse for inaction. That’s not what happened in El Salvador. A problem was identified and all efforts were made to correct that problem instead of coming up with reasons for not doing so or choosing to blame societal factors or even outside influences (namely, the United States, the world’s favorite scapegoat).
To paraphrase something Dreher said a week or so ago, I’m not sure what’s more worrisome: the thought that this could all lead to some kind of blow-up, or that it never will. At least in Chicago, it appears “never will” is the answer. I suppose, in our lifetimes, we’ll learn if Chicago holds any lessons for the country as a whole. I have a feeling it already does.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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