Recently, I was sitting down with my friend Angi, and we were talking about how much it bothers us that Chicago is being exploited and politicized all in an effort to somehow get at Obama. That this will somehow undermine the President by hyping up our crime. The logic is flawed and a failed one, but then again so is all right wing thought processes.
Fox News, and The Drudge Report among other right wing "news" outlets, have made it their main goal in life to politicize Chicago every chance they get. Publishing headlines like "Obama's Chicago Way --Scandals from the Daley Playbook." And basically having every headline refer to Chicago as a "War Zone"every week.
Well, the lies are working.
A new recent poll showed that Americans think that Chicago is the most violent city. This mess of false information from right wing media floating out there has brainwashed people into thinking so. The facts don't back it up, but people just let the noise sink in and think of it as truth.
The fact remains that Chicago is not even in the top 20 for violence, according to the FBI, and we are at a 40 year low for crime. The gun laws are working, we are proud of that. Homicides in 1991: 924. Homicides last year: 415 Those are the facts. Chicago is one of the safest cities in the country. Our police officers do a fine job of protecting us, among the best in the nation. But you wouldn't know that when you see the city reported on in the media. You also wouldn't know that the MOST violent cities are the red ones. So, while their hate of Obama and his hometown consumes them in red states, they fail to do anything about their very real situation of being amongst the most violent in the world.
Just last weekend 15 people were shot in a club in Miami (population 415,000) but since Obama is not from Florida you didn't hear about that. Rest assured if it was Chicago you would have. Miami is a city that has a fraction of Chicago's population. That's just one example.
Oh, and for the record, Obama never held any Government position in the City of Chicago at all. He was never Mayor, or Alderman and was never involved in any official position in city politics. He wasn't involved in our city's gun regulations or a "Daley Playbook" or anything else the right seems to want to blame him for.
Time to get over your hate folks.
This sickness and hatred has of course moved on to include our Mayor, Rahm Emanuel and the Drudge report has referred to Rahm Emanuel, as "The Godfather." See what they did there, with the Gangster reference, despite the fact Al Capone died 67 years ago? Pathetic.
You can't tell me this is not an absolute hatred for our President and his hometown. It is.
But, what hurts us the most out of all of this, is the exploitation and exaggeration of our crime rates, because this affects each and every one of us in Chicago. It hurts our businesses, our tourism, our citizens and our reputation--all based on lies and political games.
At what point did we start being a political party instead of Americans? I don't remember anyone trashing Crawford, Texas and saying it was a horrible place. Because liberals think in terms of we are all Americans, and conservatives don't. We tear down policy not people. We don't make it personal.
Something happened that apparently made conservative folks lose their mind, and that something was apparently the election of our first African American President to office. The polarization is unprecedented, to the point where the guy's hometown needs to be torn apart. It is shameful, and embarrassing.
Well, we Chicagoans are fed up with it. Stop hurting your fellow Americans. We are all Americans, together in one nation. Tear one of us down, and you tear all of us down. Not everything is a political party. If only the so called "Patriots" and "defenders" of the Constitution understood this.