Chicago Tribune reporter and columnist John Kass learned about The Chicago Way as a teenager.
In his latest column, he recalls a specific one of the Sunday gatherings of his large Greek family during which the discussions they would have after dinner would cover every subject under the sun:
One Sunday, I must have been 12 or 13, I decided to ask what I thought was an intelligent question that was something like this:
We talk politics every Sunday, we fight about this and that, so why aren’t you politically active outside?
Why don’t you get involved in politics?
There was an immediate silence. The older cousins looked away. The aunts and uncles stared at me in horror, as if I’d just announced I was selling heroin after school.
You could hear them breathing. No one spoke. I could feel myself blushing.
Someone quickly changed the subject to some safe old story. It could have been the one about how our grandfather named the family mule — a white, big-headed animal — after President Truman. My sin seemed forgotten.
But I couldn’t forget it. I couldn’t understand how we could argue about politics over baklava and watermelon and coffee, but not put it into practice.
We could support a political candidacy, we could donate or work for one or another politician that we agreed with.
This is America, I said.
"Are you in your good senses?" said my father. "We have lives here. We have businesses. If we get involved in politics, they will ruin us."
And no one, not the Roosevelt Democrats or the Reagan Republicans, disagreed. The socialists, the communists, the royalists, everyone nodded their heads.
This was Chicago. And for a business owner to get involved meant one thing: It would cost you money and somebody from government could destroy you.
The health inspectors would come, and the revenue department, the building inspectors, the fire inspectors, on and on. The city code books aren’t thick because politicians like to write new laws and regulations. The codes are thick because when government swings them at a citizen, they hurt.
And who swings the codes and regulations at those who’d open their mouths? A government worker. That government worker owes his or her job to the political boss. And that boss has a boss.
The worker doesn’t have to be told. The worker wants a promotion. If an irritant rises, it is erased. The hack gets a promotion. This is government.
So everybody kept their mouths shut, and Chicago was hailed by national political reporters as the city that works.
I didn’t understand it all back then, but I understand it now. Once there were old bosses. Now there are new bosses. And shopkeepers still keep their mouths shut. Tavern owners still keep their mouths shut.
Even billionaires keep their mouths shut.
One hard-working billionaire whose children own the Chicago Cubs dared to open his mouth. Joe Ricketts considered funding a political group critical of Obama before last year’s campaign. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, made it clear that if the Cubs wanted City Hall’s approval to refurbish decrepit Wrigley Field, Ricketts better back off.
It happened. He backed off. It was sickening. But it was and is Chicago.
And now — with the IRS used as political muscle and the Obama administration keeping that secret until after the president was elected — America understands it too.
Let us hope so…though I doubt if a majority of us really care [as in the 1770's, the burden for saving America will fall on a minority of it's people].
Besides, how do we battle this fact, when the leaders of the opposition either aren’t up to the task or are members of The Ruling Class themselves:
[Mark Steyn]…to America’s shame this is now a land in which there are laws against everything — or, at any rate, regulations (we’re way beyond laws at this stage) — and any one of us is in non-compliance with something or other any hour of the day. So, if they’re serious about getting you on something, anything, eventually they will. And they’ll take as much time as they want: The process is the punishment.
Jeff Goldstein seems to be less cynical [I may be reading him wrong]:
Establishment politicians hate change. And we’ve seen virtually no attempt by GOP leadership to bring to the fore the idea of abolishing or attenuating the IRS and replacing it with a much more equitable (and classically liberal) tax system, one that promoted actual fairness and equality and made it so that all Americans had a degree of skin in the game. Instead, they are content to play with the Marxist progressive tax framework, because within it, they can please cronies and punish enemies and wield enormous power and influence. And without it? Not so much.
So we’re going to see show trials and arrests and some flunkies get flushed. None of which will matter. Because what’s needed is systemic change, and everyone knows it. It’s just that a vanishingly few in power desire to make the changes — and they’re hoping that we can again be sated by impassioned words of condemnation and a few scapegoats.
Not me. Not this time. Spit.
So congrats to the ruling class, which has managed to bring me, Mark Levin and Ron Paul (mostly) together…in our calls for how best to reform the government.
And that is no easy feat.
I just don’t believe it’s worth it anymore.
The national government is too far gone in it’s corruption for any meaningful systemic change to occur. The patient is terminal.
I just can’t see any way for reform to happen, given the present circumstances.
I’m willing to listen to any suggestions, however, if they will help prevent the turmoil and violence I see as in our future.
