WAR!
POST 1221
Reporting From War-Torn Chicago . . .
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Adapted from Edward R. Murrow’s March 9, 1941 broadcast from London.
Edward R. Murrow
This is Chicago.
Soon it will be winter in America. Already the flowers in the parks are browning and wilting as though there will be no renewal next year. There’s good fighting and invading weather ahead for Trump’s shock troops. In a few days’ time the moon will be full again and there’s a feeling in the air that big, dangerous things will happen soon.
Don’t believe it’s war? Go to Broadview, IL and ask anyone about masked gunmen, smash and trash, people thrown to the ground, pepper spray blasted in the face of innocents, children zip-tied and jammed into an unmarked, blackened U-Haul. Ask about camouflaged masked gunmen rappelling from a Black Hawk attack helicopter to invade and vandalize a peaceful apartment building. Ask about people shot by masked thugs and a priest shot in the head while praying for peace. Ask them if at first it felt like an invasion of criminals and now it feels more like a Civil War battlefield. So much for better angels.
From pal Frank Levy:
It isn’t bad enough that 47 is sending storm troopers (ICE and CBP) to northern cities with Democratic and Black mayors to quell an insurrection that does not exist.
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Now he is sending federalized National Guard troops from Texas to Chicago. Said another way, 47 is sending north hundreds of “sons of the south,” descendants of fighters for the “lost cause,” to quell violence, to stop an insurrection that does not exist, and control all those uppity people of color and put them back in their place. This sounds an awful lot like the making of an attack on Fort Sumter. I mean Fort Chicago.
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Can you imagine how excited all those Texas NG troops are to be going to Chicago to stomp on those Yankees? Can you imagine how over the top Greg Abbott is to be the first southern governor to send troops from his little army to control or attack the abolitionists in Chicago?
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We all know 47 wants to instigate violence so he can justify sending in the big guns. And we have known for some time that the MAGA cult has wanted a true Civil War. It looks like 47 is setting the stage for the outbreak of real violence and America’s 2nd Civil War.
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MAGA-types have been calling for a shooting civil war in and on America for a long time. I confess that I find a certain appeal to most of the federal tax sucking red states (dark colored states in the pic) seceding from our present disunion and having to go it alone without the hundreds of billions of dollars from blue states to support their bullying conceits every year. These are the people who decry welfare for desperately poor people but are quite happy to suck money from blue states for themselves..
At least since 2016 dementia addled Trump has been calling for martial law to be led by his bone spur self. He’ll command the bloody, treasonous travesty while sitting safely on his gold toilet. He is enacting a Constitution eviscerating war on America right now, making the have-not dupes do the fighting, leaving the rich guys safely on their yachts and in their mansions, protected by their security forces.
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Still don’t believe this is war? Read Jonathan Last’s essay in TheBulwark from October 7, Emergency Triad: The Chicago Rubicon and What Comes Next. If the facts Last presents don’t convince you and make you want to scream and do something to right this foundering ship of democracy, this last, best hope, you have a world class case of denial.
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Didn’t the Republicans used to be the tough-on-crime guys? Weren’t they absolutist believers in bedrock American values like those made clear by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, at least for themselves? Weren’t they the bible thumping, Jesus everything, black-and-white, obey-the-law unquestion-alists? Where’s their fury over Trump violating the Constitution, the law and the courts multiple times every day?
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Actually, the Republicans have always been bible thumpers. It bolsters their certainties and justifies everything they want to do, including violently attacking people for an insurrection that doesn’t exist and locking up innocents who don’t pass the racial profiling test. Bible thumping is what the boundlessly manhood deficient KKK used to use to justify lynchings. All the official strongman, tough guy posturing today is the current version of manhood deficiencies. And it actually is as deranged as it sounds.
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To be fair, this has been ongoing insanity at least since the Rutherford B. Hayes administration. He’s the selfish bastard who killed Reconstruction to sell out southern Blacks (yet again) in order to get the presidency for himself. Republicans have constantly and aggressively been blasting away at everyone and everything that isn’t White and identifies as whatever their current distortion of Christianity might be. Oppression and hypocrisy aren’t new here.
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We Don’t Have a Trump Problem
We have a cowardice, hypocrisy and greed problem. All of this war on America could be stopped almost instantly if Republicans in Congress would actually find their spines and honor their oath to protect and defend the Constitution..
Instructions for being a Republican
But there’s no chance of that happening. These people sold out a long time ago. They sold their integrity and they sold their honor. Likely, they don’t even remember a time when they had clarity on what is right and what is wrong. Their clarity now is limited to what serves themselves best in the short term, which consists solely of sucking up to Trump..
This war is no fiction, no movie. Harm is being inflicted on real people and death has already come to some.
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It takes a certain trust and a stretch of empathy to see this violent lawlessness from my peaceful North Shore neighborhood. But that’s what they thought in Highland Park, IL in the morning of July 4, 2022. Everything seemed peaceful. Then suddenly it wasn’t.
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Maybe there’s no war to see where you live. But there is a shooting war in America right now, with bullets flying in only one direction – at We The People – regardless of whether you can see the violence from your door step.
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From
Each of us can take steps to support – and perfect – our democracy, whether through talking with friends, family, and neighbors, contacting elected representatives, or exercising our right to protest. The value of the right to speak freely, to celebrate dissent even when uncomfortable, to have a say in our government, to live free from surveillance and the threat of unwarranted punishment, demands no less.
– Julie Goldscheid, Professor of Law Emeritus at CUNY School of Law
What Would They Say or Do Today?
Looking towards the Paul Revere statue and the rear of the historic Old North Church in Boston, MA. Photo Credit : Aimee Seavey
Paul Revere made his famous ride because of the immediate threat posed by the tyrannical British overlords and their soldiers advancing on the colonists. One lantern was hung in the belfry of the Old North Church in Boston and that sent Revere speeding on his horse to sound the alarm.
We are no less threatened today by the advancing tyranny of the Trump administration. Today Revere’s call would be:.
The fascists are coming! The fascists are coming!
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What would Paul Revere do today? What will you do today?
Thomas Paine told us:
Thomas Paine
THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered;
What would Paine say of our American Crisis today? What would he implore us to do?
What will you do today? Click here for guidance. And read this.
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NO KINGS!
- Be there on October 18 – in just 6 days – to join millions of our fellow democracy loving Americans and make your voice heard. Insist that there will be no fascism and NO KING in the United States of America!
- Click the map below to find a demonstration near you. There are over 2,500 of them ready to go in blue states and red states – in every state.
Be there!
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Final Words
“The fundamental reason for all our evil is our desperate attempt to prove our preferred illusion true by slaughtering everyone who clings to a different illusion.”
- – Finding Myself in Rehab #8
- Rabbi Rami, October 9, 2025
Who is it who wants to do the slaughtering?
Still Standing
Three years ago Rep,Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Some Other Reality) ranted idiotically,
“Not only do we have the DC jail which is the DC gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens,”
It stands yet today as a supreme MAGA totem against intelligence – and gazpacho soup. Take no comfort in her now demanding that Trump’s Big Ugly Bill be neutered of its attack on healthcare because the cost of healthcare insurance for her adult sons will double. The rest of you . . . oh wait: she doesn’t even see you.
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“Reporting from Chicago, Good night and good luck.”
Mid-Term Election
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JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
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