The shots that rang out last week resemble those fired on Fort Sumter which started the Civil War
The shooting has started.
A federal law enforcement source has now confirmed that a Chicagoan opened fire on federal officers. Whether this is the first volley or merely the latest escalation, it follows an obvious trajectory: When city leaders wink at lawlessness and when newspapers sanctify defiance, blood is the next headline.
Our local press corps has abandoned skepticism for sermonizing. They’ve become propagandists — much like the newspapers of the South in the years before the Civil War — stirring emotion, arousing grievance, and normalizing rebellion against our own federal government. They no longer cover the news; they choreograph it.
How Chicago media is praising a rebellion
You don’t have to take my word for it. Just read what they print.
Over the past several weeks, Chicago’s newspapers have waxed rhapsodic about what is, in plain English, a treasonous insurrection — one incited and encouraged by our mayor and applauded by our governor. Their coverage could be mistaken for a romance novel about “resistance.”
They lionize protesters for blocking and attacking federal agents, portraying the offenders as victims of political persecution rather than the obstructors of justice they are, rightly accused of violating federal law. Editorials frame their indictments and prosecutions as assaults on “dissent” and “free speech,” as if storming a secure facility were the same as writing a letter to the editor.
They glorify clashes between demonstrators and federal agents, waxing rhapsodic over images of tear gas, chanting crowds, and the “courage” of those who rush police lines, like the polemicists who fueled the flames of the French and Russian revolutions.
When federal judges — many appointed by Obama and Biden — issue restrictions on the use of force, the papers celebrate it as a “civil rights victory,” never mind that such rulings make it harder to protect the very communities they claim to champion.
They present Chicago as a city united in moral defiance of Washington. To them, federal agents are invaders; activists are patriots; the mayor is a folk hero. The coverage invokes the Haymarket.
They hold riots and the 1968 Democratic Convention as sacred precedents, as if today’s mobs were heirs to some noble revolutionary tradition.
Grassroots “Whistlemania” events, student walkouts, and neighborhood tip lines are treated as courageous civic acts — never as interference with law enforcement, and the breathless features about frightened restaurant owners and parents hiding from ICE raids always stop short of asking the obvious: Why are these raids happening in the first place?
It’s propaganda with a local accent — an elegy for law-and-order masquerading as journalism.
Inciters in high office
At the center of this performative defiance stands Mayor Brandon Johnson, the city’s self-styled revolutionary-in-chief. Every press conference, every slogan, every wink toward “sanctuary” is like putting out a fire with gasoline.
Beside him stands Governor Jelly Billy Pritzker, the state’s most enthusiastic enabler of dysfunction — who seems to believe the path to the White House runs through open borders, lawless streets, and theatrical indignation.
The inevitable outcome of their combined incitement to riot is already visible: federal agents under fire, neighborhoods paralyzed by fear, and public confidence collapsing faster than the city’s bond rating.
People are getting hurt. People are getting killed. More will be. If this spiral of madness and violent obstruction of justice continues, Washington will have no choice but to restore order — perhaps through federal injunctions, perhaps through the National Guard, perhaps through martial law. The only question is how long our state and city officials will pretend this is some grand moral crusade rather than a reckless dereliction of duty.
The sad fact is these cynical charlatans, blinded by ambition and hate, welcome this chaotic confrontation. They want to make Chicago the ultimate victim.
A rebel city
Let’s not kid ourselves: Chicago today is behaving less like a municipality and more like a rogue state. This is the municipal equivalent of firing on Fort Sumter — symbolic now, but fraught with peril. Those of us who still believe in the Union, who pay our taxes and obey the law, are left living behind enemy lines in a city that treats the federal government as a foreign power.
Meanwhile, the local elite — boss Toni Preckwinkle, the governor, and Chicago’s six percent approval mayor — continue to posture as if their rebellion were popular.
It isn’t. The patience of ordinary citizens, who see their safety and federal subsidies sacrificed for ideology and blind political ambition, has worn thin.
The political reckoning ahead
The Democrat victories in last week’s by-elections have emboldened them. They think they're on the right side of history.
They couldn’t be more wrong. The same electorate that can hand them illusory victories can just as easily deal them historic defeats once voters grasp the scale of the betrayal.
This governor presides over a state hemorrhaging residents and revenue, yet imagines himself a national figure. This mayor presides over a city bleeding jobs, tourists, solvency, and credibility, yet calls it progress. They represent criminals over victims, illegal immigrants over citizens, and ideology over governance.
The people of Chicago are not fools. Even in this bluest of states, the margin for Kamala Harris was no landslide, and Brandon Johnson’s numbers now scrape the floor. When a mayor’s approval rating asymptotically approaches zero, it’s time to start writing political obituaries.
What comes next
Chicago needs a civic awakening — not mobs in the street, but citizens at the ballot box. We must organize, donate, and vote. We must call our legislators, confront our aldermen, and demand investigations into the policies that have brought us to this point.
And if City Hall refuses to listen, there are still courts, oversight committees, and inspectors general who can compel answers. Accountability is democracy in action.
If the powers that be think the outflow of people and capital from Illinois is a joke — if they snicker “good riddance” as the moving vans roll down the freeways — then let them. But the rest of us have a duty to stand and fight in the civic sense: to defend our communities, our police, our neighborhoods, and our constitutional order.
We have already removed two of the worst offenders — Tim Evans and Kim Foxx. That’s progress. But the work isn’t done. Pritzker, Johnson, Boss Toni Preckwinkle, Chewy Garcia’s mini-me, and the rest of the political cartel must also face judgment at the ballot box.
A city worth saving
Leaving should be the last resort. Chicago is our home. The sensible center must reclaim it — not with bullets, but with ballots and relentless civic engagement. We can still restore law and order without surrendering our humanity.
The federal government will do what it must to protect its officers and enforce its laws. But the moral duty to rebuild our civic culture belongs to us. Chicago can be saved — but only if enough of us decide to stay, speak out, and vote the scoundrels who would defile and destroy her out on their ears.
That’s the challenge before us. For those of us who still believe in reason over rage, it’s almost a sacred calling.
This city is not America anymore. Those of us who remain loyal to our country must steer our civic ship back toward the course of common sense before it runs aground on the shoals of socialist secession, toward the sensible center, guided by the North Star of truth as best we can discern it. And right now, that starlight shines on one thing loud and clear: Enough is enough.
Those of us who remain sane must put the inmates who are running amok on the streets and in the halls of power of the madhouse that Chicago has become back where they belong — in political exile.
