Fortress of Failure

If you live in a place long enough, you get used to its dysfunction in a way that almost makes you feel at home. The only thing that forces you to see the dysfunction is time spent away, and the recognition that things are not only that way the world over, but it is better they they aren’t. To a certain degree, all cities have walls. The city that I live in part of the year, Lucca Italy, actually has walls. Walls that envelop the city and have existed for centuries, over 4 miles in length around the expanse of the entire city. The people who live outside the walls of the city say the the Lucchese tend to be so suspicious and set in their ways that the “walls are in their head.” There is some of that for sure.

But, the more time I have spent away from the city of my birth, Chicago, the more I see that the while the walls are invisible, they are far more impenetrable than anything that surrounds Lucca. The majority of Chicagoans spend the greater part of their life in and around the city or suburbs, and while a few travel, the majority would never think of leaving. There is an entire mythology that has gone up around the city. First, that it is a friendly city. Second that it is a down to earth, working class city. People are real. The city is built on neighborhoods, and although there is a measure of corruption, it is there to hold everything into place. Oh, we love our architecture which we are proud of, and we love the Chicago Blues. And our famous deep dish pizza, and our sports teams, although they tend to be lovable losers. We’re not like those New Yorkers who are snooty, and we stick up for each other.

I have been away from Chicago now for 30 years and when I return a few times a year, there has been such a perceptible change in the city that this mythology seems like a lie bordering on absurdity. Chicago has the highest murder rate in the country. The inner city schools are absolute garbage. They are not only not safe, it is impossible to learn anything. The neighborhoods on the West Side of Chicago have been unsafe for 50 years and are the epicenter of the Heroin Highway. The West Side and the South Side of Chicago have been unsafe for 50 years. The industry is long gone, and the taxes in the city have made it virtually impossible for any kind of industry to move in and revitalize the neighborhoods. The people are so far from friendly that it is laughable. Wrigleyville consists of brain-dead yuppies who will stay there for a few years before moving out to the suburbs. Lincoln Park consists of rich professionals who like to pretend they are open minded and liberal but have not given two shits about the murder and crime in the city for nearly a century unless, of course, it affects them. The politicians, regardless of race, are corrupt to the core. Race hustlers benefit off segregation, and the suburbs, which are increasingly left of center show their concern by placing obnoxious lawn signs on their property to show how much “they care.” The Chicago schools are, and have always been a caste system. If you are born poor and black in Chicago, your only chance of success is to get the hell out. The place is a crab bucket.

When we come home for holidays, relatives and friends ask us when we are moving back to Chicago. But why the hell would anyone move back to this cesspool? Moreover, why would anyone stay? For generations the Irish mafia ran Chicago and doled out jobs and favors through patronage. Now the blacks have stepped into the role that the Irish used to have, and are as crooked and every bit as racist as the Irish once were. Only the Irish did a helluva lot better job of taking care of their people. According to WBEZ, the median net wealth for white families in Chicago is $210,000 a year. For black families the number is $0. That’s right. $0. This is despite the fact that the Chicago City Council is 40% black. So if black Chicagoans think they are better off by electing black representatives, guess again. In 1963, black families had about 53% of the wealth of white families. That isn’t good, but it’s a whole lot better than $0. In 1960, 78% of the kids born in black families had two parents. Today, the number has climbed in recent years to 44% up from the depths of the 20% where it used to be. Meanwhile, corruption cases mount, the murder rate mounts, and Chicago politicians refuse to ask for help.

White Lakeshore liberals in Chicago are about the dumbest animals alive, with the possible exception of North Shore Chicagoans. Lakeshore liberals treat voting for the liberal candidate the way that mafia hit men treat the confessional booth. They live in segregated neighborhoods and ignore the horrific violence and murder on the south and west sides, but believe that voting for a liberal candidate as clueless as they are absolves them of all guilt. But in addition to this obnoxious behavior they don’t even see the corruption right under their nose. They ignore the fact that Chicago and Illinois politicians don’t want the Feds to come in and arrest thugs because the thugs will talk, and they will likely point the finger back to the corrupt politicians who are benefit from the massive corruption, the drug trafficking and the human trafficking. They are gullible enough to believe that their governor and mayor are “taking a stand against Donald Trump” in denying safe neighborhoods to working class black families. They are stupid enough to believe that the teachers unions are “taking a stand against Donald Trump” by continuing to serve up the same shit sandwich of violence and poor pedagogy that they have delivered for half a century. Lakeshore liberals are not only disconnected and ignorant, they are downright stupid. Corrupt politicians in Chicago at least pay the busloads of voters from the west and south side to vote for them, but how could anyone be so incredibly dim-witted as to voluntarily vote for continued corruption under the auspices of a Marxist cow pie.

Add to this the cold weather, the mountains of snow, the pathetic sports teams and greedy owners who have no intention of winning, the enabling sports writers who still have not stood up to Jerry Reinsdorf and called him out for breaking up the greatest basketball team in sports history. The colorful ethnic neighborhoods are disappearing, and the restaurants are becoming Manhattanized, overpriced, pretentious nonsense. The blues clubs have all but disappeared and the only people who still bother to go are Japanese tourists. Everyone else is gone, Willie Kent, Smoky Smothers, Robert Covington, Son Seals, Chess Records, Muddy and the Wolf, they will all soon be completely forgotten.

Chicago, you don’t care about each other. You never did. You’re not a city of Big Shoulders. You haven’t been for a century. If you want to be a city again, admit your mistakes, ask for Federal help and clean the drugs out of your neighborhood. Fix your schools. Make it possible for a black kid to make it out alive. Hold your school board accountable. Hold your politicians accountable, and if they are corrupt throw their asses in jail. Encourage families to stay together, and for girls to wait until marriage to have children. And if you have children, take care of them. Get every last street gang and drug dealer off your streets. Washington D.C. has proven it is possible. Swallow your pride and make the streets safe for everyone, not just pompous white liberals. Hold your sports owners accountable. Demand excellence, from your schools, your politicians, but most of all from yourselves.

When I see it, I’ll believe it. But for now, I don’t miss Chicago, not even one bit. And until you start to show some self-respect, no one will respect you again.