I Want You to Understand Chicago
"I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time."
Computer safety researcher Kyle Kingsbury on living in Chicago in the current moment:
“Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again.”
The lawlessness of this moment — the oppression, and, let’s be super-clear, the fascism of it all — should not be ignored. We can’t let this become some kind of new normal.
I worry a lot about the PATRIOT Act. In the aftermath of 9/11, there was a bipartisan effort to pass what in effect was a draconian security bill that vastly eroded American civil rights. It was supposed to be a temporary measure, but, of course, almost everything it brought about is still with us decades later. It permanently ratcheted down American freedom. This year’s activities — which represent not so much a ratchet down as a fall into deep, dark precipice — must not establish a new baseline.
I’m less worried about Trump than the framework around Trump. He’s awful in a multitude of very obvious ways, but he’s also a 79 year old man with health problems who is obsessed with his ratings and absolutely needs to eat his rock-hard steak with ketchup. But there is an enormous financial, legislative, and strategic scaffold around him, of which the Heritage Foundation and Stephen Miller are just two nodes, that is pushing this agenda. It’s not one guy who has led to people being kidnapped from the streets of Chicago; it’s thousands and thousands of people, all motivated by power and financial gain. It’s not a cult of personality so much as a mycelial network that has been patiently undermining democratic foundations for decades.
It is also, I’m convinced, the dying gasp of the twentieth century. It’s important to share stories like Kyle’s. It’s important to keep talking about it. It’s important to keep marching and organizing. This isn’t some partisan political disagreement; this, in a real way, is about the future of human society. That can be paralyzing, for sure. But I also believe that democracy will win. We just have to keep pushing, telling the truth, and sharing stories about what’s really going on.
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