Goodbye, Chicago
That's Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot above, making a last-minute pitch before the city votes on her re-election. It's not looking good. As the beloved Chicago columnist John Kass recovers from open heart surgery, he turned over his website to his fishing buddy "Steve the Pilot" to write about why he (the fishing buddy) left the Windy City. It's a must read. Steve was born and raised in Chicago, lived almost all his life there, raised his kids there, was involved in the civic life of the city, all of it. But he no longer lives there. Excerpts:
The kids went to college, the wife retired and our life of travel was beginning. I mentioned I had missed one election earlier. The only one I missed (no, I even voted when deployed for Desert Storm) was the municipal election of 2019, we were overseas before voting started and did not come back until a few days after it had taken place. I voted in the runoff and happily voted for [Mayor Lori] Lightfoot looking for that change… and boy did I get it.
He says that "Covid, George Floyd riots, crime and budgets changed everything." More:
I had many friends from high school who went on the job. The story I heard was that CPD leadership went to Lightfoot’s office with a plan to protect us, as city after city started having riots. She told them we’re not doing that plan, all the guys I know have now retired. I rode my bike to the river near Wolf Point the morning after the first riots. I have pictures of smashed windows, looted stores and an iconic photo of all the bridges up, which I wish I never had the opportunity to take. I was devastated.
The second set of looting happened much closer to home, during that so called “Summer of Love”. Friends who have places of business, not even near downtown, were on their roofs and in their stores armed and ready, since the police wouldn’t or rather were told couldn’t. That morning after, the looting was still unraveling. I was at the airport going to work in my uniform and as I watched the reporting on the TV in the terminal, I started to tear up. While I think I hid it well, I wept for my city. My dream of living in Chicago until the end was over, I knew we were going to be moving. Lightfoot had destroyed our city in under 2 years.
And:
They started burning Michigan Avenue and now there’s a lot of boarded up storefronts and no one after darkCarjackings, murders, robberies, shoplifting and mayhem in broad daylight, even in good neighborhoods. My family didn’t want to come into the city to visit us for fear of robbery or worse! The engine is dying and I don’t see it running smooth, if ever, for a very long time. They talk about investing in the neighborhoods, but without a well running engine at the core, the car doesn’t go. It’s pretty simple.
I was there when Chicago was down, I grew up through the tumult. I know even if the city does turn itself around, it’s a long road and I will be too old when it happens to enjoy it.
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There's a lot more to the column than I've quoted here, but you get the gist.
How about you? Have you moved from your city because of crime, Covid, corruption, etc.? If so, I want to know about it. What was the tipping point? Do you regret it? If you ultimately decided not to move, how come? If you can't comment here, e-mail me your story at rod -- at -- amconmag -- dot -- com, and put MOVE in the subject line.
By the way, speaking of, I have no problem with replacing the dancing clown-harpy Lightfoot, but I'm not buying the fairy tale that Chicago is "destroyed," to the contrary. Recall when liberals "destroyed" New York City not so long ago, with the help of Covid? Sure, everything is destroyed. Philadelphia, a world-famous restaurant town (as you intimately know, belly-lover) has been Destroyed, Rod, the hospitality industry is gone, there's nothing left of Penn either but Joe Biden's classified folders. Don't bother visiting Philly anymore. It has all been destroyed and it's never coming back, never reviving, never, never, it's dead, dead, dead!
Chicago, New York, Philly, Frisco, all our great centers of hedonism, learning, culture and wealth-creation... they're just rotting fish corpses floating upside down in murky muck and detritus and pondscum. In Hungary, if you ask Fidesz supporters, I'm sure they will tell you that ever since Mr. Karácsony has been the mayor of Budapest, that splendid treasure of a city has also been destroyed.
Budapest is a smoldering wreck run straight into the ground by its liberal mayor, is it? Well, can't you see with your own eyes?
Will be checking on the state of Chicago personally as time permits, thank you. I love that town, and refuse to buy the doomscape. Have you ever eaten at Emil's, by the way? Last time I visited, it was still there, but that was before Covid.
The point: most cities have stupid and evil and silly liberal mayors, and most cities are infestations of overcrowding and inefficiency, crime and disease and filth. And yet, they don't fail, for that's how they're supposed to be, tough, edgy and living dangerous.
That being said, we haven’t suffered the level of rioting/anarchy etc. that the US has. I live in Montreal, which is a very liberal city even by Canadian standards, and although there’s palpable decline on many levels, it’s neither “destroyed” nor even noticeably more dangerous.
Even in the US, words like “destroyed “ or “collapsed” are thrown about too lightly. Life goes on, remarkably enough. In fact, the real tragedy of all this socialist, woke, authoritarian and immoral madness is not so much that things collapse or are destroyed as that things manage to go on to the extent that they do. Life becomes gradually harder, more unfair, more unjust, etc. and much unnecessary suffering and decline takes place, but life goes on, and on, and on…Just look at how long it took for the Soviet Union to “collapse”, or for China to politically/economically implode, or for the giant mess that is the global economy to collapse. And yet, there’s so much more poverty and misery and depression in the world as life goes on. That’s the real tragedy.
Well, actually, the uniformity of political opinion can be irritating. Not irritating enough to move away from my children & grandchildren, though.
Just one person’s perspective. Other DC residents might see things differently.