OPINION:
With the continuing disasters of Democrat-run cities, it would be easy to become numb to the chaos and violence rolling through some of America’s most historic metropolises. But that is not the answer; silence and apathy are never the answer.
Now is the time, in fact, to look directly at those who facilitate these arenas of death. There are liars corralling their victims (those previously known as constituents) into dumpster fires that used to be gleaming symbols of American opportunity.
Now, galloping through her urban war zone, one mayor of a Hell Town, USA is blaming racism, sexism, the courts, COVID, and whatever other bell might toll for her town’s river of blood in a vain and ghoulish attempt to protect herself. Her name is Lori Lightfoot.
Ms. Lightfoot is the mayor of Chicago. Her town is now what one of its own alderman characterized as a “war zone,” and for good reason. Fox News reported, “Chicago Alderman Anthony Napolitano reacted to the violent Fourth of July weekend in his city on Monday, calling the area a ‘war zone,’ and slammed local leaders, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot, for the increase in crime. ‘We are averaging over 6,000 people shot over the last 18 months,’ … Napolitano also slammed Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx, who he referred to as ‘by far the worst in the nation,’ for the increase in crime.
“He said that when criminals get arrested, ‘they’re out within a couple hours because we have the worst state’s attorney in the country, [who] wants to prosecute nobody’…” reported Fox News.
Last Thursday as the 4th of July holiday weekend was about to get underway, in unrelated acts of violence, a 1-month-old baby girl and a 9-year-old girl were both shot in the head. And that was only the monstrous beginning.
As of 5 p.m. Monday, July 5th, the Chicago Sun-Times reports 99 people were shot including 11 children, and 17 people killed. According to a data site devoted to tracking Chicago violence, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times shooting and homicide trackers indicate year-to-date there have been 2082 people shot and of those 378 killed in the city. Lives taken on that scale make it clear the Windy City should instead be dubbed the Bloody City.
Enter Ms. Lightfoot who has a veritable list of reasons why the city is going to hell and her constituents are being murdered in the streets, none having to do with her so-called leadership. Having lost her conscience on the road to the mayor’s office, she decided deflecting and blaming is the smart thing to do when your citizens are massacred every weekend. Leaning on the oldest and most predictable tropes in the Democratic arsenal—she charged criticism aimed at her is “99 percent” due to her being a Black woman.
So racism and sexism are responsible for all that bloodshed and misery, and Ms. Lightfoot is somehow the victim proving even malignant narcissism can sometimes be sloppily obvious.
This is similar to her antic last month, as crime and violence was surging, announcing her decision to no longer talk to White reporters because of “the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of Chicago media outlets, editorial boards, the political press corps and, yes, the city hall press corps…”
The claim that White reporters couldn’t fairly cover Black politicians and that she didn’t have time to “educate” them on “implicit bias” was decried as unconstitutional and also deeply unfair. Assigning inherent racism to people simply because of their skin color also struck many as odd considering Ms. Lightfoot goes home every night to her wife—a White woman.
Unless, of course, what the mayor was doing with her now abandoned decree was attempting to distract from the ongoing carnage of people of color happening under her watch.
As this human tragedy unfolds in Chicago, it’s clear the mayor decided to engage in stunts to win news cycles. Her focus is on deflecting and distracting the media from covering life and death issues and questioning her competence by using the Democrats’ go-to strategy—ringing the bell of identity politics and shouting “racist!” from the mountaintop.
The irony is ghoulish and shocking—the Democrats deliberately divide society using identity politics, convincing their targets—their own constituents—that their only hope is to once again hand their city and lives over to those same Democrats. And when their malevolent leftist policies and malignant narcissism result in a river of blood, the Democrat in charge of Chicago uses the very same scourge of identity politics rhetoric to protect herself from blame.
Democratic policies and attitudes end up destroying people’s lives, and then those same divisive narratives are used by the perpetrators to avoid responsibility. We know there is racism and sexism in society but using those serious issues to distract is like callously using regular, innocent Americans as human shields.
Unfortunately, Ms. Lightfoot is not an anomaly, she is exactly what the Democratic Party has become. Democratic malevolence is a nonpartisan catastrophe and those with a conscience must end their silence and stop looking away.
• Tammy Bruce, author, host at Fox Nation and contributor at Fox News, is a radio talk-show host.
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