800 dude wrote:
Actually, it isn't just Chicago. Murder rates are way up in all major U.S. cities lately, and nobody is quite sure why. They're still way down from their peaks decades ago, but it's a troubling trend.
I happen to be close with some people who prosecute violent drug gangs, and one trend they've seen is that mobile phones and social media have basically thrown gasoline on conflicts. It used to be that people had to be in the same place to start a feud, and most people were generally smart enough to avoid being physically in the wrong territories. Now you have people getting into it on Twitter and Instagram (not so much facebook), posting Youtube rap videos dissing each other, and things get out of hand.
Also, it's very easy for people to locate each other and assemble a crew for a shooting. In a way, it's sort of a trickle-down version of the command and control revolution that happened in the U.S. military in the late 80s and 90s. Technology give you real time intel and real time communication with your entire organization.
Finally, technology has had a cultural impact. It was always hard to raise a kid in these communities where there are powerful cultural elements that glorify violence, but now that stuff is hitting kids 24/7. All of these criminals promote themselves with social media and youtube videos, and kids are exposed to it even in the home.
Also, I think Black Lives Matter has something to do with it. I'm not sympathetic to the notion that police are now afraid to be proactive. Frankly, I think it's a good thing that police now feel like they need to be careful that their actions will be recorded and second guessed by everyone in the nation. But on the other hand, I think that heightened anger and resentment towards law enforcement leads to disrespect for the law. (Which is NOT to suggest that the anger is unjustified, just that it also has negative consequences.)
Excellent post.
I think that several other (or related factors) might be contributing. I'm sure that there's been at least a modest police pullback in response to BLM--a sense that it's better to "leave them to themselves" than, for example, to charge into dangerous situations where one false move by a cop leads to a career-ending viral video.
The Chicago gang-thing is real, and it seems to have infected the cops, so that it's not hard to find quotes by cops in which they claim that "We're the baddest gang of all." That produces cynicism in black citizens and contributes powerfully to the arising of a don't-be-a-snitch culture. That makes effective and honest policing more difficult: how are you going to prosecute if those who know won't tell you what they know?
Finally, Chicago has always been a leading black intellectual hub, with what I'd call a hard-progressive (if not quite hard Left) edge. Black Chicagoans have southern roots; they're the children and grandchildren of those in Mississippi and elsewhere who said, "I'm not going to take this s--t anymore" and took off for points north. That attitude--don't tell ME who runs the show--lingers in the air as a contentious feeling-tone and a predisposition to see malignancy in white power. When you add to that the fact that white power in Chicago IS, in fact, sometimes malignant (especially the police), you've got a nasty, angry vibe in the air, one that breeds righteous insubordination. Charles S. Johnson said the same thing about black migrants in Harlem in the 1920s: having escaped from oppression down South, they're disinclined to be pushed around up North.
But these are just general trends. I suspect that a lot of the folks suffering for all this violence are just basic working folk trying to survive, without a heavy ideological investment in being SJWs.