A Middle East terrorist attack on your correspondent is no match for rising state sponsored equity terrorism at home
A few days ago, your trusty correspondent went hiking with family and friends in a canyon less than a kilometer from the Lebanese border in Israel.
We heard two loud explosions that I wanted to believe sounded like a large rock slide crashing into a mountain wall.
But I knew better.
The actual booms were the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system intercepting an initial rocket fired into Israel from Lebanon. (Yes, the same Iron Dome that Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wanted to stop funding.)
Minutes later, our group — including two children — emerged into a clearing and landed a front row seat to the true fireworks as Iron Dome intercepted what I counted was over 10 additional missiles directly above our head (over 30 were fired in total and 25 were intercepted).
It was a real-life, daytime Fourth of July watching the projectiles and the adjusting flight path of the interceptors (I’ll never forget their red glow and the contrails dancing across the sky).
We sheltered next to the side of an abandoned old ruin and captured some great video of an incident I hope never to see again so close up, but was utterly thrilling to observe. Fortunately, no one died in the attack, although a nearby building took a hit and at least one serious injury occurred.
Within minutes, half a dozen friends and family, including those from Chicago, began texting.
“Where are you in Israel?”
“Are you OK?”
“Oh my G-d – you’re there?”
The truth is we were fine. And we were deeply appreciative of the outreach from friends and family.
The irony, however, was not lost on me. The reality is that the truth of those who called to check in on us from Chicago were, statistically, at far greater risk of harm than I was following the Hamas attack.
During the same week in Chicago, hundreds of crimes occurred, including murders, shootings, car jackings, armed robberies and high-speed car accidents that came as a direct result of a criminal mindset in which those who commit such acts know there is less than a one percent chance of getting caught per incident and even less of a chance of being prosecuted.
Curious about the actual numbers for homicide clearance (about the only crime that gets detectives assigned)? Check out Heyjackass.
As humans, we generally do a miserable job at calculating risks and returns.
In Israel, I knew I hit the bad luck lottery. To provide perspective, our friends who we traveled with — citizens born in Israel — have never heard rocket fire from outside of their home, which has a shelter, albeit with one exception (these friends are over 50 and 60 years old).
And the region I was in had not been attacked like this for over 12 years while terrorist activity has waned (until now).
But besides terrorism, virtually no other violent crimes are committed in Israel.
On the Northside of Chicago, the reality that the chance of something violent happening to someone is much, much greater.
Yet people don’t calculate the risks.
For calculating personal crime risk, compound interest serves as a great framework and analogy.
Most people don’t think about the extent of how numbers compound over a period of time, which is actually really hard to do without a calculator because it doesn’t make sense intuitively (at least I know it's challenging for me, and I do numbers for a living).
People notoriously ignore the fact that something modest can grow into something massive as returns compound.
It only takes time, patience and starting early.
Save every penny you can to put $100K away by age 25 and you’ll have roughly $5 million by 70 if you don’t put another dollar in based on average S&P 500 returns over the past 100 years (and if you put away $200K by age 25, you’ll have around $10 million by 70).
It’s the same with crime. Run the state-sponsored terrorism numbers in Chicago (which by now, hopefully most can agree, is what the new progressive religion has actually turned into).
If we add up the thousands of annual murders, attempted murders, homicides, armed assaults, car jackings, home robberies and other violent crimes in a given year north of Roosevelt, and then multiply by a factor of three-times as a baseline because most crimes go unrecorded (I’m being conservative — this multiplier is actually low), the numbers hit five figures.
Let’s call it 15,000 violent Northside annual crimes as a baseline, which is, if anything, conservative.
Next, add a 20 percent interest annual multiplier because “Let’s Go Brandon” will require a more equitable distribution of social workers responding to 911 calls and will have an estimated 800-1000 fewer police officers than are currently on the job, particularly if Johnson fails to hire a Chicago insider as his next Superintendent of Police.
Over a five-year period, the conservative math gets us to 130,000 violent crimes on the Northside.
For all my friends who remain in Chicago, I would bet money on it that during the coming years of an initial Johnson administration, something violent will happen to you, your family or close friends.
It’s impossible to avoid the law of big numbers.
Said another way: What is your risk adjusted return for staying or leaving based on the actual math?
Considering your personal risk, also consider that the Northside has no Iron Dome to combat social justice equity missiles hurled at your “privilege.”
Heck, in this case I would go so far as to suggest that what’s happening in Chicago (and other progressive-led cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and New York) is nothing short of state-sponsored terrorism from within.
Run the math that Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson and Kim Foxx will pursue by design as the social justice dynamic duo.
And be safe out there as long as you can.
Inshallah.
