The Trump administration decides to adopt the motto that it can change the world here in our hometown of Chicago
Back in the 60s, circa the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, the famous rock musician Graham Nash of the group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, came out with sort of an anthem for the aftermath of that epochal political event called “Chicago” with politically charged lyrics:
“Though your brother's bound and gagged And they've chained him to a chair Won't you please come to Chicago Just to sing In a land that's known as freedom How can such a thing be fair Won't you please come to Chicago For the help we can bring We can change the world
Re-arrange the world It's dying, to get better
Politicians sit yourself down, There's nothing for you here Won't you please come to Chicago For a ride
Don't ask Jack to help you Cause he'll turn the other ear Won't you please come to Chicago Or else join the other side
We can change the world, Re-arrange the world It's dying, if you believe in justice It's dying, and if you believe in freedom It's dying, let a man live his own life It's dying, rules and regulations, who needs them Open up the door Somehow people must be free
I hope the day comes soon Won't you please come to Chicago Show your face From the bottom of the ocean To the mountains of the moon Won't you please come to Chicago No one else can take your place
We can change the world, Re-arrange the world”
Etc, etc., etc.
Well, as a politician, Nash, a Brit, is a great musician.
Now a clever parodist could repurpose this song for day two of the Trump Administration.
It's going to be a tough week for Democrats. Day one is going to renew a double secular saint day for them, ruining both Martin Luther King's birthday as well as one of the days when the flag is supposed to be at half-staff for secular Saint Jimmy Carter.
Then comes the day after. Oh day of mourning, oh day of woe.
President-elect Donald Trump plans to initiate large-scale immigration raids in Chicago starting Tuesday, focusing on undocumented immigrants with criminal records. The operation is expected to involve 100 to 200 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and may extend throughout the week.
Chicago has been selected as the initial target due to its significant immigrant population and its status as a sanctuary city. Tom Homan, the incoming border czar, has indicated that other cities with large immigrant communities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Denver, and Miami, are also under consideration for future operations.
In response, Chicago’s immigrant communities are organizing emergency plans, including “Know Your Rights” workshops, to prepare residents for potential encounters with ICE agents. Additionally, the Chicago Police Department has issued advisories stating that officers will not assist in enforcing federal immigration laws unless there is an immediate public safety concern, in line with the city’s Welcoming City Ordinance and the Illinois TRUST Act.
The planned raids have prompted protests from local activists and community organizations, who argue that such actions could lead to family separations and disrupt communities. A larger protest is scheduled for January 20, coinciding with President-elect Trump’s inauguration.
Well, this ought to be interesting. Presumably, the Democrats are on high alert to this at the city, county, and state levels. Will ICE look like the Blues Brothers trying to attack the State of Illinois building as they tried to bail out the Penguins in the iconic Made in Chicago comedy starring Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi? Will there be an armed confrontation at the border of the city, county, or state? Will there be a Mexican standoff (pun intended) including a cast of 10s if not hundreds of thousands from South America as well? Time will tell, or perhaps we should say we'll see what happens as and then Trump often says.
But it is clear that the administration has picked Chicago as a poster boy as it were as an example for all the other cities in the country, such as Denver, that have threatened to use their own police forces, which normally they aren't too crazy about and seek the defund, to defend non-citizens against our own federal government. This is an ironic turn of events, to say the least, as immigrants are left to wreak havoc on citizens virtually unmolested.
In Chicago, this comes at a time when the mayor in particular is especially weakened. Brandon Johnson has very little support from his own communities, except for the teacher's union of course. What he, as do all Democrats, failed to realize is that people of color do not vote in a stereotypical, caricatured, lockstep fashion. African Americans are particularly unsupportive of Chicago’s sanctuary policy that puts non-citizens ahead of them. Many Hispanic citizens are not at all supportive of bringing in large numbers of asylum seekers without proper vetting through due process, as was the case in the first Trump administration, but was changed by virtual administrative fiat by the Biden administration as sort of a knee-jerk reaction to Trump.
Johnson’s weakness was illustrated in dollars and cents by a Chicago Tribune article over the weekend that indicated he has raised a very paltry sum of money, according to his campaign records at least, even though the campaign claims to have raised something in the neighborhood of $200,000. So, either his record keeping is bad or his fundraising is bad, or maybe both — one never knows what the truth is when one relies on quotations from Chairman Johnson.
Democrats up and down the ticket are weak at this point. Chicago's mayor has a 14 percent approval rating, the worst in recorded history. The teacher’s union president, the notorious SDG (Stacey Davis Gates), recently made appalling comments comparing the Hispanic CEO of Chicago Public Schools to a special-ed student, which is the kind of insult referring to the neediest of students in the system that one would expect Democrats to put in the mouth of Trump. She apologized rapidly of course, but her apology was not accepted by the parents of kids with disabilities who are particularly sensitive to this sort of tasteless joke.
At the county level, Toni Preckwinkle is also weak, having just had her incumbent State’s Attorney Kim Foxx forced to resign and her hand-picked successor, who was worse than Foxx if that's possible, rejected by her own party's voters. Now there's a new sheriff in town. State’s Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke is reversing the policies of her Soros-funded predecessor.
At the state level, JB Pritzker only carried Illinois for the nearly departed Joe Biden by 11 percentage points, a very disappointing result based on the recent electoral history, which showed regrettable blue dominance.
So, as they gird for battle with a very strong Trump administration full of enthusiasm and determination, Democrats are weak at every level.
Perhaps that's one reason why the Trump administration picked them out as an example. The other of course is the conservative media has made a poster boy for progressivism out of Chicago, notably Fox News, which has the highest ratings of any cable news network in the country.
So it will be fascinating TV viewing next week. We have an all-Midwest national championship in college football pitting the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame against the Ohio State Buckeyes, the inauguration (which has been moved indoors, ostensibly because of the cold but perhaps to minimize the risk of assassination by the violent left), and we have the national championship of the forces of sanctuary versus the forces of deportation.
Unlike the national championship, the bookies don't place odds on Tuesday’s events, and this writer finds it difficult to handicap as well. It seems to me that the administration is bound and determined to get this done, and history shows that betting against the power of the federal government is a poor idea, so I would have to bet that the feds will get the job done to some extent at least.
The atmosphere does have some echoes of the confederate seizure of Fort Sumter that began the civil war, although the political polarity is somewhat reversed. The notion of Illinois State Police, Cook County Sheriff's Police, and the Chicago Police Department standing against federal ICE officers is both jarring and chilling. It also raises the specter of the potential mutiny of said officers in the face of clearly legal federal efforts to enforce federal law.
So, stay tuned and watch for The Contrarian to come out with some after-action analysis of the dramatic events to come. It could be wild.
