There's an evenin' haze settlin' over the town
Starlight by the edge of the creek
The buyin' power of the proletariat's gone down
Money's gettin' shallow and weak — Bob Dylan, workingman's blues #2
The mythical Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse are biblical figures representing Death, Famine, War, and Conquest who were sent down as punishment from God.
The new, man-made four horsemen are the war in Ukraine, a Covid resurgence, gun violence, and inflation. Count on them to be riding through your neighborhoods again this summer even though all four of them should have been cut off at the pass long ago.
Yesterday, the US surpassed the million mark in Covid deaths. Most of them were unnecessary and the price we all pay for a broken, inequitable health-care system and a right-wing political movement that has made mask-wearing and vaccines its pet wedge issues, right up there with abortion, immigration, and Critical Race Theory.
The seemingly interminable and unwinnable war in Ukraine has evolved from being primarily a war of national defense on the part of Ukraine against the Russian invaders, into a big-power proxy war that President Biden and his neocon coterie see as a way of strategically weakening Russia for the inevitable cold-war battles that lie ahead. Now with both sides suffering from delusions of total victory over the other, the prospects of a negotiated peace or even a ceasefire, appear to be out of reach.
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. — Washington Post.
As the civilian death toll in Ukraine continues to rise and millions of Ukrainians flee their homeland, Biden continues to funnel billions of dollars in weaponry into the killing fields, thereby keeping the war going and, at the same time, placing the US economy on an unstable war footing. His hope is to rally midterm voters to the Democrats by waving the bloody Ukrainian flag. Instead, the war has only succeeded in driving spiraling inflation in the US, placing basic necessities like food and fuel out of reach for many around the world and making inflation the number one issue on voters’ minds here as election day nears.
Gun deaths at all-time high
As for the other American pandemic, the CDC reported Tuesday that Gun deaths reached the highest number ever recorded in the United States in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, as gun-related homicides surged by 35 percent.
More than 45,000 Americans died in gun-related incidents as the pandemic spread in the United States, the highest number on record, federal data show. The gun homicide rate was the highest reported since 1994. That’s even higher than the official death toll in Ukraine if you’re counting. The biggest increases were among Black boys and men ages 10 to 44 and American Indian or Alaska Native men ages 25 to 44.
Here in Chicago, we’re all happy to hear that shooting deaths are down in the city compared to last year. A Chicago Sun-Times analysis shows the 15 communities targeted by the mayor’s “Our City Our Safety” initiative saw a 19% decline in homicides and a 28% drop in nonfatal shootings from the same time last year. Citywide, those numbers have fallen 7% and 17% respectively,
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has attributed the decline to an anti-violence plan aimed at flooding the city’s most dangerous areas with “new resources.”
But “new resources” usually means simply more cops. To her credit, the mayor means that and a lot more, ie. affordable housing and big increases in community investment on the south and west sides. But she’s up against a host of vocal and powerful law-and-order opponents who think that more cops, higher bail, and harsher prison sentences mean less crime. There’s never been any evidence that such a correlation exists. Quite the opposite.
Yesterday, it was announced that a Chicago man has been charged with sending threatening law-and-order messages to Mayor Lightfoot and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
Christopher J. Tatlock, 32, allegedly sent emails to Foxx on May 4, threatening “to shoot and hang her if she did not prosecute crime in Chicago,” according to a news release from Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
In the last week, with CPD on high alert, there have been several mass shootings in the city and as usual, the cops and the gang interventionists arrive on the scene after the shooting has ended and the body count begins.
A gaggle of pro-cop, law-and-order candidates are lining up to take on Lightfoot in the upcoming mayor’s race. But none of them have shown that they have any clue how to end the violence and none will talk about stopping the flow of guns into the city or anything resembling gun control. The reason is that neither of those things, vital as they are for reducing gun violence in the city, are in the hands of the mayor.