The COVID-19 outbreak has been the ultimate opportunity for Democrats to indulge their favorite pastime - power trips - as never before. And few politicians have come closer to admitting it than Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot just did.
NBC-5 reports that the mayor had this to say about residents chafing at the prospect of enduring more restrictions on their liberties in the name of stamping out the coronavirus:
“Some of you have joked that I’m like the mom who will turn the car around when you’re acting up. No friends, it’s actually worse,” Lightfoot said. “I won’t just turn the car around. I’m gonna shut it off, kick you out and I’m gonna make you walk home. That’s who I am. That’s who I must be for you and everyone else in this city to make sure that we continue to be safe.”
“I don’t want to be that person if I don’t have to - but I will if you make me,” she continued […]
“We’ve got to continue to do the right things. If you are a business, we’re not afraid to shut you down and we’ve proven that. So please step up and do the right thing. Follow the guidance that you know is in place to keep your workers, to keep your customers and to keep you safe,” Lightfoot said, noting that she did not want Chicago to see a spike in cases like some states in the South and West regions of the U.S. have in recent weeks.
“I certainly don’t want to be like other places of the country where we’re shutting down commerce and businesses again,” Lightfoot said.
“We fully recognize the hardship that this has placed on everyone. But if we must, we must. And it depends upon each and every person to do the right thing. Because the problem isn’t just that you’re hurting yourself, the problem isn’t just that you’re hurting people in your network. You’re hurting the whole city,” Lightfoot said.
Gee, “Mom,” then it sure is weird how many of your “kids” keep getting blown away on your watch, with the best idea you can muster to stop it being to take guns away from people other than the shooters:
The Chicago Killing Fields yield their gruesome daily harvest. https://t.co/6yldjSMb14
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 16, 2020
On Monday morning, NBC Chicago reported the total number of shooting victims was over 60 for the weekend, with 16 people dead.
The Chicag0 Sun-Times reported one of the weekend’s fatalities was a 10-year-old girl who was “inside a Logan Square home on the Northwest Side” when she was shot in the head by a stray bullet. She was shot at 9:40 p.m. Saturday and pronounced dead just hours later.
A one-year-old boy riding in the car with his mom was also shot and killed Saturday. He and his mother were driving back from the laundromat when a car pulled up next to them and opened fire. The mother was shot as well, but her wounds were not life-threatening.
At least 100 people were shot in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago last weekend, which was Father’s Day Weekend, and 14 of them succumbed to their wounds.
This is one the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats.
For all their many, many faults, the GOP generally at least presents itself as recognizing that public servants are just that: servants.
Employees of the people who voted them and whose taxes pay their salaries. Even those Republicans who ignore conservatives in favor of their donors has the minimum level of self-awareness necessary to not flaunt it.
Democrats, by contrast, are much more likely to openly embrace their self-imagined dominance over the people.
Whether casting themselves as parents disciplining unruly children, as Lightfoot does, or any number of other roles - teachers, masters, even saviors - the common thread is the presumption that their knowledge, understanding, ideas, and even motives should simply be accepted as superior to most other members of the community from which they came.
But the truth is, from intellect to character to interests, there’s nothing that automatically makes our elected leaders one iota better than “he first 2,000 people in the telephone directory,” as William F. Buckley put it. And Chicago is perhaps the ultimate cautionary tale as to the consequences of believing otherwise.
