My Descent Into The Chicago Hellhole

Is the Whitehouse building a national policing and surveillance system in plain sight?

The word from the White House wasn’t good:

Allegedly, Chicago was a “war zone” under attack by an organized invading horde of domestic terrorists inciting chaos, violence and rebellion. The White House (WH) said Chicago was “on fire,” the “most dangerous city in America,” a “killing field,” and a “hellhole”. WOW! Pretty bad stuff, but kinda hard to believe, wouldn’t you say?

My wife and I had promised our seventh grade granddaughter we would drive to Chicago to see her play volleyball at a middle school in Broadview. We were aware that local residents were protesting the aggressive actions of masked and armed ICE and National Guard outside the Broadview ICE Immigrant Detention Center. Even though we would be driving straight into the “hellhole,” there was no way we were going to miss our granddaughter’s first game of the season.

We prepared ourselves in the event we ran into trouble: bottles of water, fresh coffee, and a CLIF bar. As we cruised through Broadview on our way to the middle school, we looked for signs of chaos, but instead, it was a beautiful day with the colored leaves of fall swirling in the air against a blue sky and white clouds. We saw kids on bikes, moms strolling newborns, people walking dogs, and the hustle and bustle of Chicagoans running errands. We also saw roofing crews atop old homes, lawn care teams mowing and trimming, and construction crews up high where most people don’t want to go. As we pulled into the school parking lot, excited parents were walking their seventh grade daughters into the gym wearing their colorful uniforms. It was just your typical vibrant and peaceful Chicago scene as we’ve always known it.

So no surprise, we never passed a single hellhole.

The real hellholes these days are inside the ICE Immigrant Detention Centers popping up all over the country. Inside these detention centers there is a very dark process underway that includes illegal, unwarranted search and seizure, temporary detention, deportation in the dark of night to a black site prison in the middle of nowhere, and disappearance of detainees subjected to treatment bordering on torture, leading to death for some. If it sounds like a Gulag, that’s because it is.

After the volleyball game on the way home to Champaign, we talked about the extreme narratives being dumped on Chicago, the Governor and Mayor by the WH on TV and social media. What does your common sense tell you? If it sounds preposterous (hellhole?) coming from a preposterous person, then it probably is. And a peaceful protest on a city block with an area of 5 acres, within Chicago’s 150,000 acres, is disrupting only 0.003% of Chicago. Does that sound like an apocalypse to you?

Sure, Chicago has its problems as do all cities. Trying to manage an enormously complex city with a population over 2.7 million will never be perfect because humans and societies and institutions are not perfect and never will be. All cities struggle with their percentages of very poor, desperate, homeless, physically and mentally sick, and sometimes violent citizens. Cities deal with these problems in a transparent, honest, fair, and legal manner that respects individual liberty and humanity for everyone.

After rereading Orwell’s classic “1984,” I was reminded how closely the novel’s “Ministry of Truth” presaged today’s WH propaganda machine which attempts to rewrite history to control, distort, shape and hide the truth to maintain power. The WH has consolidated a Cartel under its control composed of Homeland Security, ICE, National Guard, Department of War, FBI, Department of Justice, Congress and Courts in a subversive collusion to force a unitary executive (a.k.a “dictatorship”) on our democracy.

My wife and I will never forget traveling through Spain in 1975 which was ruled by a dictator, Francisco Franco. In Madrid there were soldiers with rifles on every street corner. It was alarming, but we were thankful this could never happen in our democratic America. But are we now witnessing the outlines of something similar in our country? Is the WH Cartel building a national policing and surveillance system in plain sight?

Don’t let fear or peer pressure suppress your long-held values and sense of humanity. Americans are pushing back in the courts. Veteran groups are encouraging active military to not be forced to break constitutional law and military code. Residents in vulnerable neighborhoods are helping their law abiding, tax paying and hard working immigrant families to stay safe.

Stand up America, speak out, stay strong!