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Home The Chicagoization of America

The Chicagoization of America

The first urban political machine was named after a fictional Indian saint unrecognized by any church and whose name, when pronounced with a Y at the end, began to strike many as Irish which only further confused the issue.

The godfather of that machine was another fictional saint who became Thomas Jefferson's vice president after successfully rigging an election using a phony water company that eventually became Chase Bank, was tried for murder after killing the first Secretary of the Treasury, was tried for treason after a conspiracy to make himself King of Mexico and plotted to convince New England to secede from the Union.

The urban political machine was born in New York but died in Chicago. It's no longer a separate entity. One of the inconveniences of urban life along with smog, muggings and excessive regulation. The urban political machine has gone national. It's here. It's there. It's everywhere.

You may disapprove of New York's soda ban or Chicago's love affair with gun control or Los Angeles' pandering to illegal aliens; but what happens in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and the rest of the country's blighted metropolises no longer stays there. You can live surrounded by ten thousand acres of wilderness on one side and the deep blue sea on the other and it will still find you because the urban political machine has gone national.

The last election was the triumph of the urban political machine. In 2008, Obama ran as a national candidate. In 2012, he ran as the figurehead for the urban political machines and let their voter turnout and voter fraud efforts carry the day. In 2008, he tried inspiring people. In 2012, he ran the same tired campaign run by a hundred corrupt mayors in a hundred cities who know that they can't lose because the game is rigged and the voters have no choice.

The urban political machine was born in New York but died in Chicago. It's no longer a separate entity from the rest of the country; one of the inconveniences of urban life along with smog, muggings and excessive regulation. The urban political machine has gone national. It's here. It's there. It's everywhere.

The machine doesn't care about individuals. It only counts bloc votes. It doesn't care about making life better for people. Its genius is for finding ways to make life worse because it knows that it has more leverage over people looking for the next meal than over people looking to buy a house in the suburbs. The political machine doesn't budget; it loots. It breaks the bank, raises taxes, drives out industries and rules over a feudal war zone sharply divided between the rich and the poor.

Reborn in fragmented cities that were multicultural before it was even a word, let alone a buzzword, the machine feeds off misery and conflict. During the 1860s, the machine sent German and Irish immigrants to riot and kill African-Americans to protest the Civil War. During the 1960s, it sent African-American mobs to riot and kill to protest the Vietnam War. The machine does not care about black or white. It only cares about power.

Power, the machine understands, is division. The machine is Machiavellian. It plots out segregated neighborhoods the way that generals deploy battalions. It promotes violence and suspicion and then meets with both sides to offer them a truce. It got big again as the frontier got small and a thousand peoples crowded into overcrowded cities speaking a babble of different languages and knowing nothing except the transplanted micro-communities that they had brought with them.

The machine built on that. It took as their leaders anyone who could deliver a bloc vote. And it traded entitlements for votes. The community leaders became barons, the machine operators became kings and everyone else living in narrow streets, meeting in bursts of gang violence at the boundaries, and voting in blocs to keep the other side from getting better access to the goodies offered by the machine, got to be the peasants.

In 2012, tribal politics became national politics. The country was divided and conquered. A campaign run on convincing a dozen separate groups to be afraid of each other and of the majority made all the difference, not in some urban slum, but from sea to shining sea. The country had at last become the city. And considering the state of the city... the state of the union does not look good.

Amnesty for illegal aliens is the natural next step for the machine. The urban machines always wanted their cities to be big. They never cared if the people could feed themselves or if they could feed them. More people meant more votes. More votes meant more money.

The bigger the big cities get, the more micro-districts can be carved out, gerrymandered by race, divided by language, and capable of carrying more and more of the treasury back home to the machine. And if the cities can get big enough, fast enough, then they can outrace their own inevitable bankruptcies to seize control of the wealth of a nation. It's the only hope of municipalities bulging with unfunded pensions, unfundable social welfare and a next generation of workers that doesn't exist.

Money is not the issue. Urban political machines have always spent money like water counting on their cities being too big to fail. Right off City Hall in New York City sits the Tweed Courthouse, named after one of the most infamous bosses of the Tammany Hall political machine. Despite being a modest building, it cost more four times more to build than London's Houses of Parliament. Today it houses the headquarters of the Department of Education which is spending the city deep into debt. That just goes to show you that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Obama's crazed spending spree is nothing new in big cities where the debt is sky high and there is no way to cover it. Detroit is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Chicago is facing a frightening pile of debt. California's municipalities are taking the entire state down with them and Bloomberg doubled New York's debt during his time as mayor.

The urban political machines don't fear bankruptcy. They embrace it. Crises create more opportunities. When people are hungry, it's childishly easy to get them to march round demanding this and that and then using this and that as cover for even bigger thefts. Bailouts and recovery programs are rich wells full of money that can be plundered.

The score was never as big and rich as it was during the first heady days of Hope and Change. The machine operators are no longer playing around with a few billion here or there for urban recovery programs. Instead they're juggling trillions. The amount of money at their disposal is mind boggling and so is their thievery.

