America’s Choice: Chicago or MAGA Country | RealClearPolitics
It is not a trivial point. This preference and proclivity for violence can reshape America into a brutish nation that soon resembles the dangerous streets of Chicago. In fact, during the height of the recent protests and looting, Chicago suffered the deadliest single day in its modern history, with 18 people murdered on May 31, prompting the Chicago Sun-Times cover headline Bloody Sunday. But well before recent unrest, Chicago s street carnage had grown so intense in recent years, that the U.S. military sends medics to city hospitals to train in gunshot wound treatment before overseas deployments to battle zones.
Much of this violence flows from a lack of opportunity that drives far too many young men to lives of despair, danger, and criminality. A recent University of Illinois study reports that 40% of Chicago black men aged 20-24 were neither employed nor in school. Part of this idleness flows from the scandalous failure of public education in Chicago. At the end of the 2019 school year, per Illinois exam guidelines, only 26% of Chicago public schools students tested ready for the next grade level.
Much of the dereliction of duty in public education results from a bloated and expensive bureaucracy that exists for its own self-aggrandizement, to the detriment of children and families. Too many young Chicagoans find themselves consigned to lives of underperformance in a digital economy that emphasizes STEM skills and creative capacity.
Those same bureaucrats totally oppose Republican Party efforts to offer school choice for poor parents. They steadfastly fight efforts to empower parents and students to afford alternatives like Catholic schools. Why? Because statist monopolies in Chicago sustain a power structure of politically connected cronies. In most American cities, but especially Chicago, these government-paid charlatans ignore poor performance, eschew accountability, and carefully watch the clock while manipulating a union system that rewards retirees with pension benefits unfathomable to private-sector workers.