Earning a nickname stemming from one of the least stable and most violent “countries” on Earth is a feat unto itself, but to have 74 people shot (14 killed) in one weekend and pretend like it isn’t happening. That’s a display of connotative dissonance worthy of the cope Olympics. Expect Mayor Lori Lightfoot to take home the gold.
The victims of last weekend’s crime wave range from children as young as five to the city’s own police commander and a sergeant. Fourth of July weekends have been historically brutal in the city of Chicago, the police superintendent going as far as to call it the most critical weekend of the year. 15 particularly dangerous areas were granted heightened security as officers were forced to cancels their days off and work 12-hour shifts in a city rocked by riots and anti-police rhetoric for over a year.
In just this year alone, Chicago has sustained 326 murders. That total is all the more mortifying when you compare that to last year’s numbers and see that 326 is only a 1% increase from this time last year. 2019 saw 35% less death than this year, but this was prior to lock-downs and a floored economy, mind you.
In an ultimate case of irony, while many leftist activists have pushed for the defunding and, in more extreme instances, abolition of police all together to fund affordable housing, healthcare, and other projects that government has no business meddling in any way, a situation has been created where you would need those things in spades now. Less police mean more crime; which means more people needing healthcare, which means people spending money on that care, which means they don’t have money for other needs, which means more crime to get money for those needs. That is but one of hundreds of examples of cause and effect that politicians and the intelligentsia are unable to work out in their heads – assuming all of this isn’t on purpose.