Paying it back is not their problem. America, like Chicago, is too big to fail.

The machine operators live in a world where the people and the cities are collateral to be borrowed against. As long as they control governments, they imagine that there will always be greedy suckers ponying up a few trillion which the next generation will pay off and the one after that.

It never occurs to them that the rest of the world is filled with starving human collateral and the ruins of old cities. It never occurs to them that Chicago, Detroit and New York are just places where people made things and earned a living. And that a city without an economy is just Somalia or El Salvador with a lot of tall buildings.

America is now being run by the logic of the urban machine. The rules on which the cities run are being applied to the rest of the country when it comes to gun control, health care and race. The rules broke the cities and they are breaking the country. And there is no escaping the rules without breaking the power of the urban political machine that now controls the country.

Comments

  1. Gould K.L. Brownlee11/4/13

    That pretty much spells it out. Our "government" has the same short-sighted, self-destructive character as your average common criminal. It's fitting that our president is an affirmative-action parasite who is also an incompetent amoral criminal.

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  2. The machine relies on millions of idiots. Only idiots can be fooled by the arguments and tactics of the machine. That's the biggest reason for Amnesty: to import illiterate idiots. That was the biggest reason for how Ted Kennedy changed immigration in 1965: so there are more third world idiots being imported. The idiots are not only vulnerable to idiotic arguments, they patently can't fully support themselves and their families without the machine, so it's a double benefit.

    The arguments that the machine uses on its victims/beneficiaries are idiotic, and that's not a coincidence. It's easy to deconstruct logic and facts when your audience is not just of the low information variety, but low IQ. They know nothing, they understand nothing, and plan nothing but to get the very next "free" dollar as soon as possible.

    The school system teaches idiocy. Everything is recast in terms of primitive arguments supportive of how the machine wants its growing idiotic base to view the world. The Kardashians stand for nothing but idiocy, so so do the various "real housewives". Idiocracy is the goal. It won't last, but just like the criminal part of the Chicago machine that consumed it's courts, and city and state government only cared about today, the machine doesn't care about tomorrow. It must idiotize the country or die, and even though it's only postponing the moment of death, it only knows how to operate one way: as the lord of the idiots.

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  3. "And a city without an economy is just Somalia or El Salvador". And as it gets worse civil unrest will occur. And if you run afoul of what's left of the law, no worries if you live in Chicago. The machine will take care of you...

    http://rightreactions.blogspot.com/2013/04/nothing-makes-sense-anymore.html

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  4. "plotted to convince New England to secede from the Union."

    I have to say, even as a New Englander, I understand there are many around the country that wish this had succeeded, and that they had taken New York with them!

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  5. Anonymous11/4/13

    The machine doesn't have to imagine there will always be greedy suckers because human history proves there always has been.

    Elaine

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  6. Dan, the Sultan: A ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.

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  7. Anonymous11/4/13

    So just who did Tony Resko offend in order to actually be put in jail?

    Ann

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  8. Ann: Resko didn't "offend" anyone. He just got caught and there wasn't a chance of burying his crimes. The current occupant of the White House wasn't caught. His crimes are ignored by the news media.

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  9. Anonymous11/4/13

    This is an excellent and enlightening essay. Well done.

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  10. Globalization is their goal. America is not important to our leadership anymore.

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  11. Anonymous11/4/13

    "During the 1960s, it sent African-American mobs to riot and kill to protest the Vietnam War."
    Oh great and usually wise Sultan, I think this comment is wrong. The Black riots in 1964 and 65 were not about the Vietnam war. They were about civil rights and economic opportunity. I'm not defended them, just pointing out that the anti-war actions, and riots in some instances, came a few years later. They were significant because Whites were the main participants. LBJ and then Nixon (despite his election promise of a "secret plan to end the war") drafted too many white middle class kids, and their parents didn't see the value in it.

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  12. Anonymous12/4/13

    with decades of policies for sanctuary cities at most metro areas, it looks like they've been on to the cloward piven shit for forever

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  13. Anonymous12/4/13

    Your second to last para reminds me: Years ago in South Africa, the leader of the largest mineworker's union said to the head of Anglo-American, Harry Oppenheimer, that the union was going to push for the nationalization of South Africa's gold mines. Harry said to him, 'Mr Ramaphosa, a mine is just a hole in the ground'.

    Your words Daniel are too true regarding Democrat desertification of cities and the economy.
    Thanks,

    Mike Richards MD

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  14. Anonymous12/4/13

    Lord Kames said a civilized society is a polite society. As a Scotsman, he knew about clans/tribes. As a judge he recognized the difference in the legal system for the civilized and the clan. James Madison was influenced by those like Kames.

    Moving further on the timeline, Edward Banfield's "the Unheavenly Cities" provides observation on the problems with contemporary urban life, the differences in classes in America (the more short term goal oriented, the lower the class), and the typical solutions to the problems in the inner cities as making things worse, education being one of them. He also had a chapter titled "Rioting for fun and profit" that was controversial, but I think insightful.

