Chicago Politics in Alive and Well

Welcome to the Machine,

Chicago Politics is Alive and Well

My wife and I used to regularly go to Chicago for long weekends. We loved catching Michael Jordan’s Bulls, Ryne Sandberg’s Cubs, and the occasional Blackhawks game. We were regulars at classic rock concerts, which I’d been attending for nearly 40 years. Buddy Guy’s blues club was always a must, and Broadway shows were a favorite too—Phantom of the Opera still tops my list. I slept soundly during Wicked – the wife’s favorite. And no trip to Chicago was ever complete without dinner at Ron’s of Japan.

But about ten years ago, something changed. We stopped going. Don’t get me wrong—we still go to concerts, plays, and nice restaurants. Just not in Chicago. Why? Because we don’t feel safe there.

Scoreboard, Chicago: 27 shot, 6 dead last weekend. One of them was five years old, killed inside his own home. The weekend before: 23 shot, 2 dead. Before that: 34 shot, 5 dead. Sadly, it’s not breaking news anymore. It’s just another Monday in Chicago.

Fresh off deploying the National Guard to calm D.C.’s weekend chaos – over the furious shrieks of Mayor Muriel Bowser – President Trump now hints Chicago might be next. That sent Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker rushing to a microphone to declare the city “safe.” Safe? While a child’s blood is being bleached out of a stairwell? Pritzker’s big plan: sue Trump if the Guard shows up. As if another Democrat lawsuit is going to scare off the bullets – or Trump.

Mayor Brandon Johnson wasn’t far behind, parroting the same script: outrage, indignation, promises to sue. Same noise, same emptiness. Johnson, if the Guard isn’t your answer, then what the hell is? Not another task force with a shiny logo. Not another bloated pilot program. Not another podium speech. Results are what matter. Lives saved. Blood not spilled.

Translated from Politician to English, here’s what they’re really saying: We will defend our right to fail—loudly, on your dime. We cannot let Trump succeed, even if it means mothers keep burying their children. Only a big-city Democrat could look at a child-size casket and decide the real emergency is Trump.

Chicago’s crime problem isn’t a mystery. The same gangs have owned the same corners for years. Here’s a plan: pick ten “hot” blocks. Flood them on weekends. Put up the numbers: shootings down, guns seized, crews indicted, witnesses alive because you protected them. No numbers. No victory lap. Spare us the sanctimony.

Because right now, while Pritzker and Johnson bellow about lawsuits, funerals are multiplying. While they fight Trump, the real enemy is the 9mm at the corner liquor store. This is governance by slogan: Spin. Sue. Sleep. Repeat. And it isn’t working, boys.

Don’t want the Guard? Fine. Then stop pretending the Guard is the scandal. The scandal is a five-year-old who never made it to Monday. Until Chicago’s leaders trade litigation for law and order, the scoreboard will keep climbing, the funerals will keep coming, and the spotlight will keep falling on another grieving parent.

Meanwhile, the chorus line at City Hall belts its favorite number: “Everything is fine.”

It isn’t.

In the immortal words of David Gilmour of Pink Floyd: “Welcome to the Machine.”