Chicago trying to surpass SF in race toward lawless anarchy
Dec 1, 2021 18:22:54 GMT -5
Post by shalom on Dec 1, 2021 18:22:54 GMT -5
Chicago trying to surpass San Francisco in a race toward lawless anarchy
December 1, 2021
By Thomas Lifson
Two American cities, San Francisco and Chicago, seem to be competing to see which one can descend farther into the dystopia of gang rule, with honest citizens held captive to anarchy in the streets, afraid to leave their homes and finding nowhere to buy life's essentials if they do venture out. Master filmmaker John Carpenter got it wrong when he predicted which American cities would fail in his 1980s and '90s dystopian fantasies Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.
Monica Showalter covered the descent of the City by the Bay yesterday in her piece titled "The Fall of San Francisco." Today it is Chicago's turn, and even though I have lived in the San Francisco area for over three decades, I must say that Chicago is making an impressive sprint toward hell, leaving San Francisco in a cloud of bloody dust.
When it comes to retail theft, both cities have seen their premier shopping districts, North Michigan Avenue and Union Square, devastated by looters. In fact, while S.F. has recently seen storefronts boarded up, as Monica reported yesterday, over a quarter of all retail space downtown is now vacant, and on Michigan Avenue, where looting was extensive in the George Floyd memorial riots, lots of prominent retail space is going begging.
Not that the retail pillaging is over there. Shoplifters heisted 13 grand over the weekend from two beauty parlors.
But it is the realm of homicide where Chicago makes its case for pre-eminence. In what the corporate media would trumpet as a "grim milestone" if Republicans somehow could be blamed, Cook County yesterday surpassed 1,000 homicides for the year. That's in a county with 5.15 million people. San Francisco's much smaller population of 875,000 has generated only 41 homicides this year so far. If it were to match Cook County's rate, it would have to more than quadruple the death toll.
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December 1, 2021
By Thomas Lifson
Two American cities, San Francisco and Chicago, seem to be competing to see which one can descend farther into the dystopia of gang rule, with honest citizens held captive to anarchy in the streets, afraid to leave their homes and finding nowhere to buy life's essentials if they do venture out. Master filmmaker John Carpenter got it wrong when he predicted which American cities would fail in his 1980s and '90s dystopian fantasies Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.
Monica Showalter covered the descent of the City by the Bay yesterday in her piece titled "The Fall of San Francisco." Today it is Chicago's turn, and even though I have lived in the San Francisco area for over three decades, I must say that Chicago is making an impressive sprint toward hell, leaving San Francisco in a cloud of bloody dust.
When it comes to retail theft, both cities have seen their premier shopping districts, North Michigan Avenue and Union Square, devastated by looters. In fact, while S.F. has recently seen storefronts boarded up, as Monica reported yesterday, over a quarter of all retail space downtown is now vacant, and on Michigan Avenue, where looting was extensive in the George Floyd memorial riots, lots of prominent retail space is going begging.
Not that the retail pillaging is over there. Shoplifters heisted 13 grand over the weekend from two beauty parlors.
But it is the realm of homicide where Chicago makes its case for pre-eminence. In what the corporate media would trumpet as a "grim milestone" if Republicans somehow could be blamed, Cook County yesterday surpassed 1,000 homicides for the year. That's in a county with 5.15 million people. San Francisco's much smaller population of 875,000 has generated only 41 homicides this year so far. If it were to match Cook County's rate, it would have to more than quadruple the death toll.
Continued at link