    When I reflect on both these men's observations from different eras, it seems we are moving back in the civilization trendline to a more tribal culture. As mentioned, Detroit is a good example. It is so corrupt and uncivil it cannot be hid. The rudeness in popular entertainment, public discussion and social media, the debt bubbles pushed larger by the idea of immediate rewards, and the reliance on "experts" combine to make life more uncivil and unprogressive. For some, existance is little more that being kept as pets, a dehumanizing form of living. And they are oblivious to their station.

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  15. Gun Control Alert has news that barely 29 kids were shot over the school year at just one Shhhcago high school. According to the sewer media though the NRA is the problem. Liberal logic is harder than advanced algebra where I come from.

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  16. Anonymous12/4/13

    To those that say these arguments only appeal to the low information voter, I am not sure that is true.
    He also got the vote of most college students.(Although actually, they are indoctrinated rather than educated.)
    I also know many well educated older people who voted for him twice!
    These same people lead conventional lives. Many have graduate degrees. Some of them attend religious services regularly,all of them live in the suburbs, and send their kids to good schools, (both public and private) and work very hard at their chosen professions.
    You can't get any more "American Dream" than that.

    It is true that one of the constituencies is uneducated. But how to explain the law- abiding, successful people who voted for him the second time? I'm stumped. If someone can explain it ,please do!

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  17. Anonymous12/4/13

    Obama has three basic constituencies; The Stupid, The Evil and the ignorant.

    EBurke

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  18. Anonymous12/4/13

    "...was named after a fictional Indian saint unrecognized by any church and whose name, when pronounced with a Y at the end, began to strike many as Irish...".

    OK. You've got my attention. Name that Indian, please.

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  19. American Indian, St. Tammany

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  20. Linda Rivera12/4/13

    Excellent article, Daniel! Can you write an article on the latest horrifying, frightening attack on America?

    WND.COM: Obama orders same policy that sparked mortgage meltdown
    Government: Lend to less qualified or face discrimination lawsuits

    Undaunted by the housing market collapse that crashed mortgage banks, cut the rug from underneath homeowner equity and slammed taxpayers for billions in bad loans, the Obama administration now has launched a major push for banks to hand out mortgages to those with “weaker credit,” including some on public assistance... http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/obama-orders-same-policy-that-sparked-mortgage-meltdown/.

    One of champagne socialist Obama's determined goals is to UTTERLY DESTROY the American economy, and along with it, the WORLD economy.

    Are there no patriotic people in government that will put a stop to the total DESTRUCTION of our country?

    Champagne socialist is a term originating in the UK to describe some of their DISGUSTING leftist politicians. One definition of a 'champagne socialist': Someone who purports to empathize with the lower class whilst enjoying an upper class, millionaire lifestyle.

    Another definition: A champagne socialist is a derogatory label for a person who vocally and ideologically expresses support for democratic or radical socialist belief...

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  21. Averegmelon12/4/13

    Sadly, your article is dead on.
    My father wisely once said, "The mutts are winning". He was referring to the obviously vacuous souls who cared about nothing more than their next sexual victory, cold beer, and getting paid to do absolutely nothing. The lazy idiots of America, AKA mutts, are destroying all that has been built by the sweat of previous generations for them to enjoy. All because of a few well-placed groups of individuals so consumed by power and pride that it matters not if the entire globe becomes inhospitable as long as they remain in total, God-like charge. And I'll bet a few reading this say the Bible is a book of fairy tales. Just skip to the end and read the finale.

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  22. Anonymous12/4/13

    “In 2012, he ran the same tired campaign run by a hundred corrupt mayors in a hundred cities who know that they can't lose because the game is rigged…” In Fairfax County, VA, one of the country’s richest counties, the following precincts (a full 40% of all the County’s precincts) had less than 1% change in its vote percentage for Democrat vs. Republican presidential candidate from 2008 to 2012. The volume of voting changes within precincts, but the resulting percentages do not. How does this happen?

    104, 108, 116, 119, 121, 123, 127, 128, 130, 208, 209, 213, 214, 218, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 229, 236, 307, 312, 315, 317, 319, 320, 324, 325, 327, 331, 402, 404, 420, 421, 424, 426, 427, 503, 506, 508, 523, 528, 602, 605, 606, 608, 609, 611, 612, 618, 619, 627, 701, 704, 707, 708, 711, 717, 718, 719, 720, 726, 727, 730, 731, 732, 805, 824, 825, 843, 901, 903, 904, 911, 913, 914, 916, 918, 919, 920, 925, 926

    Historical perspective, these precincts had less than 1% change from 04 to 08 (5% of precincts).

    304, 305, 311, 316, 328, 502, 511, 525, 602, 608, 815

    source - http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/ website.

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  23. Anonymous12/4/13

    I thank you for this very insightful essay. I have been unable to rise above the funk I have been mired in for some time. This clears up alot for me.

    @Linda - not only someone in our country but an ally country. Champagne socialist - perfect.

    I would add self loathers to Obama voters.

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